Porto Santo has a pleasant temperature all year round, there is hardly any rain and the soil is rich in minerals, good for your health. So, except for one air-force base, its main source of income comes from tourism, in the form of buggy power! It comes with nice buggies to rent now. And, with a ‘buggy’factory for a green future.
Effective advertising for Porto Santo Tours on a wall near the beach
Citybubbles are also buggies
The owner of Citybubbles understood what this kind of tourists wants: sustainable transportation.
The proud owner of the ‘Bubbles’ electric cars in Madeira and Porto Santo with one of his cars. And, the electric kick scooter he uses to commute to and from the harbour.
In 2012, when Peter started building “Ya”, the owner of ‘Bubbles’ started renting out small and light, 100% electric, cars in Porto Santo. Buggies. When you rent the car, it comes with an application that includes detailed maps of the island.
Fossilfree sightseeing and shopping in Porto Santo The cars have a capacity for two passengers. And some shopping 😉
The buggy has a range of 60 km, and a top speed of 90km/h. You will need neither the full range, nor the top speed because the island is small and you enjoy it more on a slower speed. But, just to be on the safe side, you can charge your car in lots of (often beautiful) places.
One of the most beautiful places on Porto Santo is the South point, with the rough rocks; the loading station for ‘Bubbles’ is very elegantly tucked away.
Buggypower!
And then, we came across lots and lots of buggies. Buggypower!
You see, the algae plant near the marina appears to be the largest closed-circuit production facility of micro-algae in Europe. They build CO2 capture units. And, they harvest the algae and produce algae-products as a basis for food, feed and cosmetics.
Just a glimpse of the bubbles in the beginning of the process, before the tube turns greener and greenerThe big buggy plant near the Marina on Porto Santo, On the left side you see the different shades of green, meaning the different growing stages.
We already wrote about the CO2-capturing potential of micro-algae. It’s amazing what those buggies can do!
In the last blogs on ‘use only what you need’, on the basics of fossilfree sailing, on cooking, sailing, and on the human factor, we showed how we use only what we need, and how you can do that. It saves about 70 or 80%. Yes, that much! So, we use only little.
Now that the consumption is so little, we can generate our own energy. On our ship we use the three general ways to generate it: solar, wind and hydro energy. This ‘tripod’ gives us the stable energy input we need to stay in balance. Check our Energy Balance, our basis on board. We have never had a shortage. Although it was sometimes not much.
All devices are quality stuff, but not fancy; it is all just ‘from the shelf’.
You can do the same.
Here we can use all three sorts of generation: a bit of solar on the panels, a little bit of wind in the turbine, and -although the wind is light, with the Parasailor www.parasailor.com we can easily make the necessary speed to make the Autoprops run the electric alternators (“dynamos”) and hydro generate.
Solar panels
Instead of a canvas bimini top, we made a fixed one and covered it with solar panels. In the 4 or 5 hours that the sun shines well in a cloudless sky, they deliver about 30% of their rated peak energy, and when it is cold, they can do 40%. This is pretty good. These ones are thin, so the wind can keep them cool, which is the prerequisite for an effective working solar panel.
The deck panels are mounted on the deck, which is also insulated. So, in the tropics these ones work badly, in the subtropics reasonably. In the higher latitudes, they stay cool and they do just as well as the panels on the bimini top.
Behind the windows we put some flexible panels. Flexible panels deliver relatively poor, But, they do better than expected, because they get the solar radiation also from the reflecting water. That counts double.
The bimini protects you from the sun, while it delivers energy. The deck panels are walkable, but deliver less in hot weather because they don’t stay cool.
All details and numbers you find here including their contribution to our Energy Balance
Wind turbine
Any wind turbine works only with enough wind. There is one place where there is most wind, and that is high, in an undisturbed area. Our windmill is put on the mizzen mast, on 7 meters high. It should at least be over 5 meters, do no spend money on a windmill put on a pole of 3 or 4 meters.
Most efficient is a three-blade turbine. All A-brands have these mills.
We chose for the Silentwind, because it combines a light weight with a high yield. The MPPT (the converter box, with the vulnerable electronics) is not in the turbine but you can put it in a dry area. The device has a ‘light wind booster’ in it, so even in light winds it can take some energy out of it.
If mounted high, at least over 5 meter, the windturbine is effective
All details and numbers you find here including their contribution to our Energy Balance. An article comparing three windturbines, you find here.
