Canada :Number 1 - at hogging energy

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May. 26, 01:44 EDT

We're Number 1 - at hogging energy Canadians burn 72% more fuel than G-8 average

Mitch Potter FEATURE WRITER Saturday Special --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It remains the defining image of 1970s energy trauma: U.S. president Jimmy Carter sitting alone in the dark in a bulky knit sweater, handing America a pill so bitter it would not swallow.

Turn down the heat, turn off the lights, he ordered the planet's most profligate power-users. Ease up on the pedal of your gas-guzzling Cadillacs. Conserve and the crisis will abate.

Someday soon, we were assured, the sun and the wind and other wondrous renewables would be harnessed to warm our bodies and light our way. In the meantime, be miserly with the scarce fossil fuels that will deliver us to this brave new age.

Fast forward a quarter century and the landscape is ominously familiar. High prices at the pumps are going higher still, blackouts occur on the deregulated California power grid and a volatility in the Middle East is every bit as severe as it was in October, 1973, when the OPEC embargo sent shock waves through the not-yet-globalized global economy.

The word ``crisis'' comes again from the tongue of an American president, but this time he's a career oilman who one week ago laid forth a dig-and-drill energy strategy to which conservation need not apply.

Canada now, as then, watches from no great distance, cautiously opportunistic about the prospects of our own energy surpluses hemorrhaging south to slake the siphoning thirst of the free-trade era.

If it seems nothing has changed, those who crunch the numbers say differently: Americans no longer lead the world in energy consumption.

We do.

At 3 per cent of the world's consumption, Canada burns through more than 400 million BTUs a person - 72 per cent more than the G-8 average. That's more than France, Italy or the U.K. despite our having about half their populations, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and U.S. Energy Department data.

Never mind the Leafs and Raptors. We are Number One after all.

Somehow, between then and now, the culture of conservation went from caulking guns, attic insulation, Drive 55 and shower-with-a-friend to don't-worry-be-happy behind the wheel of a towering four-wheel-drive SUV that goes fewer kilometres per litre than dad's fuel-schlorping Barracuda.

We're choking on our own exhaust, despite enormous advances in energy efficiency in Europe, where the concepts of conservation and economic growth are entrenched as not merely compatible, but essential.

Denmark, with its forests of wind turbines that supply 10 per cent of its electricity needs, is embarking on a campaign to increase the harvest to 50 per cent.

Throughout Europe, hallway lights switch themselves off in 60 seconds - the time to pass from one room to the next - unless otherwise directed. And those would be of the compact fluorescent variety, not terribly familiar to our incandescent selves.

That we are now Number One in consumption intrigues those who spend their lives steering Canadians toward the ever-evolving variety of efficiency solutions for home, business and the things that take us to them.

Heinrich Feistner, senior consultant with the City of Toronto's Energy Efficiency Office, suggests years of post-'70s cynicism, a sustained glut of cheap supply, and the ultimate failure of Jimmy Carter's message have marginalized conservation to the periphery of public concern.

``The very word conservation fell out of favour because it was attached to an image of shivering in the dark,'' Feistner says.

``And the whole '70s energy crisis thing, in the end, was overshadowed by a sense that it was not so much a real scare but simply the oil companies and OPEC trying to gouge the public.''

In its place grew affluenza - the monster house, the monster SUV, multiple TVs, microwaves, air conditioning, home computers and the servers and hubs that keep them humming. The art of conspicuous consumption, from all-the-flavour, all-the-fat gourmet ice cream to dot-com's instant rich erecting castles of conquest, became the leisure pursuit of the digital revolution.

Nothing exceeds like excess, and the media through which we buy it.

But Feistner and others note the worm of consumption is now turning, as it always does, with the hike for gas prices and home heating.

In Toronto, homeowners have begun to reawaken to thermal leakage amid soaring natural gas rates. Electronic thermostats are in vogue for their programmable efficiencies. New home builders are beginning to incorporate the cost of approaching the federal government's R-2000 project. R-2000 homes are built using construction methods that reduce fuel consumption.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- `It's our weather, our geography, the fact that our economy is still largely based on natural resources . . . All this contributes to our status as leading consumers.' - Peter Love, Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In fact, the commercial sector is embracing the religion of efficiency the most. The TD Centre, faced with a doubling of its energy bill to $5 million a year, has bitten down on a retrofit to ease the financial pain.

Even Honest Eds, that citadel of glowing commercial signage at Bloor and Bathurst Sts., has bought in.

The discount store has replaced its inventory of 23,000 bulbs with low wattage (7.5) units. More important, the Eds sign now burns an average of three hours a day, down from the 20-hour average of a few years back that made that corner of the Annex seem like the land of the midnight sun.

``When you're in the bargain business, you save money any way you can,'' explains Honest Eds general manager Russell Lazar.

``Under the old system, the sign was on a timer. You couldn't turn it off without calling somebody in to restart it,'' Lazar says.

``When we replaced it with a simple manual switch, our energy costs came down drastically. If it's a dark, rainy day, we'll have it on, but the minute the sun comes out we turn it off.''

It's safe to say Greenpeace is not about to induct Eds' 23,000-bulber into its hall of fame anytime soon, but the trend toward efficiency is positive nonetheless.

