Small actions = big energy demand cuts

When researchers tell us we need to cut our carbon dioxide output by megatonnes a year, it’s hard to see how we as puny little individuals can have much of an impact. But lots of puny little individuals acting in concert can help generate significant savings in both energy use and carbon emissions.

So kudos to KiWi Power for its clever “low-carbon Christmas” campaign, which offers a no-brainer way to help Britons avoid overwhelming the power grid at times of peak holiday energy demand. The service works like this: sign up and tell the company how to contact you by text. Then, at one point over the holidays when stress on the National Grid is greatest, KiWi will send you a message asking you to cut back on your non-essential power use for an hour.

Depending on what you’re doing, that could mean anything from switching off your holiday lights to waiting a bit before turning on the kettle to make a pot of tea. Such small actions probably won’t put much of a crimp in your celebrating, but — multiplied by the hundreds or thousands or more — could significantly reduce peak power demand across the country.

And that could make a big difference, as the power stations put into operation during times of peak demand are typically the most inefficient and worst-polluting.

“We are all acutely aware of just how much energy we use in cold weather and at Christmas, so anything we can do to minimise the most polluting usage with little or no disruption to our lives has to be worth doing,” said Ziko Abram, founder of KiWi Power.

In fact, a study earlier this year found that policy-makers are likely wildly underestimating just how great an impact such small individual actions can have. According to Adam Hawkes of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, estimates of the impact of simple conservation measures on carbon emissions could be as much as 60 per cent too small because official calculations don’t adequately account for the fact that only fossil-fuel-powered plants can be ramped up or down effectively enough to meet fluctuating energy demands.

“This means any reduction we make in our electricity use — for example, if everyone switched off lights that they weren’t using, or turned off electric heating earlier in the year — could have a bigger impact on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by power stations than previously thought,” Hawkes said.

That means KiWi’s little text-message strategy could also have a bigger impact on energy demand than one might first assume. Plus, it’s also throwing in a bit of a bonus: as part of the low-carbon Christmas campaign, it will also make a donation to PURE the Clean Planet Trust, a carbon offset charity that, among other projects provides renewable energy grants to schools and other organisations in the UK.

A relatively young company, KiWi Power works with companies to identify ways to reduce energy use and earn money for limiting their consumption at critical times. Among the organisations it has worked with so far are the Cleveland Potash Mining company, the Eden Centre Shopping Centre, and London Oxford Airport.