Why Conservation Is the World's Best Energy Source
By Alexander Jung
Warnings of a coming climate catastrophe caused by greenhouse gas
emissions are growing louder. But the pressure for economic growth
around the globe is pushing gas and oil prices higher. The solution
seems deceptively simple: conserve energy by using it more efficiently.
So why aren't more people doing exactly that?
A satellite image of Europe at night: Residents of Western Europe's
industrial nations waste enormous amunts of electricity, petrol, heating
oil and gas. Without any noticeable decrease in quality of life,
consumers could reduce their energy consumption by one-fifth.
AP/ NASA
A satellite image of Europe at night: Residents of Western Europe's
industrial nations waste enormous amunts of electricity, petrol, heating
oil and gas. Without any noticeable decrease in quality of life,
consumers could reduce their energy consumption by one-fifth.
Peter Lentz always starts his hunt for wastefulness in the cellar.
That's where the energy expert hits pay dirt on this particular morning
too: He feels it as soon as he walks into the boiler room. It's too warm
down here.
The thermometer shows 29 degrees Celsius (84.2 degrees Fahrenheit). The
apartment building has two boilers supplying its heat. Both are running
even though it's above freezing outside. "One would be more than
enough," says Lentz. But what really stuns the energy specialist is the
fact that each unit has a water capacity of 2,500 liters (660.4
gallons), which he considers "absolute nonsense."
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Lentz directs WGB Wärme GmbH, a Berlin-based company with a unique
business model. His firm turns a profit by saving energy for its
clients. WGB installs modern heating systems that can be controlled from
its service center. Clients agree to buy oil or gas from the firm for a
set period of time, say ten years, but do not pay a cent for the
equipment. Instead, WGB finances the new heating systems from the energy
savings it provides.
The deal pays off for both client and contractor -- and helps the
environment at the same time. Energy savings average between 15 and 20
percent, but are often even more. The clever concept is becoming quite
popular in Germany; there are already some 500 energy contractors like
WGB providing services to real estate companies, supermarkets and even
prisons. And their market share is growing by about 15 percent each year.
The conservation industry
Conserving energy is rapidly becoming a growth sector. The new industry
is creating thousands of jobs in areas where German firms are already
leaders. Who would have thought 20 years ago that modern technology for
wind and solar energy would eventually become an export hit? Or that
shares in these companies would be traded on the stock market?
Graphic: Energy Consumption and Savings Goal
DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: Energy Consumption and Savings Goal
With humanity wasting massive amounts of oil, gas and coal to heat
buildings, power industry and fuel vehicles, the potential for
conservation efforts is vast. Fossil fuel consumption has increased by
two-thirds within a generation. Rapidly growing economies in Asia and
countries formerly part of the Soviet Union have increased the global
competition for resources
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,k-6954,00.html>. The world
seems to have insatiable appetite for energy these days.
And the future of new economic powerhouses like China and India
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,433401,00.html>
depends on a steadily growing global energy supply. But where modern
technology falls by the wayside in their rapid development, massive
quantities of natural resources are wastefully being burned and pumped
into the atmosphere. That makes no sense economically, and it's
environmentally insane.
Climate change reports released by the United Nations last week and in
February came to rather worrisome conclusions about the state of
worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming. That in part has
encouraged leaders of all political persuasions and nationalities to
declare themselves ready to make environmental protection a priority.
The alarming forecasts even led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to
announce: "It's five minutes till midnight." But can anything actually
be done to turn back the clock?
Asia ascendent
Future superpower China is already the world's second biggest consumer
of oil after the United States, even though the Asian giant is hardly
motorized. Only 19 out of 1,000 Chinese drive a car, whereas in America
some 780 people out of 1,000 do. And China is second only to the United
States when it comes to belching greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Graphic: International comparison of energy efficiency
DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: International comparison of energy efficiency
Hundreds of millions of people want to copy Western standards of living
and Western consumer habits -- hurtling their countries toward
environmental catastrophes in the process. At the same time citizens of
the industrialized world are beginning to fret over the question of how
much more the planet can withstand. How can mankind's monstrous appetite
for energy be sated in both Asia and in the West?
