THIS IS A STORY about dodgy statistics. It is intended more as a cautionary than a moral tale so you will find no villains or heroes in it. Though interesting, the issue itself is secondary. Being neither a statistician nor an engineer, I may in what follows make blunders of my own: but my purpose is not to initiate you into the mysteries of energy conservation but to offer a real-life example of how a dud fact can enter the national mind with no valid passport and no real corroborating paperwork.
Some of us are sure we saw or heard of a claim by the Chancellor, in April, that “up to 10 per cent of the electricity supply” is being wasted on electrical appliances left on “standby”. I thought I heard this on a BBC radio news report. A colleague on The Daily Telegraph thinks it must have been a press briefing that led him to report on April 20 that “the Chancellor will be addressing the UN on the need for international co-operation to protect the environment. He intends to highlight the ‘huge waste’ from consumer goods left on standby — about 10 per cent of the electricity supply”.
The Evening Standard reported likewise. Gordon Brown flew off to speak in New York: “Consumer goods left on standby worldwide are responsible for 1 per cent of global emissions.”
That is, of course, a very different claim, which Mr Brown’s civil servants say is partly based on an academic study in California. Of which more later.
As for the 10 per cent claim, the Treasury informs me (in so many words) that if it isn’t true then Gordon Brown didn’t say it, we must have misheard, and even if he did, it would be somebody else’s fault — probably another department, so why don’t I talk to them? Funny how civil servants begin to resemble their masters.
Meanwhile, it’s fair to say that the startling “approximately 10 per cent” figure has entered the public imagination. Everyone I ask has noted claims about the wastefulness of appliances in standby mode. Politicians — who have to be communicators — need striking killer facts, and Westminster has embraced this one with a passion. Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Environment spokesman, has been asking parliamentary questions about it, and so has Baroness Perry of Southwark. There have been many newspaper reports: “Energy waste soars as we fill our homes with gadgets” said the headline in the Daily Express.
Ministers love nothing better than a simple, graphic certainty. And so it was that last week Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, in a statement to Parliament on the energy review, declared: “Mr Speaker, it is estimated that leaving electric appliances on standby uses about 7 per cent of all electricity generated in the UK. So we will work with industry . . . to phase out inefficient goods limiting the amount of standby energy wasted.”
“About 7 per cent?” A new figure? Or is that “about 10 per cent”? More importantly, where did the phrase “all electricity generated in the UK” come from? We need not bother ourselves with this mystery because a written correction came fast from Mr Darling: “Further to my statement to the House on Tuesday July 11, it has come to light that the statistics quoted on electricity appliances on standby should have referred to 8 per cent of electricity used in the home, not 7 per cent of the electricity generated in the United Kingdom.” This erratum slip reduced the estimate for wasted power to less than half the earlier figure — but, hey-ho, what’s a few hundred gigawatts between friends?
Friends of the Earth took a similarly cheerful attitude when I rang them.“In a way it doesn’t really matter. In the meantime the Government should act.” I rather warmed to that: at least it was honest, and made the not un- reasonable point that whatever the figures, there’s a hell of a lot of electricity being wasted in lots of ways you might not have thought about.
Nevertheless, in the belief that the facts do still matter a bit, I tried to find out where all these figures were coming from. First I was directed to A Worldwide Review of Standby Power Use in Homes, conducted for the US Government by Alan K. Meier of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s energy analysis department. This is an old paper, published in 2000. It is carefully couched. It does not support the certitudes expressed by ministers or journalists. Dr Meier’s report estimates that “between 3 per cent and 12 per cent of electrical power is being wasted on standby”.
The guess is based on surveys in 22 countries. The United Kingdom has almost the best record of all of them: a fraction of the wastage in the United States or New Zealand. But in Britain only 32 homes were surveyed. There must (I thought) be a better basis for ministers’ claims than a 20th-century survey of 32 houses. I inquired further and was led by the exceptionally helpful Institution of Engineering and Technology to a report, The Rise of the Machines, from the government-sponsored Energy Savings Trust. This document estimates that the figures for standby wastage “range from 3 to 10 per cent of residential electricity use”.
But from where do such estimates come? I am redirected again, this time to a baby of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, named Market Transformation Programme. Its Report BNXS 36 is headed Estimated UK Standby Electricity Consumption in 2004.
Here at last are hard figures — or what seem to be. 9.2 terawatt-hours wasted per annum: about 360kWh per household, 8 per cent of domestic electricity consumption, costing about £27.50 per household.
In other words, about £10 from each of us. You could recoup that by replacing one 100w tungsten light bulb with a low-energy equivalent (though in winter an appliance on standby is slightly helping to reduce your heating bill). Curiously, the MTP’s 9.2 terawatt global figure includes commercial, retail, hotel and office use. To divide this by the number of private households seems misleading — if that is indeed what they’ve done.
Have they? I put a call in to the Defra press office, who promise someone will come back to me — but nobody does. Finally they re-send me the EST report — with a press release saying the figure is 10 per cent. Better tell Mr Darling, whose 8 per cent figure comes from the MTP report. But where, in turn, did the MTP folk find their figures? My eye moves to the references quoted at the end of the report.
And what’s this? Alan K Meier again: that old 2000 study. So I make one final dive into what is turning into our rather flimsy Holy Grail.
Near the end of Meier’s report I spot this: “Estimates of standby power use and savings opportunities are based on just a few, scattered measurement studies . . . (they are) inadequate. More complete information is needed to answer these questions:
Meier is asking these questions! Everyone else is pointing to him as the man who answers them.
The truth is plain. Nobody has the least idea. All we do know amounts simply to this: that some small energy savings are available from switching some appliances right off.
At the start of the Iraq war, Jack Straw, then the Foreign Secretary, announced that Iraq was more than twice the size of France. Soon everyone was repeating this. Actually Iraq is smaller than France. But why fret? Journalists and politicians bring you the essential not the literal truth. The essential truth is that you must remember to unplug your mobile phone charger; and Iraq is awfully big.
