Story submitted by Eric Worrall
A UK government study has concluded that people concerned about global warming, on average, use more electricity than climate skeptics.
Some highlights from the study follow.
On the “benefits” of switching off appliances;
“There is some link between households’ stated behaviour towards switching off unused appliances and electricity use, but there is seldom a statistically significant relationship (p-value 0.05 or less) between stated and actual behaviour. This means that policy-makers cannot rely on stated behaviours alone in assessing how often householders turn off unused TVs and desktop computers, or how much hot water they use for showers.”
On the (inverse!) correlation between environmental belief and energy use;
“Taken all together, householders who strongly agreed they were not worried about climate change because it was too far in the future in fact used less electricity rather than more, counter to the hypothesis that households concerned about climate change use less electricity.”
The study noted however that this was largely due to the fact most climate skeptics were older and poorer than people who expressed strong feelings about green issues.
“However, we found this was largely due to the effect of age, as older households were much more likely to agree with this statement, and also had lower energy consumption.”
Peter Lilley, a Conservative member of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee, said:
“The survey exposes the hypocrisy of many who claim to be ‘green’: the greater the concern people express about global warming the less they do to reduce their energy usage.”
The study is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/326075/Electricity_Survey_2_-_Savings__beliefs__demographics_150514.pdf