All About: Waste heat (CNN)

[jpak]

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/eco.about.heat/

There's no place like home -- especially when it comes to affecting the environment, it seems.

For all the bad mouthing we dish out to the auto and manufacturing industries for the foul pollutants they force us to breathe, a wealth of evidence is suggesting that we should be looking a little closer to home for the other villains of global warming.

It turns out that our homes gobble up 25 percent of the world's energy and are to thank for 19 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (that's 4,400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or CO2), according to a recent McKinsey report, "Curbing Global Energy Demand: The Energy Productivity Opportunity."

That figure is expected to reach 21 percent by 2020 if we carry on the way we are going. It could, of course get much higher, depending on how quickly the developing world adopts the same consumer-led lifestyle as the West. (India and China's emissions per capita, for example, are expected to double by 2020).

As it stands now, the U.S. residential sector is the largest single consumer of energy on Earth, with American homes spewing out 25 percent of global home-related greenhouse gas emissions. But by 2020, developing China -- which is currently emitting 18 percent -- will have surpassed the United States, says McKinsey, taking 26 percent of the world's share.

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[jwirr]

1. And this is an area of our lives that we can all do something about.

The wind is coming out of the west today and it is making my curtain move. I intend to put a blanket over that window this morning. Even something as small as that can make a difference.