Hydro generation: Autoprops and alternators
We use the most efficient Autoprops https://www.bruntonspropellers.com/autoprop/ as propellers. They are connected to E-tech www.etechdrives.com electric motors. They give us propulsion. But if the sails give us the speed, we switch a button to ‘Charge’ and the motors turn into alternators. The Autoprops will rotate in the water (like the windmill in the wind) and will run the alternators, making the energy to put in the battery bank.
The Autoprop (left) here seen from astern (‘behind’) in feathering position, and the blades change themselves in the most efficient pitch (angle), depending on rotation and boat speed, to drive the motor (right), switched to the alternator function and generate the maximum power into the battery bank.
All details and numbers you find here, including their contribution to our Energy Balance.
Battery bank
The Ya has had a conventional battery bank. It could contain 55 kWh (kiloWatthour). That is what an average Euopean family uses per week. After 7 years the bank was worn out. The energy content had reduced to only 30 kWh. Still this was enough, because we only just use what we need. But it was time to renew them.
We renewed them for a Lithium Ferro Phospate bank, or LFP. These are like the light and modern batteries used in electric cars, but then then in a safe, not inflammable version. The batteries are better controlled than lead acid ones, they last two times longer and the maintenance is nothing more then plugging it in a 220Volt outlet every three months.
The big (red) battery is one of the 24 lead acid batteries we had. It weighs 60 kilos. The small battery is one of the 48 new LFP batteries we have and weighs only 4 kilos. Two of these small ones have nearly the same energy as one big one. This saves weight and volume. And they last about 2 times longer.
The energy content is 42 kWh nominal, so 33 kWh effectively. In the 4 months of use it has never been empty because of 4 reasons:
the properties of the batteries are more efficient
All guests on board of Ya automatically start living and acting using less energy. Regardless of age or background. Of course, Ya’s design and devices like the watercooker make it easy. But, in two or three days, the guests start living and acting in a more sustainable way, without having been told. They only use what they need. A miracle? All pre-biased?
Here we explain how people, like you, can change.
All guests on board ‘Ya’, from the age of 14 to 79, change and start using only the energy they need.
Much rewards mixed with a little threat
If you cook water for tea on board ‘Ya’, the electrical cooker cooks it within a minute. A kettle on a gas stove would take 3 to 4 times longer. And, the electrical cooker doesn’t heat the cabin with lots of steam finding its way to your ceiling and your bed linen. So, this is rewarding.
The same reward you get when using the induction cooker. It is straight forward: the energy goes only to the cooking, safely, without hindering side effects. The haybox gets a pan out of the way and makes cooking more relaxed.
Using the well-insulated fridge and freezer, all the same. Of course you always close the lid after opening it. The fridge works without the disadvantages that most yachts experience because of bad insulation. So, the diesel engine has to run for an hour to refill the batteries, sucked empty by these fridges. Not on Ya.
When we use the engine for propulsion, the electric engine gives no noise, no fumes, it is all peace and quiet.
Cooking on board with a micro wave, water cooker, bread baker, fridge and freezer, no heat or moisture as side effects, and all safe – this pays off. The condition is to only use what you need.
Who would not appreciate all this positive impact? The funny thing is: if your environment is rewarding and positive, you want to keep it this way. So, people get interested.
And, knowing that we regenerate all energy ourselves by solar, wind and hydro, people want to know how much the equipment takes on energy. Because you don’t want to lose, you want the energy to stay in balance. The idea of an empty battery bank -although never happened in Ya’s seven years existence- creates a threat that keeps you away from this downside.
The display and us
You start a car and you watch the display. You make speed, you check the display. In winter at home, when you feel chilled, you check the temperature display. On a building you see a display with the time you already know, and the temperature you already know. Why do we watch? Because you want to be sure. And because there might be changes, and you want to know all about it. So, a display attracts our attention.
In most yachts, the energy displays are put away in the ‘Engineering Corner’. Often they show abracadabra like ‘Ah’ or ‘Amp’, with numbers in a small print.
Lucky us: we have one with the W of Watt and everybody knows that a 10 W light bulb uses 10 Watt power. And the numbers are in big print. We mounted the display on a central place in the cabin, visible from all seats and corners.
The display has a central place, like the clock in the old-fashioned house, so everyone sees it.
Do you want to see for yourself how this works? We put together different screenshots that make clear how much energy we use and get in which situations.
