RSSAppliances and lighting
What are appliances and lighting?
Anything that we turn on power within our home is using energy to function. This includes refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, televisions and lights. These devices make our daily lives easier, but they also use a great deal of energy within the home.
The Centre for Energy uses the term appliance to describe devices that have a narrow function, such as washing clothes, and the word lighting to describe devices used for illumination within the home, usually referring to artificial light sources such as lamps.
How much energy is used?
The ability to turn on devices to aid in work around the house or to switch on a light within the home takes a great deal of energy. In Canada, appliances and lighting account for 10 per cent of the average energy use in the household.
Appliances
This includes energy used by televisions, radios, washers, dryers, refrigerators, freezers, microwaves dishwashers, and smaller appliances such as blenders and toasters. In an average Canadian home, household appliances consume 7.5 per cent of the energy used in the residential sector.
About 97 per cent of all household appliances are powered by electricity and about 3 per cent are powered by natural gas. Together, refrigerators and freezers consume about 26 per cent of the energy used by appliances, ranges 16 per cent and clothes and dishwashers 2.5 per cent, not including the energy used to heat water. Other appliances include televisions, radios, toasters, mixers and coffee makers.
New technologies
Many new technologies in appliances focus on the way the appliance is made. In recent years, appliances have been built with more efficient compressors, better insulation and more effective door seals which reduces power consumption, sometimes as much as 50 per cent compared to appliances of just five years ago.
Many appliances now come with sensors and cycle options to allow you to perform necessary tasks while using the least amount of energy. These sensors allow owners to choose specific cycles or time amounts needed to perform a task, such as drying clothes.
Lighting
Household lighting includes all lights wired into the residence’s electrical system as well as all lamps used in the home.
Virtually all household lighting is electrically powered. About 2.6 per cent of the energy consumed in the residential sector is used in lighting.
New technologies
New technologies that improve energy efficiency in light bulbs and lighting fixtures are also becoming more common.
There are three types of light bulbs currently in use. The incandescent bulb (Halogen bulbs are also considered incandescent bulbs), fluorescent bulbs and compact fluorescent lamps, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). These three types of light bulbs all work with varying degrees of efficiency.
In the chart below, the efficiency of these lightbulbs is shown. Light output is measured by lumens, and the efficiency of a light source is measured by lumens per watt, or the amount of light produced compared to the amount of energy used.
| Type of bulb | Lumens per watt |
| Incandescent | 16 |
| Halogen | 22 |
| Flourescent tube | 50 to 100 |
| Compact flourescent | 60 |
| LED | 32 |
Based on the chart, incandescent bulbs are the least energy efficient lighting solution and fluorescent bulbs are the most energy efficient. Keep this in mind when purchasing new bulbs or new lighting fixtures. If you replace traditional light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, they can last up to 10 times longer and use 75 per cent less energy.
You can now also purchase energy efficient bulbs from most local stores. Look for the energy efficient label on the packaging.
Reducing Emissions
Because greenhouse gas emissions have a significant impact on climate change, reducing those emissions is a necessary step toward curbing global warming. The amount of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere depends upon the type of fossil fuel consumed.
While consuming electricity does not cause emissions per se, some methods of generating electricity do release greenhouse gases.
Recently, new technologies have been developed that mitigate potentially harmful emissions at the generation stage. These new technologies include clean coal technology and carbon capture and storage.
Clean coal technology is designed to eliminate emissions such as particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, sulphur oxide and greenhouse gases. This technology includes coal cleaning prior to combustion, higher efficiency combustion methods, low nitrogen oxide burners, post-combustion electrostatic precipitators and fabric filters to remove particulate matter, post combustion catalytic nitrogen oxide removers and desulphurization.
Carbon capture and storage
While approximately 35 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions are due to transportation (49 per cent for the residential sector) it is impractical to collect carbon dioxide from moving vehicles. Most carbon dioxide will be captured from large final emitters (LFEs) such as coal or natural gas fired power plants, oil and natural gas processing facilities, chemical and fertilizer plants and other industrial users of hydrocarbon fuels such as plants which produce hydrogen for use in upgrading. Carbon dioxide can be captured post-combustion, as is the case in power plants, or pre-combustion, as is the case in fertilizer manufacturing and hydrogen production.
The carbon dioxide is then transported through an underground pipeline system similar to a natural gas pipeline where high-pressure carbon dioxide can be moved long distances at low cost. The carbon dioxide is then injected into deep underground geological formations, such as saline aquifers, depleted natural gas and petroleum reservoirs, or enhanced oil recovery projects where it will be kept isolated from the environment.
While these new technologies are used to lower the emissions caused by converting energy resources into energy for your home, there are also other ways that each individual can lower emissions in their home.