In the past, it was enough to simply drill for new oil and gas fields,
burn larger amounts of coal and build more nuclear power plants. But
these days even enthusiastic growth optimists are pointing out the
limits of such a strategy: It's too expensive, too dangerous, and --
above all -- too dirty.
One reliable source of energy is not even close to being depleted:
Simply saving it may be the safest and cleanest option mankind has. It
also happens to make a tidy profit.
Without much effort, the almost 500 million citizens of the European
Union could reduce their energy use by one-fifth, studies have found.
That would add up to savings of roughly EUR60 billion ($79 billion) per
year. Such huge sums become less abstract when broken down to household
level: An average family could save from EUR200 to EUR1,000 by using
their energy more efficiently.
Graphic: Electricity Savings
DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: Electricity Savings
In this case, less could certainly be more. And it's not about silly
suggestions such as using your coffee filter three times. Saving doesn't
have to mean sacrificing quality of life. An energy-saving compact
flourescent light bulb, for example, uses only one-fifth of the energy
required by a conventional incandescent bulb and lasts ten times longer.
Buying them will "pay off more than most investments," says Hans
Weinreuther from a consumer advocacy association in the German state of
Rhineland-Palatinate.
If Europeans switched to innovative lighting technology, they could save
EUR4.3 billion each year which in turn could be used for more important
things. But why are consumers so reluctant to take that path?
Leaky pipes and poor insulation
The current debate about energy often seems to be filled with paradoxes.
Many Germans are afraid of being too dependent on Russian oil and
natural gas, which leads some in this traditionally anti-nuclear nation
to reassess their attitudes toward atomic energy
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,460011,00.html>.
Others are even mention the possibility of increasing domestic coal
production. At the same time, the German environmental group BUND has
criticized that the most important source of energy "has hardly been
tapped at all."
End consumers use only about a third of all the energy produced
worldwide. The rest is wasted -- it disappears into the air or sea
through leaky pipes and poor insulation. Peter Hennicke, president of
the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, compares
current energy systems with a bathtub that doesn't have a plug in the
drain -- it constantly needs more water. "It's an intellectual
provocation for any creative engineer or planner," Hennicke says.
Even supposedly fine-tuned products such as automobiles are horrendously
inefficient. Around 70 to 80 percent of the power created by the motor
does not end up being used for the car's main purpose: moving forward.
Instead the energy heats up the radiator fluid or is blown out the
muffler as hot air. Naturally the heat could be used for propulsion;
that's not a new idea. But the technological hurdles to produce such
steam-powered automobiles have proven too great -- and gasoline has
simply been too affordable to make the effort worthwhile.
Saving energy to secure world supplies
How people use energy -- and the products that require it -- is often a
conflicted affair. But every liter of oil, every cubic meter of gas,
every kilowatt-hour of power conserved not only saves money and the
environment. It also helps secure the world's energy supplies.
Slowly this realization is spreading. US President George W. Bush
recently called on Americans to use less oil since their country's
consumption of petroleum products made the United States "vulnerable to
enemy regimes and terrorists." For the first time, the former Texas
oilman admitted that some sort of climate change was underway and that
it presented "a serious challenge."
But the new tune coming from Washington is a rather familiar one in
Brussels. The European Commission has already come up with countless
action plans, presented studies and pushed ahead with efficiency
campaigns. The goal is for the 27 EU members to use at least one percent
less energy each year. And the Commission demonstrated just how serious
it is about achieving that aim by attempting to tighten emissions
standards for the automobile industry.
Of course, the EU commissioner responsible for environmental issues,
Stavros Dimas, watered down his original demands. It's not just the
carmakers being held responsible -- gasoline producers are supposed to
deliver cleaner- burning and ecologically friendly biofuels
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,426736,00.html>. And
one of the most important questions remains: Do the new limits apply to
the entire automobile industry? Will the same standards be set for Fiat
and Porsche? But the EU will no longer be satisfied with lazy promises
made by the industry to improve its record. The argument about not
wanting to endanger thousands of jobs was specious to begin with. For
only those carmakers developing new models -- which will most certainly
be cars that use less fuel -- will survive the coming decades, and
secure jobs in the process.