The percentage number shows the energy content, how full the battery bank is. With one finger tap the display changes to the mode where you can see the Watts coming in or out (here: 359 Watt, left under)At night on anchor, and no wind, we lose a bit. But even on a cloudy day you get 120-150Watt.The average is about 300Watt. With a good sun at noon, the panels charge over 400WattAnd 100 Watt more when the wind generator running in a moderate wind. And when we switch on the propellers and alternator at a 5 knot speed, we easily get 150 Watt extra.The water cooker takes about 2 kWatt for 1-2 minutes and the other cooking devices can vary from 200 W to 3,5 kWattMotoring 3 knots in a calm takes 500 Watt, but in wind and sea against you, much more.Leaving the dock, you give the engines a blow to get speed. The engines can take up to 15 kW.
Once a new guest just switched on the water cooker and she asked: “Peter, kW, that means kilowatt, doesn’t it?” Because she was surprised that a water cooker used so much. She always thought that the lights were the big users. She learned that on the energy for one pot of tea, you can switch on all LED lights on board the Ya for one week.
Our guest Marijke is on board for one day now and starts spontaneously checking the energy use and generation numbers.
Seeing is believing, awareness is change
If you use only what you need, you will find that the batteries are always at an acceptable level. Or even better: if you take good care of your energy generation, you get rewarded by more energy. When you sail in light winds, you can hoist the Parasailor and start generating with the Autoprops. If you are on anchor and you make sure your solar panels are not shadowed, this makes a huge difference. These actions make you feel safe, you can rely on your energy-balance.
Your display can also work at home
Your energy display at home is put in a closet, often even without a decent door knob, so you only look at that meter incidentally. At the end of the year you get a bill from the supplier and then you think: “Now really, this year I want to use less.’ But again, a year later… the supplier has sent another bill and he is the only laughing one.
Our friends got solar panels. They then asked the company to put the display outside the meter closet. Every time they were near, they read the display. What comes in, what goes out. They learned to interpret it. A sunny day, was a good day. When her son came home from school, he could see that Mum had a cake in the oven before he could even smell it. The family talked about what costs energy and what saves energy. You know what happened with the use? They used 40% less since then.
So, if you want to save money, and some of the environment for your children, mount a display where you can see it!
On the last use-only-what-you-need-cooking blog, we got various reactions, and all good. So, are you ready for the big one? Sailing. With sails, not on the engine. If you only use the engine when you need it, the pay off is great in the experience on comfort, safety, sailing pleasure and experiencing nature. The key to most of it is the planning, so about good weather forecasts.
Do you know yachties who like motoring? I don’t. Because the real fun of sailing lies in … sailing with the sails. (Photo: Vernoo Media)
Planning according to the weather forecast
30 years ago, a weather forecast could be: “During the day the wind will be South west to North West 2 to 3 Beaufort, in open area up to 4 or 5 and in showers 6 Beaufort” So basically, you didn’t know more than that the wind could be Westerly, between 2 to 6 Beaufort. So you hardly planned for the weather, you just decided on the day itself.
Nowadays we have great weather forecasts, in with wind angles per degree, and speeds in knots or m/s. All this with great accuracy over 5 days ahead. We take profit of that bij planning our voyage. When we make trip for a weekend, we decide about our routing depending the forecast. Never more the wind against you!
But still we meet sailors making appointments first and afterwards checking the weather. Once we heard a story of people sailing an 8 days round trip. They constantly motored, 5 knots for 600 miles, beating against waves and winds – and actually could set sails for a mere 100 miles. Terrible. Their appointments happened to be made contrary with the weather. This is not only a waste of fossil fuel, money and CO2, but also bad for your health, your precise leisure time, and the extra CO2 is bad for your childrens future.
Before we sail a trip, big or small, we plan it and check the weather. It saves an enormous amount of engine hours, energy. And setting sails gives us pleasure, motoring not.
With the use of a weather forecast instead of the diesel engine, they would have sailed the other way around would have led to a joyful trip with only 100 miles motorsailing and 700 miles of sheer sailing pleasure.
So do use the engines only when you need it. It gives sailing pleasure in stead of banging your boat into waves and wind.
A modern yacht
The Ya is a modern yacht. She is not heavy, and you can feel her sailing. This makes the sailing fun. Especially with light winds we enjoy sailing in all its subtleties. And then we are surprised to see so many modern yachts going on the engine., even with 5 knots of speed. That’s a pity, they miss the best part! Perhaps they like the motoring? Well, then buy a motor yacht.
And in heavy weather, if you use the engine instead of sails, you miss the safe part. Because a sailing yacht is designed and built for sailing, and not for heavy engine use.
So, on our modern yacht, we use the engine only when we need it. And we get more sailing pleasure out of that.