The Toronto-based Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance rates provincial governments each year on their willingness to act.

Mike Harris' Ontario is now in the middle of the pack - hailed as big on talk, chided as short on specific targets.

The alliance's executive director, Peter Love, says our international status as Number One power-users should be placed in context.

``It's not just a habitual thing,'' says Love.

``It's our weather, our geography, the fact that our economy is still largely based on natural resources, with heavy energy-consuming industries such as pulp, iron ore, and extracting syncrude from the tar sands of Alberta. All this contributes to our status as leading consumers of energy.

``But at the same time, we've made big strides. When you look at all four sectors - residential, commercial, industrial and transportation - we can see measurable advances in each one, from Energuide labels on everything to businesses retrofitting to improve their bottom line.

``Are we improving? Yes. Can we do better? No doubt. Where should we start? Most people say transportation.''

Arguably the most visible of Toronto's past efficiency efforts was Howland House, that downtown showcase of the 1980s state of the insulating arts.

Owned by the Ontario Ministry of Housing, the house offered people a glimpse into the possible before closing due to lack of interest.

Some may view that as a metaphor for public apathy. David Peters, the man who organized Howland House, thinks not.

``It was an amazing place in its day,'' says Peters, now general manager of the Ontario Housing Authority.

``We did everything to an old house, from triple-glazed windows to one of the early heat exchangers. An ultra-efficient furnace and total insulation. It cost $100 a year to heat.

``It had good traffic at a time when energy prices were high. People weren't meant to do it all - nobody could afford to - but they could pick and choose the ideas that made sense in their home. Eventually, it ran its course.''

With prices soaring once again - and with a widening view that Ontario's deregulation of electricity will almost certainly mean higher, not lower, prices - Peters postulates a new era of efficiency awareness is likely to push ahead in the next five to six years.

``The conservation culture of the 1970s and '80s was, to varying degrees, trendy and shallow,'' he says.

``It has much deeper roots to build on now. There's a not so visible foundation from those days that can be built on quite quickly. Like wind technology, solar technology has been moving along rapidly all this time. What's been missing is the economics - the cents-per-unit cost of production to make it competitive. But as fossil fuels go up, we're closing in on that magic number.

``The other big factor is that energy efficiency has been taught in schools and universities for years. There's at least one generation now that takes it for granted not as part of pop culture, but as a necessary shift in lifestyles.

``But the central requirement for change will be money. It has to affect people in the pocketbook. That's when we'll change.''

Toronto will get a glimpse of one option later this year when the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative launches its wind turbine project at either Ashbridge's Bay or the CNE grounds.

The European-designed windmill is expected to serve as a hope for renewable energy.

``Think of it as a maypole. A very visual reminder that there are a lot of people still here, working toward these solutions,'' says one of the project leaders, Greg Allen of Allen Kani Sustainable Technology Consultants.

``Let's face it, we've been through two decades of a deliberate initiative to reshape the North American ethos regarding capitalist Darwinism. The interests of Big Oil have been well served. They ridded the land of the mythology that efficiency and renewables are the solution.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- `As a population, we've been sleepwalking. But now we're being reawakened by the shocks of natural gas and home heating supplies and the prices at the gas pumps. - Greg Allen, Allen Kani Sustainable Technology Consultants --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

``As a population, we've been sleepwalking.

But now we're being reawakened by the shocks of natural gas and home heating supplies and the prices at the gas pumps.

``At the same time, I don't know anybody that has to travel by car in the GTA that isn't appalled by the state of our transportation system. It isn't working. It's a miserable experience. it's not a morning or evening ritual anyone takes enjoyment in, regardless of what kind of SUV you drive.

``It's dawning on people that that any metropolis of this scale has to have a serious commuter rail system, which is how every large centre has coped with the density of people movement required.''

Tony Woods, of Can-am Building Envelope Specialists, speaks with the been-there, done-that weariness of someone who's been trying to sell people efficiency for a lifetime. His lessons were hard-won and lasting.

``You can't sell people efficiency by itself because it's not visible. They can't taste it, touch it, smell it or see it and no amount of showing them cost/benefit analyses will change that,'' Woods says .

At the same time, he's seen homeowners spend as much as $15,000 to rebuild their building envelopes to seal off problems with clusterflies or bats. They ended up saving lots in energy efficiency, but that wasn't the motivation. Bats, they can see.

``I've often thought the solution to Toronto's efficiency problem is to breed very large amounts of clusterfly larvae,'' Woods jokes.

``The whole city would seal itself tight pretty quick.''

Woods says bluntly that homeowners have three primary motivations - fear, greed and comfort, in that order.

``We were scared in the '70s and '80s because of energy prices and we acted. Then we got greedy because the government was giving out free money to owners of older homes until 1985 to help improve efficiency.

``Now, the watchword is comfort. It's no coincidence that the word comfort shows up in every bit of utility advertising you see. Comfort in the broadest sense. We'll pay for the comfort of eliminating problems like bats, mice, odours, flies and dirt from our homes.

``And if energy costs get high enough, we'll pay for the comfort of better efficiency to make that problem go away too.''

http://www.thestar.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_FutureTenseContentServer=364477829e806a1c&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=990848081137

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 26, 2001


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