Pressure to change
There's no doubt that something is underway. The growing number of
forecasts predicting dramatic changes to the planet's climate is
altering the perceptions of political leaders, corporate managers and
even average consumers. It was taken seriously once consumers saw how
rising prices for gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and electricity
were emptying their pocketbooks. The more financial pressure is applied,
apparently, the more people are willing to save.
Seventy to 80 percent of the power generated by a car's motor is wasted.
DPA
Seventy to 80 percent of the power generated by a car's motor is wasted.
Energy consultants in Germany are booked out for weeks at a time.
Consumer advocacy agencies that provide energy saving tips are busier
than ever. New furnaces sell like hotcakes and heating experts can
barely install them fast enough. Wood has been rediscovered as a heating
source, and remains more affordable than gas despite rising demand for it.
Heating with pellets made from pressed wood scraps is even more
affordable. The number of heating units using them in Germany has grown
to 70,000 from only 40,000 the year before. Pellets burn evenly, giving
them an extremely high energy conversion efficiency of over 90 percent.
Strong demand for energy-efficient items is causing prices to soar.
Insulating materials like rock wool, polystyrene, cork or coco fiber
panels cost as much as ten percent more than they did last year. Despite
the inflated prices, some are still sold out for months at a time,
waking memories of a bygone era of energy shocks and a drive to be more
efficient.
Saving energy was popular in the 1970s, as surging oil prices changed
people's daily lives. In Germany in 1979, a liter of gasoline cost more
than one deutsche mark for the first time ever. The German motor club
ADAC distributed millions of stickers with the slogan: "I'm an energy
saver." American physicist Amory Lovins coined the term "negawatts" for
unused megawatts to show that saving energy could have an economic
impact. His credo explained that economic growth and a reduction of
energy use didn't have to be mutually exclusive.
Both the public and industry made an effort and, sure enough, energy
costs sank. Energy intensity -- the relationship between energy use and
economic output -- has since dropped by 40 percent. However, as oil
prices eventually fell, so too did the interest in saving energy. It's a
lot like people with bad backs -- as soon as the pain is gone, they stop
doing their therapeutic exercises.
A generation later, the spirit of saving has returned. And this time it
may have more lasting effects, since it has less to do with doing good
and more to do with economic sense. Even Germany's ruling coalition of
the conservative Christian Democrats and center-left Social Democrats --
often paralyzed by its efforts to reach a consensus -- is getting in on
the act.
Little public awareness of energy consumption
The government has already established its own goals for 2020. Germany
should cut its electricity consumption by 8 percent compared to 2003
levels, lower heating for buildings by 19 percent and decrease energy
consumption for transportation by 5 percent. That, at least, is what
Germany's Dena energy agency is aiming for, but the path getting there
won't be easy.
The difficulties start with the images associated with saving energy --
which never sounds sexy or exciting. Instead it conjures up ideas of
getting by with less or freezing. "Who really likes to save?" asks
Dena's director Stephan Kohler. "I don't."
Kohler prefers to talk about efficiency. Of course, that's his job: Dena
was set up by Germany's last center-left government under Gerhard
Schröder's Social Democrats and the Green Party to spread the gospel of
energy conservation across the land. And that's one of the toughest
hurdles to clear -- far too many people just don't know much about the
energy they use.
Compact fluorescent light bulb require only one-fifth the energy of a
standard light bulb.
REUTERS
Compact fluorescent light bulb require only one-fifth the energy of a
standard light bulb.
Who knows how much their freezer costs them each month? Who is aware
that a flight from Europe to America spews some 4,000 kilograms of
carbon dioxide into the stratosphere? Who realizes that a washing
machine only uses half as much electricity when laundry is washed at 40
degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) instead of 60 degrees? The
average customer of utility companies in Germany like RWE, Vattenfall,
Ruhrgas or who tanks up at Shell or BP is totally clueless -- and
irrational to boot.
"People drive across town to buy meat for 99 cents," a bemused Kohler
says while lamenting how much those same people ignore the potential
gains from simply being a little more conscious about how they use
energy. The widespread attitude assuming that electricity is cheap and
always available from a wall socket annoys the Dena boss: "We have to
get away from that."
Very few already have managed to do so. Barbara Schweer and Martin Hoyer
are exceptions. They moved with their daughter to a housing development
in the southwestern German city of Freiburg consisting of 47
energy-efficient structures.