“When necessary”, and reliability
Many skippers tell me they want the engine to be there ‘when necessary’ and often they mean: to resist a storm. From the shore point of view this sounds reasonable. But sorry, in the four occasions I was in a storm, the diesel engine let us down three times. Once it was the sludge from the tank, stirred into the diesel by the pounding waves, blocking the fuel filters. Once it was sea water splashed through the exhaust pipe into the engine and stopped the engine, and once it was some wet or broken electronics on the engine. On these occasions, it was the reefed sails that helped us out and brought us to safety.
Only the fourth time, it was in Force 9 on an old-fashioned sailing lugger, we sometimes ran the old engine for comfort purposes. But on board was a dedicated engineer for the maintenance. But, also in this case, we relied on the sails to get us home safely.
A marinized engine is a beautiful piece of technique, but all thousands of parts are vulnerable to moist, salt, temperature differences, and (the main cause) a lack of the so necessary maintenance to keep it all running.
Realize that you need to know an awful lot of a diesel engine before you can oversee what can be the cause of a defect. And, even of more value: how you can prevent defects. If you are a yacht skipper and you are not a yacht engineer yourself, please do not count on the engine, especially not the complex, computerized engines. Focus on your sails and your sailing for reliability. And, with a wink: also don’t use more sails than you need.
So, we sail, also in heavy weather. Perhaps we will use our electric engines as auxiliary in a storm. To give a little bit of extra propulsion and make our leeway smaller. The chance that electric engines will work in stormy circumstances is much bigger, because:
Salt, water or moisture don’t affect the watertight engines and controllers
They are not sensitive to moving and shaking
There are hardly moving parts (only a rotor and shaft)
In general, they are maintenance free.
Electric engines and controllers are closed and free of moist, saltwater, oil. The mean time between failure is large and the maintenance is many times smaller than for a combustion engine.
“Range”
Often yacht skippers ask for the range on the engine, with of our battery bank, our ‘fuel tank’. Their yacht has a 200 litres diesel tank and they can sail 300 miles with it. They say. But they never tested it, so I think in the first storm it will stop within 3 miles. They had better set sails.
And honestly, I don’t know what our “range” is. Our Fibercon sails already did 40,000 nautical miles. O, you mean the engines? We never did, but we can use the engines for 2 days on 2 knots on a flat sea, so that would be 100 miles. So we can reach any wind still harbour or bay. But we like sailing. Even with a tiny bit of wind, we can motor sail endlessly with a little bit of power, as long as we have a little bit of sun in the solar panels to feed the engines. We love it and a guest once called it ‘sun sailing’. You feel with your ship a part in balance with nature.
We have another view on the “range”. Last week, on our trip to Madeira we sailed for two days with 25 knots of wind (6 Beaufort) and the only thing we did with our motors was to use them as alternators. So, to fill our battery bank, our ‘fuel tank’. We arrived 100% full. We are quite happy with this range. 😉
Manoeuvring
We intend to use our two engines to manoeuvre us from a harbour straight towards the sailing area. Marinas are designed very space efficient; manoeuvring your yacht on sails into or out of a box is virtually impossible. But when out of the marina, we hoist a sail.
When we go anchor up and we have some space, we enjoy to manoeuvre ourselves out sailing. The engines are stand by (electric engines are always stand by, come to think of it), and sometimes we use them for some seconds. And this feels a bit like a loss, because we like the sailing.
A marina is planned and designed to berth as many boats as possible. An engine is obligatory, sailing is often forbidden
River sailing; 2 knots through the water is our leisure speed
Sometimes when we are inshore and we want to travel further on a river with no wind or against us, we use the engines. We sail with the tide then, and make about 2 knots through the water. Why 2 knots?
First, we go with the tide, so the current adds it up to 3 or 4 knots. Second, we don’t want to make miles, there is no target. And if so, we are there already: on our yacht on a river, enjoying, sight-seeing, exploring, discovering.
Third reason is that we don’t hear our silent engines at all anymore. Ever sailed on a river in complete silence, with just the sound of a bird, a bee, a fly? Last reason is that we want to make sure we always have enough energy left for the unexpected. Like we do with our water, our food, everything. And just for the sheer beauty of physics: did you know that doubling your speed means you use a staggering 2 X 2 X 2 times, is 8 times more energy?
Main thing is the philosophy: we only want to use what we need. So, this is about getting more; not about ‘using less’. We experience nature more and we feel in balance with our environment.
Sailing a river slowly with the tide current, and without hearing the engine and in complete silence. It is one of our precious experiences that we get extra, when we use only what we need.
Last blog we promised to show you that we only use the energy we need. First, we show the use of our equipment in the galley, the ship’s kitchen.
