To save energy has never been as easy as now: bet you

by Marzia Fialdini

Energy is valuable and we have to safeguard it. Within the domestic life, in everyday routine, we can reduce energy wastage through simple tricks, achieving consumption cut. On these bases, in 2009 was created Energy Neighbourhoods, a European initiative which put in competition hundreds of families in Ireland, England, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Germany and Belgium. They had to prove they were able to reduce energy consumption without investments or comfort loss.It’s the third edition of the initiative in France and several families living in Alpine regions have experienced an energetic consumption reduction by 8%: for example, switching off electronic devices or heating houses at no more than 19 degrees. During the six-months contest, participants received suitable technical support achieving an energy consumption reduction by 17% on average, saving 270 euros per family.

In Italy the initiative has been renamed Famiglie SalvaEnergia, and it’s spreading across several cities, in particular in the Genoa Province, in which it involves the municipalities of Lavagna, Serra Riccò and Arenzano in an energetic bet with their citizens. Groups of families engaged in reducing as much energy consumption as possible, in terms of electric and thermic consumption, just changing their habits and correcting their behaviors. From February to April, 2011, the Provincial Government committed itself to survey the event, and families achieved to reduce their consumption by 7%. FamiglieSalvaEnergia is one of the first standard actions promoted by the Province to its municipalities and has been included in every SEAP (Action Plan for Sustainable Energy) approved up to now. On December 1, the second edition of the initiative will start. The goal is saving by 9% of electricity bills, and has to be carried out between December 2011 and March 2012: the most virtuous families will be publicly awarded in May 2012.

The Genoa Province promoted the initiative after receiving a report on CO2 emissions on its territory: 45% of the emissions is due to buildings, and 60% of it comes from houses. Actually it’s possible to dramatically cut off CO2 emissions just changing our routine habits. Lowering by one degree the heating temperature or switching off stand-by pcs or televisions can enable to save energy, money and polluting emissions.

The three municipalities involved in the Famiglie SalvaEnergia program signed the “Patto dei Sindaci (Mayor’s Agreement)”, an EU’s initiative the accession to which is spontaneous. Signatories bind themselves to reduce by 20% by 2020 the CO2 emissions on their territories (main cause of the climate change), according to the EU policy.

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Prepariamoci! Luca Mercalli's new book

by Roberto Cavallo

Get ready!
With the exclamation mark.
My mother used to tell me this word, when we were waiting for a trip on the mountains.
Luca Mercalli’s invitation, which become an exhortation, doesn’t refer to that kind of mountain-trip feelings, rather to dark days which are waiting for us if we don’t exit the thick cultural fog that enshroud us.

Luca starts his book with ten commandments for the 21st century.The author has not became a mythomaniac but, like a kind of modern Spinoza, tries to be the nature’s spokesman. That nature we should obey to avoid our self-destruction.

Mercalli’s book is composed by two parts and an appendix. The first one is “What we should know”, in which author introduces us some concepts of sustainability, because, actually, “we should know”.

There are biographical references, at least fifty, for readers who are interested in deepening the concepts of intelligent mobility, good waste management and energy saving.

First part paves the way to the second one, Mercalli’s plan B, in which, reminding Lester Brown, accompanies us to choose daily-based behaviors that will help us to survive. Surviving does not mean relying on good luck but, Mercalli tries to convince us, means using the great knowledge potential got together in thousands of years of human history to change the course of our future.

The big surplus value of this book is that Mercalli’s plan B is not a theoretical formula or an academic research, rather an effective report about author’s deeply consistent way of life. He tells us how he installed solar panel for heating water and photovoltaic ones for electric energy, how he built up a big tank to collect raining water or how he got to optimize the energetic consumption of his old house.

His style is light and reading goes on like a pleasant chat in front of the fireplace. Personally I prefer a less-diplomatic Mercalli, like in that chapter in which he tells, with pleasure, how he destroyed with a big beetle his just-bought new house’s flower box. In the same time I can understand that he doesn’t want to receive libel actions as it happened in the past.

The book is fine and Mercalli is a rare consistent and careful man. Enjoy your reading and, quoting the author: let’s wake up and prepare!

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