Their penthouse is heated entirely from a nearby wood-fired power plant.
"We had heating costs of only EUR300," says Schweer, referring to the
paltry annual bill for the 167 square-meter (1,800 square-foot)
apartment. The secret of such savings is the house's extensive
insulation. Even on cold days in February, the thermostat is often kept
at a low temperature. The south-facing glass side of the structure
captures the winter sun, but during the summer the sun is high enough in
the sky so that the rooms don't heat up.
The building, a so-called positive energy house, actually produces more
energy than its residents need -- it's essentially a tiny power plant.
The solar panels on the roof produced almost 9,000 kilowatt-hours of
electricity in the first year. Subtract the structure's own power usage
along with heating costs and there's still a surplus of around 2,000
kilowatt-hours left over. The monthly expenditures of EUR100 for
electricity and heat are more than offset by the EUR400 in revenue the
solar panels bring in.
The key point is that the family can actually make money with its
energy-efficient way of living. And it doesn't require spending winter
evenings reading by candlelight or taking only one warm shower a week.
But such homes remain the exception in both Europe and America. Most of
the 17 million houses and apartment buildings in Germany spend some 30
percent of their total energy use just heating rooms and water. This
also happens to be where most of the savings potential lies.
A report by the energy services firm Techem found that a regular heating
unit needs on average 15.7 liters of heating oil per square meter.
Low-energy houses require only 7 liters. Some models, such as the one
where the Hoyer-Schweer family lives, make do with even less. And such
structures no longer look like oversized burlap bags.
Making old buildings fit for the future
The biggest energy-wasting culprits are older buildings. They burn
around 50 liters of heating oil per square meter. Unfortunately they
also make up the majority of the structures in Germany. Three quarters
of all houses and apartments were built before 1977, when strict
insulation regulations went into effect. That's more than 12 million
structures in Germany alone.
"There's a backup in renovating old buildings energy-wise," says Andreas
Troge, head of Germany's Environmental Protection Agency. And that
slowdown will be hard to change -- only one percent of all real estate
is renovated each year.
When homeowners call upon carpenters, electricians or plumbers, it's
usually for cosmetic repairs. Perhaps the bath will be spruced up, the
stairway painted or the kitchen modernized. But unspectacular
renovations in the cellar or in the attic are usually the ones that
never get done. That's not where guests will be looking.
Graphic: Heat Savings
DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: Heat Savings
Only when the heating bill shows up do some people decide to take
action. Often they get advice from someone like Peter Hirt, an energy
consultant for the consumer protection association in the northern
German city Kiel. The trained engineer then searches for those spots
where a house leaks heat. It could be poorly insulated cellar ceilings,
thin frames for built-in blinds or even boilers placed in non-insulated
niches in foundation walls - a typical building practice in the 1960s.
"They make nice red spots on the infrared camera," says Hirt.
Every blot of color on his monitor represents money lost. Homeowners
could save up to two-thirds of their heating costs if they took
advantage of all the technology available. The installation of a
condensing boiler -- which makes use of its own exhaust for heat --
could be combined with solar panels or a heat pump, as well as a
properly insulated roof, walls and windows.
Policies spur home improvements
Beginning in 2008, the European Union will require the issuance of
energy certificates for homes and apartments that rate a building's
energy efficiency. Though home and flat owners are excluded from the
certificate rule, they will be required to obtain one if they sell or
rent out the property. Like so many regulations that come out of
Brussels, the final energy certificates and requirements are a
watered-down compromise. Indeed, in some instances, the certificate will
include little more information than the previous year's heat and
electric bill. But those dealing in real estate expect the energy
certificate to change the industry, since the added transparency could
end up having consequences for the market value of homes and apartments,
as well as the rents landlords charge.
Requirements like the energy certificate could help consumers do the
right thing. But tax credits and other incentives provided by the
government also help.
Germany's KfW development bank has around EUR5.6 billion to support
energy renovations through 2009. That's four times as much as in
previous years. The state-backed financial institution offers
low-interest loans of up to EUR50,000 ($66,800) per apartment, as well
as grants topping out at EUR8,750. The program ends up working like
government aid to prime the economy -- helping in particular smaller,
regional architects, carpenters, and heating installers. "For every
billion euros invested in the renovation of buildings for energy
reasons, 25,000 jobs in the construction sector are created or secured,"
the latest environmental report of German federal government claims.