Here, Inge opens the microwave. On top the induction cooker, to her right is the water cooker and the bread baking machine, to her left in the corner the lit of the fridge/freezer. We will cover it all here.
Heating water
Before Ya, we always used a kettle and a gas stove to heat the water for our coffee and tea. The heat of the flame and fumes go around the kettle and… are still hot over the kettle. That heat is all lost.
Now we use a water heater, a cooker. Let us have a look:
If you poor water in, you see a level meter. So, you only cook the water you need.
The heating element is built in the bottom, not at the side.This way it gives all the heat to the water to be cooked. So, you only use the energy you need.
The body of the heater and the lid are double skinned: insulation. The heating process does not lose heat to the outside.
It cooks fast, so there is hardly time to ‘leak’ heat.
A water cooker with a level meter (not shown), the heating element inside, and complety double skinned. It saves you 80% of energy compared to a kettle on a gas stove.
Compared to the kettle on the gas stove, we save about 80% of the energy. While we only use what we need with the electric heater, most of the energy created by the gas combustion, ends up in the form of steam. You cannot use it to heat up your room, because the steam consist of water damp and CO2. So, this means you must ventilate your room well, for your own health and to keep your room free of moisture.
Cooking with induction and hay box
The induction cooker is high tech. The induction technique gives energy through a (safety) glass to the steel bottom of the pan, and then that pan bottom gets hot. That place is exactly the place where you need the heat. The induction cooker saves you about 50 to 55% of the heat if you compare it with cooking on gas stoves or the old-fashioned electric heating stoves.
Our induction cooker can heat two pans, but that is plenty because of the combination with the hay box.
But we can do better. We go from high to low tech. In Grandma’s time, before we had the overflow of fossil fuels, everybody was careful with the fuels, because they were expensive. So, Grandma cooked her rice and vegetables in a pan, and the moment it was hot, she took it from the fire and the pan went straight in the ‘hay box’
The hay box was a box with hay. It insulates. It keeps the heat in the pan. The rice or vegetables were cooked slowly. Most food is cooked in 1/3 extra time compared to the time it takes when you cook it on a stove. If you start cooking the things that need most time, you don’t lose any time.
On a moving ship it has the extra advantage that the hot pan stays in a safe place.
Our hay box is a simple drawer with PIR insulation. You use the heat of the pan’s content to get it cooked. It saves us 30% on energy.
We modernized it a bit. We took PIR foam, put it in a drawer, and with the pan inside we cover it with a ‘Hooimadam’, a cotton cover filled with good old-fashioned wool. This modern ‘hay box’ saves us energy again. We save another 30%.
And finally, as we showed you some blogs ago, we use a pressure cooker to speed cooking up just a bit more, and save even more time and energy on cooking.
So, when we cook with the induction cooker, pressure cooker and hay box we can easily use 20% of the energy we used in the old, fossil days. That’s a reduction of, indeed: 80%.
How much do you use at home?
Heating up in the micro wave
About 70% of the electricity is converted to little radio waves. These radio waves make water molecules move. By moving and colliding, there is friction, and friction makes heat.
It means that the water in the food gets hot. Water is generally the main part, so your food gets hot ‘from the inside’.
This is ideal to heat up food. Because you don’t have to heat up a pan first. And, when mixing the hot and cold food in a pan, the lid is off, so much of the heat flies away. Instead, the microwave uses 70% of the electricity input to really heat up your food. That is a loss of only 30%. And the job is done quickly.
The microwave has an efficiency of 70%, but this complete 70% is all used to heat up your food. This is much more efficient than heating up in pan.
Bread baking machine instead of an oven
For small, private use, the oven is a real energy consumer. But we like fresh baked bread. That is why we use a bread baking machine.
The old-fashioned way with kneading the dough, etcetera, costs a lot of work and energy. Not with the bread baking machine. You simply put the water, flour, salt, yeast et cetera in the pot, push some buttons and off the machine goes. The machine itself is closed, double skinned, is economic on the heat, so, it uses only what it needs to make the bread.
We tried to measure the difference in energy use between oven and bread baking machine and even though we could not pin it down to exact numbers it saves about 30 to 50%.
The fridge and the freezer
If you only want to use what you need when cooling (and heating), only 3 things are important:
Insulation
Insulation
Insulation
So that is what we did. Our refrigerator is surrounded by a 15 centimetre pack of PIR foam. The bottom has more than 20 cm of PIR insulation, and the lit, where the cold exchange is less, only 8. Now the cold stays en and we only use a tiny bit of energy. So little, that we even don’t notice it in our energy household. In the tropics and subtropics, the 50 Watt equipment runs on 3 to 4 times an hour for 6 minutes. For the 35 litre fridge we note about 2-4 degrees Celsius, and for the 25 litre freezer we sometimes hit the 11 degrees.
