A Greener Future
Mark Crosier, CEO of DeepStream Technologies, discusses how a new wave of technology can lead us on the way towards a zero-carbon future.
The EU reports that energy demand (and CO2 emissions) is estimated to rise by 60% by 2030. Given that governments have introduced targets to half energy usage by 2050; these two figures make it hard to believe that these targets can be achieved.
And as homes account for around 27 per cent of the UK's carbon emissions there’s a real need to change the way we build homes and communities.
The Department for Communites and Local Government published its Building a Greener Future policy statement in July 2007. This confirms the Government's intention for all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016 with a progressive tightening of the energy efficiency building regulations - by 25 per cent in 2010 and by 44 per cent in 2013 - up to the zero carbon target in 2016.
Zero carbon houses need to have zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from all energy use in the home. This would include heating, hot water, cooking, and the powering of TVs, computers and other appliances.
The role new technologies can play in energy reduction is extremely important. For the building industry, this implies the incorporation of technologies that allow businesses and residents to monitor, control and manage their use of different energy sources.
A recent step that the utilities industry has taken to monitor spiralling energy use has been to introduce smart metering, which provides consumers and businesses with real-time information about their energy use. But who’s the main beneficiary?
Smart meters provide real-time information; allowing more efficient management of the grid and negating the need to send someone out to read your meter. Consumers do gain real-time visibility, but they don’t automatically see the benefits of energy reduction and cost saving.
Some evidence suggests smart meters change consumer behaviour with reports of expected 10 – 15% savings. However, having this information available requires users to take action and the savings are not automatic.
The information can be difficult to decipher and implement effective action. This may be acceptable in a business, which has a trained energy manager or specialist company assisting them, but what about the untrained, busy, homeowner? Also, in the home this information relates to the whole property, not individual appliances, so where do we start?
Concerned individuals are taking action by buying ‘add-on’ products such as the Intelliplug, which automatically turns peripheral devices such as the DVD player, home entertainment systems and game consoles off when you turn off the TV.
However, this still depends on people taking action themselves, actively seeking out products and purchasing products that help them to control energy use and to take action once installed; which the majority of people are not willing to do.
We believe that it’s time for government to place greater emphasis on supporting the development of new energy saving technologies and for industry and utilities to take responsibility for producing and using more energy efficient products. In the lighting industry, the low energy light bulb is a good example.
Products with embedded energy saving capabilities, that require little or no action from the user, would provide greater savings still. Such technologies do come with additional cost, but with greater adoption from stakeholders such as the government, manufacturers, architects, house builders, and utilities, would increase our chances of meeting talked about energy savings.
Incorporating such technologies into building structures and appliances would provide real-time, accurate information on energy use throughout the day. It would also enable manual or remote control via the internet for example, so that consumers can turn appliances off or set a policy to ensure they are turned off when not being used
Better still would be an intuitive technology that can analyse energy use and do this automatically. TV and games consoles in a child’s bedroom would turn off automatically at 11 in the evening, or turn off by itself when not being used with no human intervention needed.
Technology such as this is around the corner - companies like DeepStream Technologies have received worldwide recognition in recent years for new technology innovation – and it will be available for new build houses and for retrofit into existing buildings, making it available and affordable for everyone to adopt, from homeowners to businesses.
By having this level of intuitive control over energy use, many of the issues of growing energy demand, global warming and climate change could be addressed. One thing ‘energy stakeholders’ must realise is; energy saving technologies, no matter how affordable, will never be zero cost. Let’s hope this doesn’t get in the way of our goal of zero carbon homes.
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