Reducing electricity use#

Some appliances use a lot of energy, and some only use a little. Community buildings have a lot of electrics so it’s better to focus on what matters the most. You’ll want to think about:

  • Anything that heats something up or cools it down. They use a lot of energy when they are on.

  • Anything left on all the time that doesn’t go into “standby” mode.

  • Anything gets hot pointlessly, like halogen light bulbs. If the heat isn’t useful, it’s wasting energy. In extreme cases, it could also be a sign of an electrical fault.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s not worth it in carbon or financial terms to replace electrical appliances until they are near end-of-life. You have to consider the embodied carbon from making the new appliance and the fact that for many of us, electricity is still relatively cheap. The exception might be might be things that move water, like pumps and motorised valves. New ones use 2-5 times less power than really old ones so there are probably circumstances when changing them would pay back, for instance, if the pumps iare in high use and there are gate valves so the system doesn’t need to be drained to do it.

Some community groups try to save energy by turning their internet routers off. Routers generally take around 6W, although some use more power. We don’t consider this a priority. The timing features on routers are usually more about making sure children don’t use the internet at night when they should be sleeping.

Appliances with “standby” mode

Standby mode has existed for electrical appliances since the 1990s, but any appliance from before around 2005 will waste enough energy that you should try to turn them off when not in use. Since 2013, appliances have been required to have better standby - usually around 1W - which means you don’t need to worry about them. It’s hard to say what you might find on site that’s from before 2013. We’ve previously found old shredders and laptop power supplies using 60-80W all the time, and some suspect 1960s heating controls that weren’t in use but were still powered up.

However, if you have smart TVs, computers, and games consoles that are by default always on to check for software updates, that’s worth changing. You want any security updates, but you don’t need the device on all the time to look for them. If it’s hot and it’s not meant to be, it’s wasting energy.