Energy Conservation in the Home: I'll Show You Mine...

I know this is just one tiny piece of the puzzle, but there IS an effective way to get people to reduce their energy usage in their homes: publicize how much their neighbours use. A recent study found that if people think they're neighbours care about the environment, and if they're shown how much energy their neighbours use relative to their own use, then people will use less energy in a race to be the least wasteful.

"The US firm Opower sends over 60 million households around the world energy bills that show their own energy consumption in relation to how much energy their neighbours consume. Providing this information has led to customers decreasing their energy consumption -- to date, this intervention has saved more than $2 billion USD in energy usage."

The problem with implementing something like this is a concern with privacy. If the city publicly displayed bills by neighbourhood, people might try to reduce their usage. But it couldn't even be average bills per neighbourhood or else people will still free-ride on their neighbours. We need people completing individually for the least amount of usage possible. Except the government will never allow companies to post this kind of information openly, which is not such a bad thing.

But we CAN share ourselves!

So here are my monthly averages for 2018. I have little idea where I fit relative to others in my neighbourhood. But I do know that if I find out my numbers are higher than most, that would spur me on to some significant changes. We have four people in our house all the time, and one of them is perpetually freezing cold so cranks the heat whenever I turn my back, plus two additional bodies (a bf and gf) who eat and shower here at least once or twice each week.

My water usage this year averaged to 15.4 m3 per month (that's about 500 litres each day!). I have several water barrels that I use almost entirely in my garden, so the spike in July is more likely from drinking, showering, and clothes washing than from watering. That seems outrageous considering how much I avoid doing laundry and how casual we tend to be about toilet flushing. But I do love a long shower, sometimes more than one in a day when it gets sticky hot outside. This says the average Canadian uses 250 litres per person each day, so we're using about half the national average (since there are four of us), but there are still ways we can reduce that number.

My natural gas usage this year averaged to 221.2 m3 each month. That includes a natural gas water heater as well as my only source of heat. This is where the long showers show. This says the average Ontario home uses about 201.3 m3 each month (or 90 GJ/year), and that's enough to make me want to lower my consumption. But I'm not convinced everyone will be affected by the cross-province numbers as much as they would by their own neighbours that they have to face each day. I'm a bit surprised that we're higher than average because we don't ever wash laundry in hot water, and we keep the house pretty cold (as long as I'm on it), but the walls of my house are leaky and difficult to insulate at this point. The basement and attic are sealed and we have new windows, but I haven't found someone able to insult the wall without destroying all the built in cabinetry.

My electrical usage averaged to 487.3 kWh per month, which is taken mainly from the nuclear plants around these parts (the green line in the graph below just indicates the average temperature each month), and only 4% is from burning fossil fuels, although I'm still not entirely sold on the benefits of going full nuclear. Nationally, residential consumption is at about 1,000 kWh per month, but we can't really compare living here to living on either coast or way up north. I didn't factor in the solar panels because they don't affect usage; they give us money, not energy.

I'm not sure what happened last January to get that spike. It was really cold, but we don't heat with electricity. The general higher use in winter is likely from being inside more often, with the lights on for more hours, heartier meals on the stove, more cups of tea, and more layers of clothes to wash. We do have a small space heater in the basement bathroom which we turn on whenever it dips below -10 after our pipes froze one year. I don't have air conditioning, which helps keep usage down in the summers.

My fatal flaw is ridiculously long showers, which affects both the gas and water bill. Anyone else care to share??