Efforts to curb energy consumption in Europe are being more than outstripped by rising use as the European economy expands and users buy increasing numbers of electrical goods.
A report from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Commission's in-house scientific service, shows that electricity consumption and CO2 emissions from the residential sector alone grew at over 10 per cent, effectively nullifying all the savings made in the five years from 1999 to 2004.
The average electricity consumption for a single EU household in 2004 was 4098kWh. The JRC reckons this could be cut by 20 per cent if existing appliances were replaced with more efficient equipment.
Appliances left on stand-by are identified in the report as one of the biggest guzzlers of Watts.
Even when users buy new devices with lower stand-by consumption, they tend to hang on to the old devices and use them in secondary roles.
The JRC report also highlighted incandescent light bulbs as an easily addressable problem.
Some 95 per cent of the electricity that incandescent bulbs use to produce visible light is wasted as heat.
Phasing them out in favour of compact fluorescent lamps or white LEDs would cut household consumption significantly, according to the report.
New initiative targets notebooks, desktops and servers 19 Jun 2007
Money better spent on educating users, analyst firm warns 29 Mar 2007
Country joins US, Canada, Australia and Europe in announcing plans to phase out energy hungry incandescent bulbs 18 Jun 2008
Demand for green domestic products set to climb as government launches new environmental advice centres and energy giants earmark £1bn a year to improve customers' energy efficiency 02 Apr 2008
US and UK industry bodies say one-size-fits-all regulation of standby power consumption would be counter-productive 11 Jul 2008
Report from the Consumer Electronics Council concludes that home working models have cut US carbon emissions by almost 14m tonnes a year 24 Sep 2007
As delegates at African climate change conference are criticised for not offsetting, events management experts insist buying offsets should become standard practice 29 Aug 2008
Proposals to reduce traffic emissions by tweaking insurance options and tackling urban sprawl are on the drawing board 29 Aug 2008
New team to develop Treasury's green policy and manage new Clean Technology Fund 29 Aug 2008
More news
Recent claims from the oil giant's chief executive suggesting tar sand extraction is required to slow the shift to coal may have caught the eye, but as BusinessGreen.com discovers they do not make much sense 28 Aug 2008
With all eyes on the Democrats' convention this week, environmentalists are asking whether it will live up to the green claims of politicians 26 Aug 2008 More in-depth
Post your comment
Send an email to the Business Green editor at feedback@businessgreen.com