Please don’t believe designers automatically design a good fridge or freezer for you. They ‘economize’ on the insulation, to ‘give’ you more space inside. So, then you need a really powerful cooling device. The designers may well design this thing right under your refrigerator. So, the heat exchanger under it heats up your fridge again. To get all this idiotic power design effective, the cooling equipment has to be extremely powerful: about 4 or 5 times stronger than what we need for our complete fridge and freezer.
Sorry to tell you, but on the market, we only found bad ‘energy-guzzling’ refrigerators and freezers. On sailboats you see that some skippers, aware of their limited energy and batteries, have become the slave of their own badly designed fridges. They run the engine 2 times a day to make electricity. Or they buy an enormous surface of solar panels, to compensate for the loss of energy by the fridge. Energy wise, it is like filling up a colander with water.
This is why some yachties simply stopped using fridges. A pity! We love cold yoghurt, a cool beer, and tapas. So, we cool only what we need.
Our fridge and our freezer box (just visible) are an arm’s length deep. In contrairy to the fridges and freezers of all yachts we know, ours is just a tiny consumer. The cause: our fridge and freezer box is packed by a thick (about 15 cm) layer of PIR foam.
The extra comfort of using only what you need.
Our galley, our kitchen, is widely appreciated for its comfort. Making tea water is done 3 times quicker than usual. The induction cooker is easy to use and safe. The microwave is convenient for heating food quickly, and the bread baking machine is a joy.
We have no gas, so no moisture getting into your upholstery. It brings comfort.
We have no danger of too much fumes in a small space. We have no gas, so no risk on explosion or fire. So, this is safer.
And by the way, we have no costs for the gas, and all equipment is cheaper or equally expensive as gas equipment. We did need to make a first investment in an inverter, that converts our battery power to the 230Volt that all the equipment needs. If you count the costs of the gas bottles you will use for many years, you will probably find a break even point.
And on top of being pleasant, more comfortable, safer and cheaper, it is better. It is the ethical thing. This way, we can live now without compromising the future of our children, of all next generations.Like most people, we like to use things. But not more. We only want to use what we need.
We live and sail a rather comfortable and luxury life. But we live fossil free. But? No; it is And, not But. We only take care for three things and we advise you to put them into practice.
Three ways to achieve a fossil free life
First: Use only what you need. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Second: Use only what you need. Starts to sound familiar?
On ‘Ya’ we use so little, that we generate the energy we need. By solar, wind and hydro generation. (Photo: www.saltycolours.com)
Now guess what the third thing would be? Exactly. Use only what you need. You can stop reading now and bring it in practice. Because from here we only give examples on how we live fossil free, having adapted these three rules, or this attitude. Or you can read more if you want to have a glance.
At a glance
Here under a glance of what we will show you in the next series of articles:
Cooking. In the galley we cook with 20 to 30% of the energy compared to the fossil way of cooking. So, we save 70-80%. And we still enjoy la belle cuisine.
Transport. When sailing our sailing yacht ‘Ya’ we save about 80% of the energy compared to other sailing yachts. (and about 99% compared to a motor yacht).
Heating. When in a mild winter, like here on the Guadiana when it occasionally gets below freezing temperature, the yacht does not need a heater or stove.
DIY Energy generation. Because we use so little energy, we provide for it by ourselves (solar, wind, hydro).
The benefits of using only what you need
First: we want to halt the deterioration of the Earth where next generations will live on. That is our main reason. Using only what you need, brings other benefits. The fossil free life brings more comfort, with less noise, moist, fumes (toxic or not) and hazardous risks. And, autarkic life on energy gives us the freedom to stay at the most beautiful off-grid spots without polluting them.
You keep money in your pocket, because you spend less on (fossil) energy. It saves lots of tax money too. Tax money is now going to subsidizing fossil fuels, wind turbine parks and solar fields. If you don’t need to build those, you can spend it on other preventive measures.
All this motivates you to check the energy meter, to get energy awareness. We find this fun to do and we notice our guests find it fun as well. It feels better in the ethical way, especially towards your next generations. Realize, more and more children now are not primarily interested in inheriting money, but in having a good life on ‘Planet A’ (because there is no ‘Planet B’).
If we use only what we need on a large scale, the solar fields we think we have to build now, can be much smaller. Perhaps that surface would even fit on roofs of houses and buildings. This would mean more space for nature and less money to spend.
