As I am coming up on the end of my second week taking cold navy showers I am starting to get accustomed to the cold of the shower. However, as the temperature in the region begins to cool down I am noticing that I turn into essentially an icicle the second I step out of the shower. I have started to climb back under the blankets on my bed and spending around 10 minutes trying to heat up using my breath. I have also had to turn the heat on a little bit at the end of the shower or I begin to get slight hypothermia as my body temperature decreases. I decided to make this exception as I don't want to get myself sick or kill myself. But let's find out if freezing myself every morning actually affects the environment.
In this week's blog post I am determining if taking these cold navy showers is actually making an impact or if it is just a useless cause. In the US, water heaters amount to ~17% of a homes total energy consumption, consuming more than all other home appliances combined (1). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential energy consumption amounts to ~6.2% of all of the country's energy consumption (2) meaning that heating water in homes amounts to ~0.0036% of all energy consumption in the US. This may seem like a tiny number at first but because the US produced the equivalent of ~6,511 million metric tons of CO2 in 2016 (3) this would mean that heating water in homes produced the equivalent of ~23.5 million metric tons of CO2 alone.
The sticker above was found on the side of my water heater and it shows how many therms are used per year. To convert therms to kWh, simply multiply the number of therms (in this case the water heater uses 284 therms a year) and multiply that number by 29.3 (number of kWh in a therm) and then you get the kWh/year (in this case my water heater uses 8321.232 kWh/year) (4). If I take this number and divide it by the number of days in a year, 365, I get ~22.797 per day. This tank is an 80-gallon tank thus if I were to divide 22.797 by 80 I would get ~0.285 kWh per gallon. If I were to take a shower where the water is running for only a minute at a flow rate of the average 2.1, that would mean that I would only use ~0.5985 kWh per shower with my water heater.
I do know that the numbers above are only applicable to my water heater and that everyone's water heater can fluctuate very far from the numbers that I have thus making the assumption that everyone has the same water heater as I do would be very far from the truth. I also admit that in my second paragraph I made it seem that CO2 is the only emission, which is obviously wrong. I used the equivalent to CO2 emissions to show that if every emission was converted to the amount of CO2 to show the sheer amount of emissions and not what the emissions are exactly as there are way too many to show effectively.
(1) - energy.gov
(2) - eia.gov
(3) - epa.gov
(4) - metric-conversions.org
In this week's blog post I am determining if taking these cold navy showers is actually making an impact or if it is just a useless cause. In the US, water heaters amount to ~17% of a homes total energy consumption, consuming more than all other home appliances combined (1). According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential energy consumption amounts to ~6.2% of all of the country's energy consumption (2) meaning that heating water in homes amounts to ~0.0036% of all energy consumption in the US. This may seem like a tiny number at first but because the US produced the equivalent of ~6,511 million metric tons of CO2 in 2016 (3) this would mean that heating water in homes produced the equivalent of ~23.5 million metric tons of CO2 alone.
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| The sticker that shows the efficiency of the utility. |
The sticker above was found on the side of my water heater and it shows how many therms are used per year. To convert therms to kWh, simply multiply the number of therms (in this case the water heater uses 284 therms a year) and multiply that number by 29.3 (number of kWh in a therm) and then you get the kWh/year (in this case my water heater uses 8321.232 kWh/year) (4). If I take this number and divide it by the number of days in a year, 365, I get ~22.797 per day. This tank is an 80-gallon tank thus if I were to divide 22.797 by 80 I would get ~0.285 kWh per gallon. If I were to take a shower where the water is running for only a minute at a flow rate of the average 2.1, that would mean that I would only use ~0.5985 kWh per shower with my water heater.
I do know that the numbers above are only applicable to my water heater and that everyone's water heater can fluctuate very far from the numbers that I have thus making the assumption that everyone has the same water heater as I do would be very far from the truth. I also admit that in my second paragraph I made it seem that CO2 is the only emission, which is obviously wrong. I used the equivalent to CO2 emissions to show that if every emission was converted to the amount of CO2 to show the sheer amount of emissions and not what the emissions are exactly as there are way too many to show effectively.
(1) - energy.gov
(2) - eia.gov
(3) - epa.gov
(4) - metric-conversions.org
I love that you used a picture to show where the numbers your using come from, as well as give links. Maybe change your conclusion a little bit, I think your reasoning is a bit skewed as I dont all the CO2 in America comes from electricity.
ReplyDeleteThe numbers that I found for emissions are converted to how the other emissions compare to CO2 levels. I have not finished this blog post yet and was planning on putting this limitation into my limitations section.
DeleteThis is a really interesting topic, not only are you taking one minute showers but you are also taking them cold. This seems like it would be very environmentally friendly, although it does not sound like most relaxing or comfortable. You said you used 0.5985 kWh per shower, I was wondering how much you would use before you started this.
ReplyDeleteI agree with taking cold navy showers. They have tons of health benefits, as I read from this article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/derms-say-cold-showers-have-a-host-of-health-benefits%E2%80%A6if-you-can-stand-them/ar-AAzR3x2
ReplyDeleteCold navy showers increase activity in the brain, and reduce stress. Cold navy showers are not for everyone though; it's fascinating how you have strong endurance for going through it.