Rediscovering Carbon Neutral

Published in

Knock Knock

4 min readMay 12, 2011

As we sit in our homes and our offices and type away on our computers and handhelds, checking status messages on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn every 15 minutes, it is easy to forget that each of these messages is being powered by electricity flowing into a data centre somewhere, and the electricity is indeed being powered by some coal being dug up or petrol getting pumped up and refined and burnt somewhere. Just because we cant hear the generator chugging away doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 50 years back, it was predicted that nuclear energy would solve the world’s problems by 2000 — clean energy, zero pollution. Only a small hitch (there always is) — the small matter of figuring out what to do with the radioactive waste. We haven’t worked out a solution yet. And the Japanese disaster has etched the reality a little deeper — there is a price to pay for our energy greed.

OK, so nuclear didn’t work. And there is some radiation mess that we have already created, that we may have to live with. What’s the alternative? We just need to find another energy source.

All the while we thought that we can find another energy source — to meet our growing energy needs. We continue to think the same way — wait for the miracle of solar energy and wind energy and tidal power and biomass and geothermal energy and nano-energy to save us. It will happen, it has to happen. Maybe it will. Given enough time, it will. Are we really doing anything to buy time? We all consume some amount of energy everyday. Let us say, hypothetically, we had to create that energy, before consuming it (so that we come close to carbon neutral). Perhaps an example will help. We watch 3 hours of TV daily and browse the internet for 6 hours, our refrigerator is on the whole day, a geyser heats up water for us to bathe, we have lights to prolong our day and fans to keep us cool, we use elevators to reach our homes and so on. All of this needs electricity (energy). Let’s say each one of us is allowed to use 4 times the energy we create (the government says, for every 1 part of energy your produce, I will sanction 3 more parts to you for use). I am imagining all of us cycling away in a corner of the house, generating energy for our daily use. You want to browse the internet for half an hour? Just need to cycle for 15 minutes. Watch TV for an hour? 30 minutes of cycling should do it. And so on. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Firstly, it is impossible to generate the amount of energy we consume in a day. Even if I do generate a little, it will be a very miniscule percentage of my total needs. It would be much easier to pay for my work’s equivalent? (Well that’s exactly the logic that companies use when they buy and sell carbon credits!) Well, I think, it is important for each one of us to realize that we are consuming more than we can generate. Lets just say that the energy we generate is a token amount towards this realization. Since we are just imagining, lets go ahead with the ridiculous a little bit more. If it turns out that there is no other option, it is just possible that we may prioritize and cut down on our energy consumption. Do I really want to tweet every 2 minutes? I am sure, if every tweet needed a good 5 minutes of cycling, we would not tweet as much. Or search as much. We may just rework our food habits so that we don’t need to store or stock up stuff in our refrigerator so much. (I am not playing the fitness card here at all.) The fact us, a lot of our energy usage is ridiculously wasteful. Finding a viable, unending, renewable source of energy might solve our problems in the future. Energy in so much abundance, we can waste all we want. But we don’t know yet. Our wastefulness today may be so foolish that our children may need to pay a hefty price. Till then, it may just be a good idea to rediscover a greener way of life, as close to carbon neutral as possible. Who knows, this could be a healthier, more meaningful life — without sacrificing the real benefits that today’s technology has to offer. Perhaps, it is also important, while we search for our next energy source, to also innovate on how we generate and consume energy and how we can sustain the good parts of our current lifestyle with less energy. This is much easier for us in India today, than for the western world — culturally we have always been closer to carbon neutral than most others, and its only recently that material comforts have started to question our sustainable lifestyles of old. It is time for us to return back to the path of sustainability, and create a lasting legacy of innovation. Related Links: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html http://www.econvergence.net/electro.htm http://www.motherearthnews.com/Renewable-Energy/1981-03-01/Bicycle-Generator-Home-Power.aspx

Rediscovering Carbon Neutral

Written by Karthikeyan Iyer