Preparing for Climate Change through Energy Internet and eVehicles: Electricity consumption by consumer electronics exceeds that of traditional appliances in many homes

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37

Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG

High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP

Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Electricity consumption by consumer electronics exceeds that of traditional appliances in many homes

[More alarming data on the contribution of ICT, especially consumer devices to energy consumption and resultant CO2 emissions. We know that demand for ICT products and services will grow much faster than growth rate of overall economy. Will energy efficiency be able to keep pace with this growth in demand for ICT equipment, especially as ICT is also used for energy reduction and CO2 abatement? Already consumer electronics are predicted to produce approximately 1/6 of CO2 in the US. Excerpts from Globe and Mail and IEA press releases—BSA]

http://www.iea.org/journalists/headlines.asp
IEA - Rising numbers of electronic gadgets undo efficiency gains
Reporting about the new IEA publication Gadgets and Gigawatts which finds that the rapidly growing number of televisions, laptops and other electronic devices will triple energy consumption by 2030, the newswire quotes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090513.wgadgetsstaff0513/BNStory/Technology/home

Power alarm over home electronics
In a report yesterday, the Paris-based IEA urged governments around the world to quickly adopt new standards that would make electronic devices such as televisions, laptops and game consoles more energy efficient.
All those PlayStations that are hooked up in the family rooms of the nation are notorious energy vampires. So, too, are the chargers that are needed to keep juiced the iPods, cellphones, laptops and cordless phones that are staples of modern living.
In its report yesterday, the International Energy Agency said the boom in electronics threatens to undermine efforts to reduce residential power demand and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Despite anticipated improvements in the efficiency of electronic devices, these savings are likely to be overshadowed by the rising demand for technology” in both the rich world and developing countries, IEA president Nobuo Tanaka said in a release.
Residential power demand is soaring with the proliferation of MP3 players, home video games, set-top boxes, wireless routers, portable phones and flat-screen, high-definition digital televisions. In the typical rich-world household, electricity demand from consumer electronics now far exceeds the amount of power used by appliances like fridges and dishwashers.
Last year, the world spent $80-billion (U.S.) on electricity to power these household electronics, and that is expected to grow to $200-billion by 2030. To meet the demand would require the output of 200 new power plants, and would double greenhouse gas emissions to one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=361
Gadgets and Gigawatts -- Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics, ISBN 978-92-64-05953-5, paper €100, PDF €80 (2009)
Type: Studies
Subject: CO2 Emissions ; Electricity ; Energy Efficiency ; Sustainable Development
By 2010 there will be over 3.5 billion mobile phones subscribers, 2 billion TVs in use around the world and 1 billion personal computers. Electronic devices are a growing part of our lives and many of us can count between 20 and 30 separate items in our homes, from major items like televisions to a host of small gadgets. The communication and entertainment benefits these bring are not only going to people in wealthier nations - in Africa, for example, one in nine people now has a mobile phone. But as these electronic devices gain popularity, they account for a growing portion of household energy consumption.

How “smart” is this equipment from an energy efficiency perspective and should we be concerned about how much energy these gadgets use? What is the potential for energy savings?

This new book, Gadgets and Gigawatts: Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics, includes a global assessment of the changing pattern in residential electricity consumption over the past decade and an in-depth analysis of the role played by electronic equipment. It reviews the influence that government policies have had on creating markets for more energy efficient appliances and identifies new opportunities for creating smarter, more energy efficient homes. This book is essential reading for policy makers and others interested in improving the energy efficiency of our ho