Imagine what you would do, if by tomorrow you were allowed only half the CO2 budget you spend normally, including what you would need to reduce your energy demand like insulating the house or buying Solar panels…
What would be your choices? You would become very fast very effective, and consider alternatives: going to work by bicycle, in stead of using a car ( in many cases) , which reduces CO2 emissions directly and significant. Maybe even move to live close to your job. Eating less meat would be an easy option, and soon accepted. Heating your house: What people do that have little money, is lowering the thermostat , and switch of the heating sooner. Or start heating only one room in stead of a whole house, and putting on a sweater. Most people will recognize this, it was standard when they grew up. And of course limited traveling by air. If immediate action is required, these are fast to implement, and easy to influence on a individual level. Requiring little or no investments, not in money nor in materials or installation equipment. Which in itself would again cause CO2 emissions.
Now the situation is that if we distribute the CO2 which maximum can be emitted to stay under the 2 degrees scenario, equally among the world population, every person in the Netherlands would be half of that what is emitted today. And this counts for many industrialized countries,
But then, this comes at the cost of … ‘comfort’ or ‘convenience’. Its the most misused argument in the quest for sustainability. The debate for energy saving and CO2 emission reduction , especially in the housing sector , has been dominated for decades by (‘indoor’-) comfort issues. That is to say, not that comfort is questioned, but that increased comfort has been used as an argument to sell energy measures to the public. But comfort has nothing to do with the Paris agreement to stay below 2 degrees. Increasing comfort is even one of the causes of climate change. Comfort, like heating 24 hours a day to 21 degrees, not one room, but the whole house . Comfort like dozens of lihjts burning long hours t create “atmosphere” , comfort of not closing curtains, of laundry machines and dryers day and night available, of showering every day, sometimes more often, in stead of 2 or 3 times a week, which even would be more healthy. Of 2 cars in front of the house, two toilets inside where there was one outside before, a doorbell that runs 24 hours on a transformer. And you can continue the list yourself.
Crucial in the whole discussion around options for CO2 reduction is the role of comfort, and the implicit assumption it should be maintained at the current level. And if possible even better, with a cooling option for the house built in, since a heat-pump is installed anyway, and why would you not use that option…. With all measures taken to reduce energy consumption in houses, it turns out that comfort has been raised constantly, but so did energy consumption, also in the housing sector. The energy spend for heating is the same in 2000 as it was in 1900, as I calculated once: of course, in 1900 people heated only one room, and mainly in the evening when every body was gathered in one and the same room. Comfort s the main evil-doer. But that does not imply it should stay like that, when we have a gigantic task to go to 0-CO2 in no more then 30 years…
In the nineties we were still working on housing designs using compartmentalization: different temperatures in different areas . In the economic bubble thereafter, we lost all inhibitions , and a “ apres nous le deluge” attitude revived, which led to the 24/21 situation. But that does not imply that comfort can now be considered as a near legal right, to avoid discussions with inhabitants and buyers of houses, that don’t want to make any concessions. Because thats counter productive, thats exactly what will lead to what we want to avoid: a actual “Deluge” in time, seeing the signals in research that climate change is increasing rather then decreasing.
We will have to accept that concessions are required, and behavior changes by people, of inhabitants. Its energy not-demanded or not-required that contributes most : it requires no investments at all. Its time to start up the debate on “Comfort” , and no longer going around avoiding the discussion. Comfort is not a set standard, its a variable parameter, not a fixed and unchangeable constant. And climatechange is not a business problem. Its a problem of each of us independently., as inhabitants of a house and consumers. And yes I know, who will tell the people…?
In relation to this, its important to know what we are really talking about. Back to the CO2 budget: the maximum to be emitted to stay below 2 degrees with a 66% chance, is between 800-1200 Gtonnes. Divide that by the global population and spread over the years to 2050, and you get a maximum of 5 tonnes per capita per year. And only until 2050, thereafter it should be 0 anyhow. In the Netherlands we currently emit 10tonnes a year per capita. The math is simple: we should cut emissions by half , immediately. And even the budget gets less, since global population is growing…. And I am not even mentioning whats needed to stay below 1,5 degrees…
So it will be half. Where does that bring us? I looked up historic figures for the Netherlands and it turns out that we end up in the early sixties of last century, when energy consumption was exactly half of that in 2014, per capita. We already new, back then, of course. Was that not the time of great resistance against capitalism and globalization? Make love, not war for oil and other resources? Exactly what has put us into trouble afterwards.
And be honest: it was not a bad period to grow up. I myself grew up that time, and it looks like it did not damage me that much…
The funny thing is that this was the period in the Netherlands before the big Gas bubble was found, and the whole country switched to gas. Currently the gas field has been nearly emptied , earthquakes have become a frequent phenomena in the region, and we are fast reducing pumping gas now. We used coal mainly in the sixties, but we are closing coal fired plants as well , building Wind-turbine fields instead. Which we could have better started building at that time, skipping the gas period. Ironically that was in fact already announced in one of the first energy policy plans by the government in the seventies: to switch fats to wind-energy. Which of course was delayed and developed very slow. But now we are building, and better late then never. Nevertheless, we should only do so for half the energy demand:…. Not for the 24/21 comfort, kept alive by a lot of technical measures , but adapt life style in every way , reducing demand before taking measures, and have the houses retrofitted with limited measures, for only one room heated in times of below 0 degrees . Maybe the babyboomers from the sixties , now old and wise, can convince the millennials that it was not so bad in the sixties, we had a lot of fun. Since we just don’t have the budget for enormous investments in energy and materials, only to keep up appearances .
PS iiSBE , International initiative Sustainable Built Environment ,will present a position paper at COP22 in November, with a more detailed analyses of consequences of the CO2 budget for the built environment.
