I’ve recently moved into my first pad as a homeowner. The climate crisis was front of mind when we chose the place, so we opted for something that should be resilient and not require huge investments. But now that we’re here, slowly unpacking our boxes, I’m wondering what the next step is to reduce our home’s environmental impact.
We’re in a leasehold flat on a heat network, and many improvements such as double glazing have already been made. So though I’ve been switching to LEDs from halogen light bulbs and researching thermal curtain liners, I’m also eyeing our appliances. They’re all working well, but technology has moved on, and I suspect we could slash our electricity bill by upgrading them.
Energy efficiency is a no-brainer climate solution. Improving it not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions but also energy bills. The biggest gains will be made by adding insulation and switching to low-carbon heating, as these investments will have the largest impact on fossil-fuel demand (74 percent of UK homes are heated with gas). But electricity use is important, too.
It’s a process that’s been happening organically: Residential electricity consumption fell by 12 percent between 2008 and 2018, even as the UK population grew, thanks to improvements in lighting and appliances. Low-energy bulbs now account for half of all light bulbs, and the installed share of efficient home appliances increased to 34 percent in 2019 from 9 percent in 2012. That’s rapid progress, but clearly there’s still room for improvement.
How much should I worry about our washing machine and fridge-freezer? I crunched some numbers to find out.
Our washing machine performs just as well as newer models, but our other kitchen appliances consume 41 percent to 64 percent more energy than top-rated equivalents. Yikes.
Regarding which machine would save us the most money (and thus, by virtue of using less energy, reduces our carbon footprint the most), upgrading our vented tumble dryer to a heat-pump model won out, and likely would for many people as dryers tend to be the most power-hungry home appliance. A heat-pump dryer recycles the hot air, while our vented machine releases it all outside. Our model also doesn’t have a sensor, which means we’re just guessing at how long a load will take to finish — and might be running our most energy-intensive device for longer than we need to.
Based on buying a £469 replacement and running 120 full loads a year, it would take about six years in reduced energy bills to recoup that investment. But there’s one more thing to consider: the embodied carbon of a new appliance.
Embodied carbon refers to the emissions from raw-material extraction, production, manufacturing and transportation of goods. (Call it the environmental cost of bringing a good into existence.) English researcher Mike Berners-Lee refers to an analysis by his carbon accounting company, Small World Consulting Ltd, in his book How Bad Are Bananas?,
which puts a new dishwasher’s carbon cost at 270 kilograms CO2-equivalent (a measure that accounts for all greenhouse gases), while a new washing machine totals 281 kilograms CO2e. For a new tumble dryer, I’ll estimate it at 276 kilograms — roughly in the middle. Based on the average carbon intensity of the UK’s electricity grid in 2023, it would take just more than six years for the new dryer to pay back that embodied carbon.
The longer you keep a machine running, the better value the initial carbon investment becomes. Many of us can probably relate to doing similar calculations to determine whether to splurge on a nice dress or suit. The estimates will be different for everyone, but once we took embodied carbon into account in our home, it suddenly felt wasteful to discard products that are still in good condition.
So while we wait for them to bite the dust, we’ll focus on making
behavioural changes and bolstering our existing insulation: using the dryer less often and running it when the carbon intensity of the grid is low; only boiling the water we need as well as using lids with our pans; turning off the lights when leaving rooms; piling on clothing and blankets when we’re chilly instead of blasting the radiators; and utilising draft excluders and thermal curtain liners.
Then, when each appliance reaches the end of its life, we’ll replace it with the most energy efficient we can afford.
Lara Williams is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views do not represent the stand of this publication.
Credit: Bloomberg
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