Japan: Lessons on conservation
The New York Times has a great article profiling the average Japanese household and its approach to conservation and using energy-efficient technologies, whether it’s fuel cells that run on natural gas and provide electricity and heat, or recycling warm bath water for doing laundry. It’s an interesting looking at how things could be done in North America were we all willing to make mostly small adjustments to our lifestyle.
“Japan is the most energy-efficient developed country on earth, according to most specialists, who say it is much better prepared than the United States to prosper in an era of higher global energy prices,” the articles states. “And if there is any lesson that Japan can offer to Americans, they say, it is that there is no one fix-all solution to living with oil above $50 a barrel.”
Amen.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
January 7th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Countries that need to be efficient (densely populated, small countries) tend to be so. Japan is just possibly the best example of this, but most of Western Europe has better environmental laws as well. When you can’t just put your garbage miles away, or just build new buildings and abandon older ones, you tend to be more conscious of your environment. If North America were more densely populated, we’d be forced to do better too.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I like the high gasoline prices translating into subsidies
( wow…$51,000 !!!) for fuel cells.
January 15th, 2007 at 10:08 am
The article is no longer available on the NYT site try the IHT at
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/07/news/energy.php