Vampire energy

Americans consumed about 3.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2009, about 72% from buildings. About half came from coal-fired power plants. This accounted for approximately 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2 emission, which is equivalent to the emissions from 400 million cars–many more than the roughly 250 million cars on U.S. roads.

A developing nation like India is fast racing to catch up.

Of the energy generated, quite a lot is lost in generation, transmission and distribution, and then there is waste heat resulting from inefficient use of electricity. Then there is also vampire energy, the energy used by any device when the intended audience/purpose of the device is not being served. Look around you, at home and on the streets. Check out ways in which energy can be saved.

Electronics retailers have a wall of demo TVs that are on all day. It does not matter if anyone is watching; they are part of the ambience. Vampire energy!
See all those buildings at night all lit up. How many people are in there working, you guess? Hardly a handful. Want to calculate the energy wasted? The CO2 emissions from vacant office space in Bay area of California was calculated to be equivalent to those made by 8000 cars. Not to overlook habits that sees people switching on lights when sunlight is plenty.

Make a list of ways we can plug energy leak and send it to us. Let us spread the message, and ‘make’ energy in the process out of nothing!