Let's be attentive to the energy

Electricity is the main source of energy that we use today in our daily lives, whether to take a shower, heat, prepare our meals or entertain electricity is essential.

It is also an energy that can, depending on its mode of transformation, be polluting. Thus our daily behavior even if they are not directly source of pollution can have a significant impact on the production of greenhouse gases.

Decentralized pollution: United Kingdom’ example

In the United Kingdom, in 2015, 89.2% of electricity was converted from non-renewable resources and 73.8% from polluting resources (oil, gas, coal).

Thus, our electricity consumption, which appears to be non-polluting at first glance, is an important source of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Hidden pollution: internet

We can not imagine it, but the use of our smartphones, our computers and our game consoles is a source of hidden pollution. The link is not easy to do but for every resource we use on the internet, a server has used energy to provide it. So every search on a search engine, each click on a social network consumes somewhere in the world, energy.

Of course it is not excessive consumption, it is estimated that 14 grams of greenhouse gas emissions for two searches on Google (the equivalent of the consumption of an electric kettle). Yet today there are nearly 3.5 billion Google searches that are done every day is 660 tons of Co2 issued. Added to this is streaming (Netflix, Amazon, YouTube), social networks and everything in between. In all, it is estimated that more than 2% of the world's pollution comes from the use of internet networks.

What can we do ?

Consume responsibly! Electricity is essential to our daily lives, and consuming responsibly does not mean drastically changing our lifestyles, but simply being attentive to our consumption and behaviour. Do not light lights, electronic objects, turn off night lights and appliances that are not used.

For the question of new technologies, a question should direct our behaviour: am I doing it necessarily requires the use of the internet? For example, a physical format (DVD, CD) rather than Internet access for multimedia formats can be a good way to reduce its ecological footprint. Finally, being attentive to data that is stored by third parties (social networks or mail providers), these data are stored in redundant data banks, which consume large amounts of energy. It is therefore better to store its data either on hard disks for example.