2.7 – Financial Freedom

The global economy is teetering on the brink of recession thanks to rampant inflation, driven mainly by high energy prices.

Aside from pressuring household budgets around the world, today’s energy market turmoil is linked to many far scarier problems. Poverty alleviation is stagnating, socioeconomic instability is rising, geopolitical relations are fraying, and environmental protection is sliding down the priority list.

So, is there a way to address all these problems at once? Certainly: Help the top 10% of world citizens (those living on more than 1200 $/month) who are responsible for half of global emissions save loads of energy (and money).

The good news is that most rich-world households can rapidly reduce their energy consumption. If you’re interested in understanding exactly how such dramatic savings work, here is an extensive article explaining the science in detail. If not, the following top 10 list is all you need.

1. Air Flow Management

Space heating/cooling is the main driver of household energy bills in most parts of the world. And a large fraction of all that energy is wasted on heating/cooling unnecessarily large amounts of ambient air.

Every home needs some fresh air flowing through it to maintain healthy air quality, and all this air needs to be heated/cooled to a comfortable indoor temperature. But because we never think about air flow management, the amount of air flowing through our homes is often far too large. To make matters worse, natural air circulation is driven by temperature differences between the inside and the outside. Thus, the amount of unnecessary air we heat or cool naturally increases during times when we need the most heating or cooling, further augmenting the amount of wasted energy.

Awareness of this issue is the most effective route to dramatic energy savings for any household in a region where it often gets very hot or cold. And all you need to deliver this awareness is a simple $100 (or cheaper) home air quality monitor capable of measuring CO2 concentrations.

The aim of the game is to keep indoor CO2 concentrations in the 800–900 ppm range whenever the outside air is considerably hotter or colder than you want it to be inside. If it falls below this range, it means you’re circulating too much air that must be heated/cooled to a comfortable temperature. If it is above this range, it means you’re circulating too little, and poor indoor air quality may be affecting your mental performance.

Many homes have vents that can easily be opened or closed to regulate airflow. Thanks to your air quality monitor, you’ll quickly learn how to manage those vents most effectively to enjoy lower energy bills and better air quality year-round.

If you have an older home, you may find it to be so leaky that you must replace some windows and doors to avoid excessive air circulation. Even though this will be a larger project, it will bring added benefits from improved insulation, as we will discuss in Section 3.

Action steps

1. Buy an air quality monitor
2. Learn to regulate your vents to keep CO2 levels at 800–900 ppm

2. Solar Radiation Management

Fun fact: The sun sends as much energy to Earth every hour as the entire human race uses in a year. When it’s cold, we welcome this energy. But when it’s hot, not so much. Thus, it makes good sense to manage solar radiation so that as much of it as possible enters your home when it’s cold and as little as possible enters when it’s hot.

If you live in a cold region, all you can do is ensure that your curtains are never drawn when the sun shines. The slanting winter sun flooding through a large window can save you plenty of heating energy.

Those in hot regions should seriously consider some solar window film. This film reflects most of the sun’s heat so that it never enters your home. Yet, you can still see out the window. Smart blinds are another interesting solution, although they are considerably more expensive.

If you’re feeling a little more ambitious, you may even consider painting your roof white. It will give your home a unique look and reduce your indoor temperature by an impressive 2–5 °C on hot and sunny days.

Action steps

1. Install window film if you live in a hot country and ensure you let in every bit of sunshine if you live in a cold country
2. Paint your roof a light shade of you live in a hot country

3. Improved Insulation

Home insulation projects can be rather intimidating, but the right strategy can yield good returns for relatively little effort and cost.

If you have one, loft insulation is the most practical and cost-effective option. It’s not a major operation, and it will probably pay for itself within a year in the current environment of high energy prices.

Modern double or triple-paned windows are the next step, especially if your windows are old and your heating/cooling bill is rather high. Installing new windows is a bigger and more expensive operation, but it can be profitable even without the energy savings because it will significantly increase the value of your home.

Action steps

1. Install loft insulation if possible
2. Install modern multi-paned windows if your heating/cooling bill is high and your windows are old

4. Thermally Regulated Living Spaces

One of the biggest reasons why heating/cooling bills are so large across the world is that we try to keep our oversized homes within an unnaturally narrow temperature band. Obviously, unwanted heat exchange with the surroundings will scale directly with the surface area of your home and the temperature difference between inside and outside.

