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Heating, cooking, showering, washing: all of this uses energy. Where are the greatest savings effects?
Author: Sina Freiermuth and Xenia Bertschmann
Many people will have to struggle with higher electricity prices in the coming year. With small changes, the costs can be reduced at least a little. Where is it worth saving? SRF clears up five misconceptions about saving electricity.
1. Heating one degree less doesn’t make a big difference.
Incorrect.
Heating one degree less saves seven percent of total heating consumption.
“I think it is very important that we find out where the big levers actually are,” explains Harald Mayr from the University of Zurich. According to the environmental economist, the big lever lies precisely in heating.
You could turn off the lights all year round and not use a single lamp in the house, explains the environmental economist. But the electricity that is saved is less than half that of heating one degree less. “Heating one degree less saves seven percent of total heating consumption.” An average household could save around 100 francs a year, says Mayr.
2. Hand washing is more energy efficient than the dishwasher.
Incorrect.
According to the Zurich Electricity Works (EKZ), washing dishes under warm running water uses 390 kWh per year. The dishwasher uses 30 percent less energy. The Eco program only uses 150 kWh per year.
3. Laundry only gets really clean at high temperatures.
Incorrect.
Nowadays, cleanliness and hygiene come from the detergents, not the temperature.
Nowadays, laundry gets clean even at low temperatures. Today’s detergents are even designed for lower temperatures. «Nowadays, cleanliness and hygiene come from the detergents, not the temperature. As a rule, 20 degrees is sufficient,” emphasizes Nadja Gross, energy efficiency project manager at Topten, a company that sells washing machines. Laundry that is not very dirty can be washed at 20 degrees, which means around 70 percent less energy is used.
4. Showering is more energy efficient than bathing.
no
When showering and bathing, heating water uses a lot of energy. A minute of showering requires an average of 15 liters, an economy shower only needs six. A full bathtub holds approximately 150 liters. So if you take a warm shower for longer than ten minutes, you use more water and energy than taking a bath.
Fun Fact
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Showering for five minutes uses 1.7 kilowatt hours of electricity. That’s almost as much as a smartphone uses per year.
The temperature makes the difference: If you also shower a little colder, you save even more energy.
5. New devices are more environmentally friendly than old ones.
no
There are basically two life phases for devices: the first phase is the production of the device and the second is the use phase, according to Roland Hischier, life cycle assessment expert at the Swiss Federal Materials Testing and Research Institute (Empa).
90 percent of the environmental impact of smartphones comes from the manufacturing of the device. A smartphone should therefore be used for as long as possible. The same applies to laptops. 80 percent of the environmental impact occurs during the manufacturing phase.
Repair or buy new?
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Roland Hischier from Empa explains that from an ecological point of view, repairing refrigerators and washing machines is worthwhile if the devices have good energy efficiency. At the moment, however, there is often not enough financial incentive to repair broken devices, which is why new ones are often bought.
With a washing machine and a refrigerator it is exactly the opposite. The main burden here lies in the usage phase.
When is it worth changing large appliances?
Newer devices are usually more efficient because they have new technologies. According to Roland Hischier from Empa, continuing to use an eleven-year-old washing machine has a smaller environmental impact than purchasing a new one in the same efficiency class.
A change is only worthwhile after a certain period of time and if the new device is in a higher energy efficiency class. Then it’s probably worth changing even sooner.
Editor’s note
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This article was first published on July 29, 2022.