The Economical Environmentalist: My Attempt to Live a Low-Carbon Life and What it Costs

391 Pages·2009·19.04 MB·English

by  Prashant Vaze

The Economical Environmentalist – Prashant Vaze
HB ISBN: 9781844078073, dimensions 240x159mm live area, 32mm spine, 18mm bleed
‘This is an exhilarating read, written with pace and
passion and full of creative solutions on the big
issues of environmental sanity and social justice.’
Ed Mayo, Chief Executive of Co-operatives UK
‘[Vaze] shows how a low-carbon life can be a rich,
rewarding, high-enjoyment thing to aim for.’ Prashant Vaze
Chris Smith, Chairman of Environment Agency
‘This is a really excellent book: practical, optimistic
THE
and honest. Everyone should read it.’
Stephen Tindale, Climate and Energy Consultant,
former Executive Director Greenpeace UK
‘We ned to cut our emisions here in the UK by 40 per cent in the next ECONOMICAL
ten years … In this excellent book, Prashant Vaze provides us with a very
practical assessment of what needs to be done. He successfully bridges the
gap betwen high level analysis and everyday living.’ Environmentalist
David Kennedy, Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change
Reducing your carbon emissions in an economic downturn can be challenging, but saving
the planet doesn’t have to cost you more.
My Attempt to Live
The author is an environmental economist trying to live a low-carbon life in London. So far
so good. But he has kids. A family to visit in India. A hectic job. In distilling and building
on his own experience of trying to live a low carbon life, he helps us navigate the choices a Low-Carbon Life
that confront us all – families, singletons, pensioners – when making decisions about what
to eat, what to buy, how to travel and how to keep warm in the era of climate change and and What It Cost
economic turmoil. He works out the sums and lets us know which choices will make the
biggest difference, and which are false savings.
His book is an irreverent but seriously rigorous reference guide to low-cost, low-carbon living
for everyone – in any location – in tough times. It’s brimming with up-to-date information on
current and future technologies, tips and ideas for every budget on how to spend the least
for the biggest carbon reduction, and insight from the experiences of people trying to live
low-carbon lives.
Prashant Vaze is the Chief Economist at Consumer Focus. He is a member of advisory boards of the
Offce for National Statistics, the Energy Savings Trust and the Offce of Fair Trading. Previously he has
worked in the UK’s Offce of Climate Change, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Department
of the Environment.
‘An excellent book for
anyone genuinely interested
www.earthscan.co.uk Climate Change / Ethical Living
in reducing their own emissions.’
Earthscan strives to minimize
its impact on the environment Cover photo by Julius Honnor NIChoLAs sterN
THE
Prashant Vaze
ECONOMICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST
The Economical Environmentalist
The Economical Environmentalist
My Attempt to Live a Low-Carbon Life
and What it Cost
Prashant Vaze
publ ishing for a sustainable future
London • Sterling, VA
First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2009
Copyright © Prashant Vaze, 2009
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-84407-807-3 hardback
978-1-84407-808-0 paperback
Typeset by Safehouse Creative
Cover design by Rob Watts
All calculations in this book can be replicated using the greenhouse gas calculator
at www.economicalenvironmentalist.co.uk
For a full list of publications please contact:
Earthscan
Dunstan House
14a St Cross St
London, EC1N 8XA, UK
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email:
I dedicate this book to Ayeisha and Satish.
You so often see with disarming clarity what needs to be done.
Sorry about the state we’re leaving the place in;
please don’t hold it against us when you pay for our pensions.
The Economical Environmentalist
Contents
List of fgures, tables and boxes ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
1 Introduction 1
Why read this book 3
Characters in this book 4
The gap between caring about climate change
and doing something 6
How to read this book 10
2 The Economic and Environmental Challenges 13
Recession, competition from India and China,
and climate change 15
India and China 19
Climate change is already happening 22
Reducing emissions 33
Current emissions in the UK 35
3 From Field to Fork: Reducing the Environmental 45
Impacts of Eating
Introduction 47
Do we really need to buy so much food? 50
How much GHG emissions come from growing the
different foodstuffs? 53
What I did and didn’t do 60
Bringing it all together 89
Annex: Seasonal fruit and vegetables 97
4 Getting from A to B: Reducing Emissions from Travel 99
Our travel patterns 101
Actions individuals can take immediately to reduce
their transport emissions 108
Changes to be made over the next fve years 115
My own travel patterns 136
Actions I took to reduce my transport emissions 138
Bringing it all together 146
The Economical Environmentalist
5 Keeping Your Home Warm 151
Introduction 153
The present situation in the UK 155
Understanding your house’s energy-effciency performance 161
Options for reducing energy use 164
My actions to reduce the house’s emissions 189
Bringing it all together 199
Annex 1: Heat conducting properties of different materials
(at atmospheric pressure) 205
Annex 2: Desired temperature of house and number of
degree-days of heat needed to maintain desired
temperature (for England) 206
6 Our Friends Electric 207
Introduction 209
Carbon emissions from electricity generation 210
Options for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from
electrical appliances 217
What I did and didn’t do 239
Bringing it altogether 242
7 Waste Not, Want Not 247
Introduction 249
The scale of the challenge 250
Options for reducing CO 253
2
What I did and didn’t do 276

Bringing it all together 280
8 Travel and Leisure 285
Introduction 287
Understanding why, where and how much we travel 291
Options for reducing emissions 295
My emissions from travelling 308
Actions for next year 311
9 Carbon Offsetting, Communities and Social Change 315
Introduction 317
Total CO emissions reductions from the actions taken 317
2
Buying our way out of climate change emissions 319
Personal emissions reductions and the macro-economy 329
List of abbreviations 337
Index 341
viii