There is little you can do about the heat exchange area other than moving to a smaller place, which will be a step too far for most people. If it is an option, however, moving from a large house to an apartment building is an outstanding way to slash your heating/cooling bills (and your mortgage).

The more practical option is to allow the temperature of your home to follow the outside temperature more freely. Put another way, you should focus more on regulating your own body’s temperature than regulating the temperature of your home.

This is easier and far more comfortable than you might think. Because we tend to spend most of our time within only a small part of our homes, it’s often easy to set up a little temperature-controlled bubble that keeps you comfortable despite larger variations in your home’s temperature. Figure out where those spaces are and set to work creating your own strategic temperature bubbles. Here are some examples applicable to someone spending a lot of time working on a computer in a cold or hot region.

• Cold. I live in Norway where I save loads of energy by allowing my indoor temperature to drop to 17 °C (15 °C in the sleeping room) in winter. Yet, I’m writing these words from the most comfortable conditions imaginable with my feet up on a recliner under a comfy duvet in front of a big screen with a cup of hot tea beside me.
• Hot. Similar degrees of comfort can be attained in hot regions using a fan (which consumes negligible amounts of energy), a computer chair with a breathable backrest, and plenty of ice-cold drinking water. If you consume your water in the form of ice, the heat absorbed when melting the ice will make it even easier to stay comfortable.

Action steps

1. Notice where you spend most of your time in the house
2. Tailor those spaces to keep yourself comfortable over a broader temperature range and adjust the thermostat accordingly

5. Smart Showering

After space heating/cooling, water heating is generally the next-largest contributor to household energy bills. Heating things is very energy intensive in general, and the average rich-world citizen heats crazy amounts of water for bathing/showering.

If you’re in the habit of taking regular baths or long showers, smart showering can save you a surprisingly large amount of energy. Here’s the secret to the smart shower technique: Simply turn off the shower while you’re doing the actual washing, using the water only for a minute of wetting before and a couple of minutes of rinsing afterward.

You’ll be surprised at the practicality of this method. When you wash with the shower off, the soap is not rinsed away instantaneously, allowing you to work up quite an enjoyable lather. Usually, the shower is sufficiently insulated that you won’t get cold when the water is turned off, and if you do get a little chilly, the rinsing step becomes all the more rewarding.

Buying a dedicated low-flow showerhead will further cut your energy bills, not to mention all the water savings.

Action steps

1. Get into the habit of turning off the shower when washing
2. Install a low-flow showerhead

6. Hot Water Tank

If you adopt the smart showering technique, the energy required to compensate for gradual heat losses from your water heater will probably be larger than the energy needed to heat the water you use for showering. A good way to limit these losses is to turn down the thermostat on your water heater to 60 °C. This reduced temperature will limit the heat losses while still avoiding risks from dangerous bacterial growth.

If you live in a hot region, heat losses from your water heater are particularly detrimental because they will also heat up your home, causing extra air conditioning load. Consider wrapping an extra layer of insulation around your hot water tank to minimize this double penalty.

Lastly, families living in sunny regions (especially those with sunny winters) can cut their water heating bill close to zero by installing a solar water heater. However, if you have implemented the smart showering technique, turned down the temperature, and insulated your water tank thoroughly, you will need at least four people in the household to use enough hot water to justify the expense of a new solar water heater.

Action steps

1. Turn down the thermostat of your water heater to 60 °C
2. Wrap the hot water tank in an extra layer of insulation if you live in a hot region
3. Larger families in sunny regions can consider a solar water heater

7. Smart Washing and Drying

First thing: Go to your washing machine, dial in the cold setting, and then proceed to forget about it. In the vast majority of cases, your clothes will wash just as clean in cold as in hot water, and avoiding the need to heat your washing will save plenty of energy.

For dishwashing, we need some temperature in the water to remove fatty food residues, but you can still achieve considerable energy savings by always using the cooler eco setting. Don’t worry about the cycle being longer. Reducing the cycle temperature saves far more energy than is consumed by pumping the water around for a longer washing cycle.

Next, please sell your drier. It uses loads of energy to do something nature does for free. If you live in a hot region, you can even gain a substantial additional cooling benefit by hanging your clothes indoors to dry. Water evaporation consumes plenty of heat, so letting the water evaporate from clothes hung indoors will cool your home.

Of course, the reverse is true in cold regions. When you need to heat your home, resist the temptation to dry your clothes in front of the heater. The evaporation of water will consume plenty of additional energy, and it can even cause water damage by condensing on windows or other surfaces if it’s very cold outside.

