Energy consumption II

Today I received a letter from my energy provider which said that I will be getting money back. It is not much but still 16.25€ is always something!

What I found much more exciting though was that I seem to have miss read the information online before. The 772 kWh was my energy consumption last year after changing my fridge and now by turning off all my electronic equipment from their stand-by mode I seemed to have saved an additional 83 kWh because I was now down to 689 kWh per year.




In Germany they have been pushing the development of wind and solar power. This has been done by giving Governmental money to the companies for performing the research as well as that they have paid a large part of the solar panels that people have bought. This is all good for pushing the development and trying to bring up the MWh of energy being produced in Germany.

Another approach besides from increasing the energy output would be to decrease the energy consumption. Not only for private people but also for companies. Why not give tax reductions to private people and companies that manage to decrease their energy consumption? I think it would be more sustainable since those changes would probably lead to a new way of thinking which can hopefully help more for the long run which... in the end... is what it is all about.

Just to give some figures on this from Umwelt Bundes Amt: in 2011 the German private households consumed 147.6 billion kWh. That represents 26.6% of the entire German consumption and what is worse here is that it increased by 19.2% in the last 20 years.

As a shareholder in E.ON. I should find this great... but I don´t. If the rest of the German households could do what I did and half their energy consumption then pressure would be put on the industry to half theirs and all of a sudden there could be a realistic decision to close down less environmental friendly alternatives of electricity production. It all comes down to the consumption. Decrease it and there is a chance for a change... keep your TV running day and night and well... there you made your decision.