Three constraints in using only what you need
To start with the first constraint: man is a creature of habit. It is your attitude not to change things. So, you have to be convinced yourself. You must want to change your lifestyle in the best way you see fit, and preferably: like it. And last but not least, you must turn this new way of life into a habit.
Second constraint: consuming less means that you are a less interesting customer for many things. The voices telling you to consume more are presently much louder than the voices telling you to consume less, or differently. This means: don’t count on the market to tell you what to do, count on your own common sense. You have to listen carefully to your inner voice and buy, take and use only what you need.
Finally, thinking the government will help us out is a constraint. Using only what you need is a preventive action, and governments are usually not really good at prevention. When there is a problem, they tend to build things, preferably big things. They take the current energy consumption, although ex-treme-ly high now, as a given fact. They call it ‘Energy Demand’ and try to replace all fossil fuel use by generating an equal amount of fossil free energy. Mainly by subsidizing huge wind turbines, enormous solar fields, and then some more, on an ever larger scale. Although these things cost an awful lot of (tax) money, they seem worth it because you can see it in the paper, on TV.
Also, the media are less interested because you cannot see prevention of an issue. Prevention solves issues inherently, and that looks almost boring. Did you ever see a TV show or paper telling about a problem that has not existed? A fire that did not occur?
Only when every solution failed and the crisis is really deep, governments will finally take preventive action and the media will report on it.
If we only use what we need on a large scale, we would only need a fraction of the wind turbines we think we have to build now. This saves sea, it saves lost whales and other species sensitive for the low sounds the turbines make.
Let’s try to prevent that. Next week we tell how we use only the energy we need for cooking.
Friends came over to visit us. To reach shore, we had to row against the strong current in river Guadiana. Not an easy task, even with our extended oars. These experienced rowers advised us to start using an electric engine. As a matter of fact, they had one they did not use. So they sent it over.
And now we enjoy the luxury of a powered dinghy. A dinghy that puts a smile upon faces everywhere we go, because it moves magically silently. Even the guy who operates the dinghy gas station in Faro gave us a thumbs up.
Many people say that the cause of the climate change is the overpopulation. It looks like it, but is it? Other say simply: “It is China, by far the biggest polluter!” Or the USA, with the highest CO2 emissions per inhabitant?
Or could it perhaps be us? Like: you and me?
Let’s try to figure this out.
This picture is from an intelligent and creative interactive animation showing which countries of the world get bigger per variable you choose. (Here: consumption per inhabitant). You can play with it on https://www.carbonmap.org/
China is the biggest polluter
China has become the workshop of the world. In 3 decades the energy use for all the upcoming industries has risen exponentially – and so have the CO2 emissions. Did you know that until 2016 they built one coal power plant each week!
Now, China’s CO2 emissions have grown to over 10 billion ton (10.000.000.000.00 kg) per year, and this leaves the USA on a second place with about half of that.
Now we only discuss CO2, but if we take all greenhouse gases, then China and USA share the first place, since USA is emitting a lot of the heavy ones, such as Methane.
Also, it is perhaps fairer to check per inhabitant. Because one should not point a finger to a country’s pollution simply because it has more people.
The wealthiest are the big polluters…
Let us check the statistics on CO2 per inhabitant. The average inhabitant of North America, Arabia and Australia is by far the biggest CO2 polluter with over 16 ton CO2 per year. And the average Chinese is only a small CO2 emittor with 7 ton/year. We leave little states like Mongolia and Kazachstan out of the equasion.
The average North American, Australian and Arabian is a triple A CO2 pollutor with over 16 ton/year. The Chinese do only a small 7 ton. See: https://ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2 for more stats.
There is one thing catching the eye on these A-states: they have fossil fuels, like gas and oil in their soil. Therefore, the gas and oil is accessible and relatively cheap. The inhabitants of these states also have a high average income.
This easy availability of fossil fuel and these high standards of living create a high carbon footprint. And, it is even higher than you think, if you consider the next:
Importing goods and outsourcing CO2 emissions
In the last decades the wealthier states like USA, Australia and also Europe sized down or even shut down many industries. Now China, with lower wages, has these industries and exports the to wealthier countries where these products are consumed.
So the people with high living standards, buying also stuff from low wage countries like China (and India, Pakistan, et cetera) also create extra CO2 emissions in these states.
This 400 meter mega container ship can take 12000 containers and brings them to the wealthier states like North America, Europe and Australia. About the smoke: did they forget the ‘N’ before its name?