However, the involuntary heating of their surroundings isn't the only
way homeowners waste energy. They also use far more power than necessary
for their household electronic devices -- be it their refrigerator,
freezer, computer, stove or lamps. With very little effort each
household could cut their electricity usage by one-third.
The first thing to do is to install switchable outlets that ensure that
electronics are completely cut off from the power network -- including
those models that no longer come with an "off" button. Normal household
devices using a so-called "stand-by" function can use more than EUR90 in
electricity each year. A computer with a monitor and printer can alone
eat up EUR24. Germany could shut down two large power plants if the
country's consumers did without such unnecessary electronic idling.
It's also underestimated just how much power the circulation pumps of a
home's heating system use. New models that regulate warm water according
to time and temperature use only a fraction of the energy the older ones
do, which lowers costs considerably. Germany could in theory switch off
another power plant if most of the heat pumps in the country's single-
and two-family homes were replaced. That's the problem, though: 60
percent of the public isn't even aware that their oil or gas heat uses
electricity.
Light savings
The potential savings from lighting are especially impressive. Regular
incandescent light bulbs have used the same primitive operating
principle for the past century: a coiled wire, usually tungsten, glows
under electricity in a glass vacuum. This method is much like a joke
without a punch line: Only five percent of the electricity is actually
converted into light. The rest is wasted in heat. Despite such horrible
inefficiency, shops in Europe continue to sell some 2 billion of these
energy-wasting light bulbs each year.
Lighting is by far the biggest item on the power bills for office
buildings. Streetlights also devour huge amounts of electricity. Often
they are outdated models from the 1960s still lighting city streets or
paths. If Europe's civic planners switched to modern lighting they could
save between EUR600 million to EUR700 million each year.
A research lab in the western German city of Aachen offers a view of
what the future of lighting holds. Here, some of the 260 physicists,
computer experts and engineers working for the Dutch electronics giant
Philips research new lighting technologies. One of the most promising is
Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED), which are thin yet wide lighting
glass tiles that are coated with a layer of polymers. They can be
integrated into walls or furniture, can change color and are especially
energy efficient.
"They create completely new possibilities for applications," says an
excitied Dietrich Bertram, the director of Philips OLED research unit.
His vision is that in a few years such new lighting will hopefully
replace classic neon tubes. Traditional LEDs are already known to last
much longer than even compact flourescent light bulbs and are more
robust and less sensitive to vibrations. They also react extremely
quickly, which is why the auto industry is using them more and more for
brake lights.
Such examples show the immense growth opportunities that greener
technologies offer. The current global market volume for
efficiency-related technology is estimated by the German Environment
Ministry to total EUR400 billion and it is expected to grow to EUR1
trillion by 2030. And German companies are well positioned to get a big
chunk of that business.
Generous subsidies from the last German government of Social Democrats
and Greens have given German firms a good head start in developing
renewable energy technologies such as hydro, photovoltaic and wind
power. Both laws and subsidies for pilot programs have also helped
German innovators become internationally known. Wind power is on the
verge of "conquering the world market," says Fritz Vahrenholt, head of
Hamburg-based wind turbine builder Repower.
Prospects for exporting new high-tech innovations do indeed look
promising. Around 19 percent of all environmentally friendly
technologies currently come from Germany, Chancellor Merkel told the
German parliament last November. "It could well become more," she said
encouragingly.
A wind farm near Halle: Germany is the world's leading exporter of
environmentally friendly technologies.
Getty Images
A wind farm near Halle: Germany is the world's leading exporter of
environmentally friendly technologies.
China is showing particular interest in "Made in Germany"
eco-technology. The leadership in Beijing knows expensive resources need
to be used more efficiently if the world's largest country is to avoid
an ecological disaster. According to the government's rather ambitious
planning, the Chinese are to become four percent more energy efficient
each year. That will take more than just windmills and solar panels --
products from more traditional sectors like regulatory technologies,
material science and power plant construction will be necessary as well.
All are areas where Germany industry is well represented.
