Our worst import from the USA

No doubt, I will be labelled as a Scrooge for saying this but, running the completely-overblown Trick or Treat hysteria surrounding Halloween into a very close second place, this is the ludicrous practice of covering your house and garden with lights at Christmas. For this reason alone, carbon taxes would be a good idea if they would stop people from indulging in such a pointless competition with their neighbours to see who can put on the best display. But hang on a minute, energy prices are already at record-breaking levels, so why on Earth do people think that this is a sensible way to waste money? Clearly none of them has a smart energy meter in their house. If they did, they would turn the lights off. Such people clearly have money to burn. Indeed why not just do that, why not use your money to blow smoke up your chimney? (You could even argue this was mitigating climate change by generating particulates that contribute to global dimming) OK, so there may well be low energy versions out there such as Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) but what proportion of Christmas Lights are still old-fashioned types? Some strings of lightbulbs (especially those used to light up large trees) can easily use in excess of 100 watts. So let’s do some maths and see just how much energy we could be wasting: To start with, let’s assume there are 25 million households in the UK but, not everyone does or can put lights up; and for those that do the number of light fittings will vary. Bearing all of that in mind, and allowing for the fact that not everyone will be using LEDs – or even put any lights up at all – this might still average out as 4 light fittings consuming an average of 40 Watts on 25 million properties, which is 4 x 40 x 25 million = 4000 Megawatts. This is equivalent to the maximum output of Europe’s largest coal-fired power station, and its biggest single point source of carbon dioxide emissions, at Drax in North Yorkshire. Even if you don’t care about (or wish to deny) the environmental damage you are doing, if you want to see how much money you are wasting, please visit: http://www.christmaslightsanddecorations.com/energy-cost-calculator.aspx In the meantime, please consider that, outdoor festive lighting may well be the biggest single source of overall holiday energy demand; and it is completely unnecessary.

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