The inhabitant with a high living standard is the big CO2 emitter
We have to conclude that it is the wealthy inhabitant of the USA, Europe, Australia and Arabia who is the most responsible for the creation of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. These people consume goods in big quantity. Most of the consumption leads to direct emissions, but also a big part of it is indirect, through the industries in low wage countries where they get most of their goods from.
Now, could it perhaps be that you live in the USA, Europe or Australia? And do you have a moderate or high income, so you can live on the ‘normal’ high standard? With a house with a room for everyone, with heating and water, a car before it, and free weekends and vacations to go out and consume more?
In that case, you live like we can live. We have high standards of living, so we thought, why not take care for the high issues that are at stake? We can still avoid the worst-case-climate-change-scenarios for our next generation, if we consume less. Or perhaps better expressed: We can consume better, with more conciousnes. Not endlessly eating chips while binge watching on a couch, feeling unsatisfied, but more like enjoying a good, simple meal, cooked with love and care.
A solution on the Ya
What we do at Ya is simple and it works. We can easily and comfortably live and sail fossil free, by doing three things:
We use only what we need
We use only what we need
We use only what we need
So why don’t you do the same? It is a way, a trick, a simple attitude, and it works this way, starting with Refuse:
Refuse is the difficult one, but the Rethink is the fun part. Reduce is where the work begins, Reuse is often repair and remarket. Recycle is a lot of work and costs, but it prevents the real problem, which is the Responsibly Containment work. You can find a fairytale on it here.
Air conditioning is so… oldfashioned! (source picture: Guardian, the airconditioning trap)
Did you know that air conditioners and fridges create lots of greenhouse gases and also consume lots of energy? Drawdown ranks the cooling (mainly airco) as no. 1 in their list of over 100 projects having impact on stopping climate change.
Source: Drawdown (2017)
The market of cooling yourself down
In the United States the amount of electricity used to keep buildings cool is equal to what the whole continent of Africa uses, for everything. The Chinese offices using air cooling grew in 1 decade from 7 to 95%. They will beat the USA. (source: Drawdown, 2017)
Source: Drawdown (2017)A small airco unit cooling a single room consumes more power than four fridgesA central unit cooling an average house uses more power than 15 fridges (source: Guardian, costs of cooling)
“Last year in Beijing, during a heatwave, 50% of the power capacity was going to air conditioning,” says John Dulac, of the International Energy Agency (IEA). “These are ‘oh shit’ moments.”
There are just over 1 billion single-room air conditioning units in the world right now – about one for every seven people on earth. By 2050 there are likely to be more than 4.5 billion, making them as widespread as the mobile phone is today.
The scale of the impact to climate change
The International Energy Agency projects that as the rest of the world reaches similar levels, air conditioning will use about 13 percent of all electricity worldwide. It will also produce 2 billion tons of CO2 a year. This is about the same amount as India, the world’s third-largest polluter, emits today.
The HFCs (HydroFluorCarbons), the gas in the ‘cooling fluid’ of the cooling units, worsen the problem. According to the IEA, these emissions will increase to 7-19 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 if nothing is done to prevent this.(source: rolling stone, see below).
The scale of the impact to green house and global warming is getting immense.
The alternatives
Best is to rethink. First: to not use air conditioners. There are good alternatives. But in specific situations, you simply need good air conditioning. Systems based on the evaporation of water seem to be best. For example, Dutch Climate Systems makes “Icecube” which replaces airco units with radical energy savings and without harmful refrigerants.
Dutch ‘Icecube’ is a good alternative for the airco unit, creates zero HFCs and uses little energy.
The better alternatives
For cities the most low-tech solution is planting more trees. Architects rediscover nature and start designing with shade. They use sunlight, without direct sunlight that would heat a room. Also, they use natural windflows and use better building materials. Some find inspiration in termite mounds, beehives, and other things that exist in the wild.
Inspiring example of a sustainable building, including natural heating and cooling: the Energy Academy Europe in Groningen (Netherlands)
The best alternatives on Ya
Ya is fully insulated and this saves us an airco, even in the tropics.
If it is really hot, we splash water over our deck and over the solar panels to keep them cool. We invent more shaded places, have a swim.
And.. we use fans.
Old fashioned? Yes! Fans. Simple and effective!
Did you know that electric fans reduce demand for electricity by 30 times compared with traditional AC units? “if people under 65] were to switch from air conditioning to fan (…) this would yield a 59 percent reduction in global HFK emissions and a 9 percent reduction in global CO2 emissions.” (source Rolling Stone). Imagine the reduction can be even more if you use the super- efficient computer fans we use on Ya!
Switching on the fan pays out double: it saves the planet for your kids, and it is cool
