By: John Gibbons

As we face into the New Year, we could all do with shedding a few pounds… for 2008, how about seeing if you can lose a few hundred kilos instead?

The weight we really need to shed this year is the carbon (CO2) that is created by our high-energy lifestyles. At this time of the year, heating is a major energy consumer and carbon emitter, accounting for around 70% of our total domestic usage.

Without a doubt, therefore, the best place to start your ‘carbon diet’ is in heating. The simple act of turning down your domestic heating by just 1 degree C will save a whopping 300 kilos of CO2 a years. Check also that your hot water isn’t too hot – it shouldn’t be hotter than 60C – as this is also hugely wasteful.

Of course, the best way to cut down on unnecessary heating is to make sure the heat you are using isn’t disappearing into space. This means replacing single-glazed windows with modern double-glazing, making sure that areas around doors are properly sealed (huge amounts of heat can escape via a quarter inch gap under your front or back door). Window replacement can cut your CO2 emissions by another 350kg a year.

Yes, this all costs money, but you can expect to get it back in a couple of years in the big savings you will pocket in fuel and electricity bills – not to mention the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you’re doing the right thing! Don’t forget insulation; the chief culprit here is your attic. Proper insulation here will make your home much snugger, and will help you shed another 630kg of CO2 a year.

None of the changes we’ve covered so far will in any way make your life more uncomfortable, quite the opposite in fact. And you can expect to get the cost of these improvements back within a short number of years in fuel savings. Next, when you’re heading down to Power City or Currys to the January sales, the most important tag to check on electrical goods (apart from the price) is to see its Energy Rating.

Insist on items with a ‘Grade A’ energy rating, and preferably ‘Grade A+’. Again, even if they’re slightly more costly, you’ll get the difference back in your ESB bills. Replacing your old fridge/freezer with a modern ‘Grade A+’ unit will save a cool 210kg of CO2 annually.

And don’t forget your boiler. If it’s more than 10 years old, you may do better by replacing it with a modern condensing boiler. These are much more efficient as they capture and recycle much of the heat in the flue gases. They could cut your fuel bill – and carbon emissions – by more than a third.

Around the house, there are lots of other practical – and painless – steps you can do to shed more kilos. An easy one is to switch off lights when you leave a room for more than a minute or two. Everyone knows about low-energy light bulbs. Just five or six regular light bulbs burn a totally inefficient half a kilowatt an hour. You would get the same light using CFL bulbs yet use 80% less electricity. Now there’s a bright idea.

In Ireland, virtually all our electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels, so it’s a mistake to think of electricity as a ‘clean’ fuel. Quite the opposite. The Moneypoint power station in Co. Clare, for example, belches out over five million tons of CO2 a year, that’s more than a ton for every man, woman and child in the state. One simple step towards going ‘greener’ is to avoid the 5–7pm electricity ‘rush hour’ by for example, not putting on dishwashers, dryers, etc. at this time. This would help ease peak loads on power stations.

Compared to 10 or 20 years ago, there are now far more electrical gizmos in our homes, from computers, printers, steam irons, cordless phones, DVD players, to digital cameras. Each of these uses electricity, especially if left in ‘standby’ when not in use. TVs, for example, waste huge amounts of electricity if permanently left on standby. The solution is simple: don’t use the remote to switch it off, use the button on the front. As for mobile phone chargers, when not in use, plug them out.

A ‘low carbon strategy’ recently published by Oxford University suggested that UK homes could cut their CO2 emissions by up to 80% by 2050, a measure researchers say is “absolutely crucial” in the battle to lower emissions and so stave off the most serious consequences of climate change. The British government announced in September that its aim was to have every new house built with the target of ‘zero carbon’ by 2016.

Ireland has lagged behind Europe, thanks in the main to the political influence of developers (who don’t like building energy-efficient houses as you can make ever bigger margins by building houses badly) and the powerful concrete industry lobby, which naturally wants as much – highly polluting – concrete as possible used in buildings.

We can’t wait for governments to magically ‘fix’ the problem of CO2 and climate change. There is no such easy solution. Each of us has responsibility to do what we can do to at least limit our own emissions.

None of this has to involve wearing sackcloth or sleeping in a haystack, but it does include looking long and hard at some of our personal decisions. For instance, just because it’s cheap to fly to Prague for the weekend or pop over to New York for a 3-day shopping trip doesn’t mean it’s right. True freedom comes with responsibility. Unsustainable living is quite literally a luxury we cannot afford.

An energy-efficient lifestyle on a slimmed down ‘carbon diet’ is the smart move. Right now, it will save you money. Looking ahead, it may just save the world as we know it.