Climate Change Series: How to cut carbon out of your heating, P5
- Shidonna Raven
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Shidonna Raven, Chief Editor
& Laura Cole, BBC
November 16, 2020
Source: BBC
Photo Source: Unsplash,
This Year we are bringing you Our 12 Months to 12 Climate Change Goals & New Habits Series. The series is designed to help you begin making simple and easy habit changing goals that can have a huge impact on your pocket and the environment, you are leaving to your children. We hope that you will be inspired to make your own Climate Change Goals and share them here with the community.
Climate Change can seem daunting as a whole, however, we are many. When we each make our own contribution, we believe these add up to huge numbers. Be inspired, encouraged and most of all enjoy yourself. Involve your children and help start their own space online where they can engage in Climate Change Habits.
We recently brought you the Cooling (Homes/Buildings/Office) Series for the July & August Climate Change Habit Changing Goal to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, This change can have a huge impact on Climate Change and is important Habit for Corporations and Community (Individuals) alike.
September is all about EnergyEfficiencies (at home, in the office and other buildings), which can have a huge impact on the environment. In September the 12 Month Habit forming Climate Change Goal is Solar Panels. Even if you decide to go another route, we invite you to learn more about Solar Panels. Solar Panels are having a huge impact in states and locations like California, that lead in such energy efficiencies. Choose carefully, in some cases Solar Panels have other environment impacts, some associated with production and longevity of usage. Heating and cooling can require a huge energy load depending on where you live and the weather differential.
Enjoy this Series, Apply what you have learned here and share the Journey with the community here by making posts and submitting photos and video to us. It could be featured on our eZine here. Also be a Climate Change Community Champions and share with your community and help empower them to make New Habit forming Climate Change Goals also in the community you share.
Making the best of a boiler
While the energy you use to heat your home makes a big difference to the carbon footprint, there are other ways of reducing emissions.
Terence Jeffrey is a green energy consultant, based in Islington, London, where he advises residents how to get more heat out of their existing boiler systems. He recommends people pay attention to their radiators.
“We always recommend radiator reflectors” he says. “Much of radiator heat is lost through the mounting wall, a reflector it bounces back 95% of it.” In a house with five radiators, reflectors could save £20 ($26) a year from energy bills, he estimates.
More efficient still is to turn off radiators that aren’t being used. Thermostatic radiator valves can be added and used to control the heat in individual rooms. “Letting the other rooms be a little cooler is going to save carbon,” Jeffrey says. Internet connected “smart” valves allow even greater control.
Turning down room temperature down by 1C can have a big cumulative effect. According to Element Energy, the UK would save 1.18 million tonnes of CO2 if everyone carried out such a decrease. Jeffrey is quick to add, however, that many of his clients are in fuel poverty, so dropping the temperature further is not always an option for those already scrimping by on the barely any heat anyway.
He does recommend lowering the running boiler temperature to 60C. “A lower temperature over a longer period is better than firing it up to higher temperatures in short bursts” he says.
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