What to Do About Energy?

We are replete with suggestions as to how to minimise our energy consumption at home, so there is not really a lot to say here without re-inventing the wheel. Having said that, when it comes to all the various bits of tech we might buy, particularly the ‘big ticket’ items, it is well worth considering where they are made…. If we think of solar panels, the majority come from China, where the irony is that they may well be made in factories whose electrical power is derived from coal; then they’re all shipped half-way around the globe… So much for reducing our carbon footprint. The same applies to the solar batteries, air-source heat pumps, electric cars and EV chargers. Luckily, with a little bit of digging, you’ll be able to find most if not all of this stuff made much closer to home and even some in the UK! We’ve listed a few companies below with UK and/or EU based manufacturing – please note that we have no links or financial ties to any of them!

Solar Batteries:

Look for manufacturers based in the UK or Europe rather than having these heavy items shipped from the Far East.

EV Chargers:

Several UK companies now manufacture EV chargers locally, reducing the transport footprint.

Social media and The Cloud…

Loads of energy used by the massive servers storing all the trillions of images and videos we take and put out on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, etc. We all have a habit of taking photos of almost everything, because it’s easy, we can see the results instantly and being that most are taken with mobiles, we can send them to others, most often for amusement! The question this raises is, what do we do with all these images and videos over the following years or even decades? I find that I hardly ever look at the majority of them, so they just sit there on my phone, taking up space, since I don’t pop them onto social media and I don’t save them in the Cloud. Most people however, do do either one or both or those things at what feels like no cost…. However, what we need to consider are the huge data centres and server centres required to cope with our insatiable need to look at what everybody else is doing! These bits of infrastructure all consume large amounts of electricity.

So, maybe it’s time to ask yourself how many of those piccies you actually, really, honestly need to keep? Remember, each one has a little carbon footprint and thus effects your future!