Singapore Peak Oil

Over an in-house lunch at the office, our R&D team’s Chief Architect spoke at length about biofuels, and how it is going to turn out to be a choice between feeding people or feeding cars – a topic I have blogged on earlier. My colleague and senior, a System Architect, proffered his opinion that biofuels are nothing but a gimmick. I noted that we burn up in fossil fuels the equivalent of 400 years of global plant and animal growth each and every year, so it’s not like biodiesel can help much.

My boss, VP Software Engineering, and the Chief Architect, then talked about the storage and range problems associated with using hydrogen as a fuel (or rather, as an energy carrier, as peakoilers will point out). A fellow colleague chimed in with his observation that there is a hydrogen fueling station at East Coast and how it seemed to have been built just for one particular “million-dollar Mercedes” seen zipping around the area.

I’m not quite sure how the discussion came about though. Perhaps it was the sight of the amount of catered food (KFC and Pizza Hut) on the conference table, and how someone remarked how we shouldn’t waste it as we had apparently ordered a bit more than needed. But it’s interesting to see how awareness of energy issues is making its way into the company. And these folks are alpha geeks – the smartest people in the room, in fact some of the smartest people I have ever worked with. They are probably a couple of notches down on the “doomerosity scale” but that’s fine by me; there are no economists in the room.

Elsewhere, in the parent company, it is also apparent that there is an increasing level of corporate awareness of energy issues. The current edition of the company newsletter has an article on the front page about alternative commuting options such as vanpools, carpools, bus services and even cycling to work. An employee comments enthusiastically about a work-related advantage : “I drive in with eight people who work on the F-22, and it keeps me in touch with what’s happening …”

So, how does your company fare on the energy awareness scale? How about your colleagues, on a personal level? Are you the resident peakoiler in your company or department? Has the corporate HQ shown any awareness or taken any action in this regard?

It’s official.

Electricity tariffs will go up by an average of 2.3 percent or 0.49 cents per KWh (kilo-watt hour) between October 1 and December 31 this year.

If you care to check out Singapore Power’s website for the details on the tariff hikes, you might see that it went up 3.04¢ per kWh (+18.4%) in 2005 while in 2006, it’s an annual increase of 2.07¢ (10.6%).

Even though the increase has slowed, I believe consumers in Singapore can do certain things to offset their increased expenditure in this area.

Conservation.

Personally, I’ve started switching off home appliances (with standby modes) at the source for about 2 months now. Overall, I’ve gotten a savings of 7% so far. This month, I’m starting to cut down my usage of airconditioning, replacing its use with electric fans. From this, I should see a further 15% reduction in my electrical bills.

And, this is not because I cannot afford my bills.

But rather, I feel people should starting thinking about how they are spending their money. If you look at the economics of this situation, not curbing your usage will send the signal to our commercial power producers that their product is price inelastic, meaning, they can still increase prices without an impact on revenues, and hence profits. Remember, unlike our public transport whose rates are regulated by the PTC, our now-commercial power sector does not have such controls or transparencies.

Normally, if these companies are losing their pants selling subsidised power to me, I would just shut up and pay up. But the fact is that these power companies are reaping more profits than ever (I’m only up to 2005 with their annual reports). So, in spite of how it is preached to me that “fuel cost make up 55% of the cost of electricity”, it is financially straightforward to see how these tariff hikes will ultimately improve profits.

All’s fair and square in economics.

If you feel this continued trend of tariff hikes is ‘ok’, go on and continue to pay your bills.

If you don’t like it, start conserving. Imagine, if we’re all to switch off our standby-mode appliances alone, power producers will see a 7% drop in their retail revenues. This will send a strong signal to them that electricity tariffs is not that inelastic afterall. And, they will think harder about pricing when the next quarter comes.

Besides, it’s good for the environment

Wow, I didn’t realised I made the last post to this blog exactly one month ago, and for that matter, it wasn’t even my own writing! I took a much needed break from too much Peak Oil talk – taking good advice from Matt Savinar, himself only thinking and writing about PO once a week.

A month has passed but I’ve been busy changing my lifestyle. The focus of which is to lower my personal carbon emission.

Turning Off Appliances
First off, I started to practice of switching off home appliances at the source, leaving all of them totally off, not on some standby mode. I do this when I’m out to work or off to sleep. I did this for 2 months and got a savings of 7.5% off my electricity bills.

At work, I rolled out a similar exercise for colleagues to turn off everything after work and over weekends. The savings are similar but due to the bigger bill, we were able to give a couple of hundred dollars less to Singapore Power.

Less Airconditioning

Riding on this little victory, I decided to tackle the biggest guzzler of electricity at my household – airconditioning. For about 10 days now, I’ve stopped using airconditioning when I work at night. In it’s place are two 38W fans that circulates fresh air into my study for an average of 3-4 hours a night. I did a little math and found that in a month, I might save up to $80 per month doing this.

Carbon-Free Day (for the car)

I’ve set Saturday as the day we don’t drive the car. Mathematically, it’s a 1/7 savings on fuel, but given that we drive more on Saturdays, I would say it could be as high as 25%.

Walk It If You Can

I recently reorganised my songs on my iPod into various lists and started to take them wherever I go. That way, I have ‘good excuse’ to take a walk instead of the usual 2-stop train ride. It’s a little time consuming but I’ve got lots of that to spare on weekends.

Riding to Work

I just started this today. The usual 8-minute commute is now a 20-minute bicycle ride. Because I perspire so much, I can only do it on days I don’t meet my clients.

Lower-Power Servers

I just realised that my Dell rack servers are 350-500W machines. And the Mac Mini just takes in 100W at peak. Starting next month, we will be swapping out those racks and moving the Mac Mini’s in. A nice little surprise is that because the Mini’s are so small and quiet, we might not even need to house them in a room that airconditioned 24×7. This saves us even more energy.