German engineers are developing turbines that are more efficient. They
are inventing tires that have a lower resistance while rolling. And they
are coming up with magical materials that offer better insulation.
Burkhard Schwenker, CEO of the Munich-based Roland Berger international
business consultancy, believes the German environmental technology
sector is already on its way to becoming a "leading industry" and local
manufacturers are "fantastically" well positioned to compete globally.
The consultant is forecasting growth of eight percent annually in the
sector, eventually increasing the number of jobs in the sector from
170,000 today to around 700,000.
Extra costs that pay off
The technology is available, it's just not being used often enough. Both
industry and service providers are still far too ignorant about the cost
of energy, even though they otherwise seem extremely keen to reduce
waste and trim expenses.
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, co-founder of the Wuppertal Institute and
current dean of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and
Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara, finds it
puzzling that more firms aren't trying to squeeze more efficiency from
their energy usage. "I don't know of any sector where it would be
impossible to increase energy productivity fourfold," he says.
If companies, for example, installed more electric motors with modern
regulating technologies, the German economy could save as much energy as
that produced by three or four large power plants. But normally they
decide to purchase what they're familiar with -- that is, the cheap
models. They've apparently overlooked the fact that, over the long term,
90 percent of the outlays for operating a power unit are made up of
electricity costs. In other words: The extra expenditures upfront more
than pay for themselves in the long term.
And that's the effect Freund Drehtechnik GmbH, a small western German
company making rotating machinery components, is counting on. The firm
recently invested EUR12,000 in a lighting system for its new assembly
hall -- EUR4,000 more than traditional lighting would have cost. The
company based in North Rhine-Westphalia installed energy-saving
fluorescent lamps with special sensors that adjust automatically
according to the ambient natural light. The extra costs will be
amortized within three years.
But many businesses are adopting better energy efficiency at a molasses
pace. For many executives it's still easier to complain publicly about
energy prices than it is to search internally for ways to use new
conservation technologies. At least part of the corporate world,
however, has begun thinking differently -- either for image reasons, out
of conviction or simply to trim costs.
* The logistics company UPS is working on optimizing electronic
navigation for its fleet of vehicles. The system is so advanced
that it even suggests routes that avoid unnecessary left turns,
which cost both time and fuel.
* US retail giant Wal-Mart, known for its stinginess when it comes
to costs, is outfitting stores with modern lighting and solar
panels. The company hopes to cut energy usage by almost a third.
* Germany's national rail operator Deutsche Bahn is training its
engineers to drive locomotives in a more efficient fashion. Some
now even let their trains roll up to 70 kilometers on routes
without a noteworthy reduction in speed.
Other companies are making use of the energy contractor model in order
to become more efficient and save costs. At Microsoft's headquarters in
Germany near Munich, a contractor managed to squeeze out EUR100,000 in
annual savings even though the building was only five years old. The
service provider is a subsidiary of utility company Vattenfall,
confirming that even the big energy companies are diving into the new
business field.
Otherwise the industry that produces and sells energy is better known
for wasting most of it. Utilities don't get nearly enough out of power
plants as technically would be possible. They still use old
lignite-fired plants that only reach levels of energy conversion
efficiency near 30 percent. Any other industry with similarly low
productivity would quickly be put out of business.
In Germany the big firms -- RWE, E.on, EnBW and Vattenfall -- have
carved up the territory. They set the industry's agenda and they are
betting on large power plants that require vast quantities of water for
cooling and an expensive long-distance power grid requiring lots of
maintenance.
Smaller plants that service end customers in urban centers are far more
efficient. Such co-generation plants are usually fired by gas and are
normally located close to the customers who use the power -- hospitals,
schools or industrial facilities. They are also able to provide both
electricity and warmth at the same time.
Of course, the big power companies have little interest in such
decentralized structures. But the time to make that switchover has never
been better. Over the next two decades, utility companies will have to
replace half of their power producing capacity, providing a unique
opportunity. This would be the best chance to switch over to modern gas-
and steam-turbine power plants that convert some 60 percent of the
energy used into electricity. Or co-generation plants that use heat
produced while making power for heating. Such technologies increase
energy conversion efficiency to near 85 percent.