Action steps

1. Wash clothes on the cold cycle and dishes on the eco setting
2. Hang clothes indoors when it’s hot and outdoors when it’s cold (and sell the clothes dryer)

8. LEDs and Energy Saving Mode

Those living in hot regions should immediately upgrade all their lights to LED technology. Inefficient lighting not only consumes more energy; it also heats up your house with all the unnecessary waste heat it produces.

If you live in a cold region, this is less of a problem because the waste heat from inefficient lighting helps heat your home. Still, it’s best to buy LEDs whenever an old lightbulb dies. Their long lifetimes compensate for their higher cost, and they also reduce the waste problems of older CFL bulbs.

And let’s not forget about the most energy-intensive light in our homes: the TV. So, grab your remote, dive into the settings, and ensure that every energy-saving option is active. Most importantly, the screen should dim automatically when ambient lighting becomes low, which also helps protect your eyes. When buying a new TV (or computer screen), please don’t go crazy with the size, and be sure to choose LED technology.

Action steps

1. Replace all less efficient bulbs with LEDs in hot regions and gradually make this replacement when old bulbs fail in cold regions
2. Activate the energy-saving options on the TV (and other devices)

9. Smart Cooking

Cooking is another activity that requires energy-intensive heat. But luckily, the amount of food we need to heat for cooking is far less than the amount of water we need to heat for showering. Still, smarter cooking habits can save considerable amounts of energy.

The first smart cooking move is to cook in bulk in the oven. Heating up the oven itself takes plenty of energy, so it pays to cook as much food as possible whenever you have your oven up to temperature. Cooking in bulk and saving some of it for later also saves loads of time in comparison to cooking each meal individually.

Next to all the ethical, health, and environmental reasons, cooking heat demand is another good reason for reducing meat consumption. Meat-rich diets generally require much more cooking than vegetarian diets.

It’s also wise to follow any natural inclination to cook less in summer. When it’s cold, all the heat generated during cooking will help heat your home, but this extra heat is unwelcome on hot days when it only serves to increase your air conditioning load. Besides, a hot kitchen is no fun on a hot summer’s day when cold meals are more appetizing anyway.

Action steps

1. Cook in bulk and reduce your meat intake as much as possible
2. Preferably cook more in winter and less in summer

10. Efficient Appliances

Buying a more efficient appliance seems like a very attractive option for cutting energy consumption. We all like new stuff, and if our new stuff is more efficient, we can save energy without having to change our habits.

But the truth is that buying a shiny new appliance is rarely the best solution. More efficient appliances are generally considerably more expensive (which also means they consume more energy during manufacturing), and they often have long payback times. If you’re considering scrapping a perfectly functional older appliance and buying a more efficient new one, know that you’ll probably lose money (and may well be doing more harm than good for the environment).

For any household that has implemented most of the preceding guidelines, the case for more expensive energy-efficient appliances becomes even weaker. When it comes to space heating/cooling and water heating, the guidelines given in Sections 1–6 above will reduce your energy demand so much that an efficient new heat pump, air conditioner, or heat-pump-driven water heater will never pay for itself.

There are at least two exceptions, though. The first is LED lighting mentioned in Section 8, and the second is refrigeration for households in hot regions of the world.

The energy efficiency of fridges and freezers has improved strongly in recent years. In addition, the extra energy consumed by inefficient older fridges causes additional indoor heating, which is OK in cold regions but very much not OK in hot regions. Thus, a new fridge or freezer with a high energy rating can be a viable option for households in hot countries when the current models reach 10–20 years of age.

Action steps

1. Carefully calculate the payback time before buying a more expensive energy-efficient appliance (especially if your current model is still fully functional)
2. Consider a new energy-efficient fridge and freezer if you live in a hot region and your current models are 10+ years old

Final Thoughts

The guidelines outlined in the ten sections above were designed to deliver maximum returns in minimum time. To make implementation even easier, they involve no great act of sacrifice or environmental martyrdom.

Aside from the obvious financial benefits, anyone who is clued up with global issues will be rewarded with a warm fuzzy feeling of contribution to the greater good after saving all this energy. Our world seriously needs to conserve energy right now, and if we are to uplift the 87% of world citizens still living on less than 1000 $/month without destroying our natural environment, we’ll need to maintain these savings for decades to come.

Good things can come from crises. If we play it well, the current energy crisis could help millions of people around the world waste far less energy on things that contribute nothing to their welfare. And that will certainly make a powerful contribution toward building a better world.