The 10:10 pledge

Last Tuesday (1st September) I went to Tate Modern and signed up to the 10:10 pledge - ie to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in 2010, and collected a little pendant recycled from an old Boeing 747 to prove it.

The 10:10 campaign is organised by Franny Armstrong, of Age of Stupid fame. I think it's a brilliant idea as it brings home the need to make substantial cuts in emissions in the near future and not be lulled into thinking we can go at a leisurely pace towards an 80% reduction by 2050.

Signing up was a rash move for me. My domestic energy consumption is already down to 31% of the national average for 2008 (see my last post) and I don't really have much of a clue about how I can get it down to 28%. For a start, I'll be more precise in the way I fill my electric kettle and I'll try and keep better track of the minutes I spend under a hot shower every morning.

Outside the home I'm always looking at ways I waste energy, such as by pressing the button at a pedestrian crossing. I reckon stopping a car weighing 1 tonne and travelling at 30 mph (about 48 kph) wastes about 25 watt-hours of usable energy (and a lot more unusable energy because of the inefficiency of a petrol or diesel engine), enough to keep an 18W energy-saving lightbulb (100W incandescent equivalent) alight for about an hour and twenty minutes. It's also enough to bring water to the boil to make one cup of tea (a quarter of a litre).

If I stop a 40-tonne articulated lorry (or 40 1-tonne cars), then the usable energy wasted is about 1 kilowatt-hour - nearly one seventh of my daily domestic energy consumption.

The trouble is, I've been alive to all this for a number of years and I already try not to stop traffic at pedestrian crossings so I don't think extra care here will get me far towards my 10% target.

Incidentally, I thought The Guardian did the campaign proud - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/10-10