In this regard, Germany is currently lagging behind international
developments. The country produces only 11 percent of its power by
co-generation plants and only a few German cities such as Flensburg and
Schwäbisch Hall produce notable portions of their power this way. In the
Netherlands it's almost 40 percent and in Denmark even 50 percent.
German utilities had once planned to double the number of co-generation
plants by 2010, but that goal is likely to be missed. German Environment
Minister Sigmar Gabriel has demanded that his cabinet colleague Economy
Minister Micheal Glos no longer take the industry by its word when it
pledges to meet voluntary targets. Instead, the government should
establish clear guidelines for the energy sector.
Lessons from the automobile industry
There's one problem with voluntary commitments from captains of
industry: Everyone welcomes them, but no one pushes them. And at the end
of they day they're all just playing for time.
This lesson was learned already during the dispute over limits for auto
emissions. In 1998, the German automobile industry promised to cut
carbon dioxide emissions on average to 140 grams per kilometer by 2008.
That's roughly the consumption of 5.9 liters of gasoline and 5.3 liters
of Diesel per 100 kilometers (39.9 and 44.4 miles per gallon
respectively). But Mercedes, Porsche, BMW and Co. are all still quite
far from that target, even though it wouldn't require magic to reach it.
At the Aachen Institute for Automotive Engineering (IKA) scientists are
attempting to modify a VW Golf TSI with 170 horsepower by this summer so
it uses less than 5 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometers (47 miles per
gallon) instead of 7.2 liters. It hasn't taken much effort to get it
down to 5.8 liters already. The scientists have changed the
transmission, reduced the weight and minimized the wind resistance.
Nothing particularly spectacular. "We want to take it even further,"
says engineer Markus Espig. But how can governments encourage such ambition?
A dilemma for the government
The failure of voluntary, industry-wide commitments calls into question
how best to improve energy efficiency. Is it enough to offer financial
incentives, such as billions in subsidies for renovating buildings, in
order to alter behavior? Or should lawmakers instead force changes by
legislating new regulations and guidelines?
Thorben Becker of the German environmental group BUND argues the German
government could certainly do more. For example, it's hard to explain
why consumers can easily compare energy use for refrigerators and
freezers, but that there are no similiar labeling requirements for
electric stoves and hot water heaters. Or why the state doesn't put more
pressure on utilities to fit power plants with co-generation facilities.
"We need clear legal requirements," says Becker.
Graphic: Speed Limit Survey
DER SPIEGEL
Graphic: Speed Limit Survey
The governments of other countries in some cases certainly do more.
Japan has implemented a so-called "Top Runner" program, which sets the
most efficient electronic device in a specific product class as the
standard to be measured by for three to 12 years. All other competing
products that fail to close the gap are labeled as energy wasters and
face being banned from sale.
The Netherlands is trying a subtler approach. The country offers direct
subsidies to consumers who buy products that are especially energy
efficient. There's EUR20 to EUR30 credit for each square meter of
thermal insulating glass and EUR100 for the purchase of an energy
thrifty washing machine.
Under Denmark's Electricity Saving Trust, which became law in 1998, each
customer must pay a levy of EUR0.008 cents on each kilowatt-hour used.
That in turn finances Danish conservation projects including a campaign
to switch from electric heating to district heating -- which often comes
from co-generation plants.
Britain also has a non-profit fund known as the Energy Saving Trust to
promote the use of sustainable energies and energy conservation.
The Wuppertal Institute has calculated what would be necessary to set up
a similar fund in Germany: A levy of 0.06 cent per kilowatt-hour on oil
or gas and 0.09 cent on electricity would add up to EUR1.5 billion
annually that could be used to finance conservation efforts. The result
would help consumers save 12 percent more energy by 2015, which adds up
to EUR9 billion each year.
But Germany's top energy saver, Dena director Kohler, offers a different
approach. Consumers, according to his philosophy, have to realize on
their own how advantageous it is to use energy more efficiently.
That happens, for example, when someone buys a new refrigerator.
Recently, the energy agency provided retailers with detailed information
about household items so they could help their customers make more
informed decisions about their purchases. One adjustable wheel shows
just how much they can save each year by purchasing the device with the
lowest power usage.
"In the end, that's the decisive message," says a confident Kohler.