a) 10 watts
b) 25 watts
c) 60 watts
Answers:
1. Which laundry method saves more energy?
b) washing with cold water instead of hot water
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July showed that most people surveyed got this question wrong. The study found that "participants underestimated energy use and savings by a factor of 2.8 on average, with small overestimates for low-energy activities and large underestimates for high-energy activities."
2. For every two minutes a car idles, it uses the same amount of fuel it takes to drive
c) a mile
The California Energy Commission's Consumer Energy Center offers this rule of thumb: "If you're in a drive-through restaurant/business line or waiting for someone and you'll be parked and sitting for 10 seconds or longer, turn off your car's engine. For every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it takes to go about one mile."
3. Stand-by power – energy consumed by appliances turned off but plugged in – accounts for how much of all US residential energy use?
c) 5 percent
The California Energy Commission notes that stand-by power consumes 5 percent of residential energy use in the US, and can cost the homeowner hundreds of dollars a year. "Don't think that just because you have a gas range it doesn't consume electricity. Many gas appliances have electronic transfomers and microchips and are being manufactured with electronic features such as digital clock displays, LEDs and soft-touch buttons," notes the commission's Consumer Energy Center.
What is the biggest expense on your utility bill?
b) heating
5. How much land would be needed to replace all of the world’s current use of fossil fuels with biofuels such as wood, charcoal, ethanol, and biodiesel?
b) 4.8 million square miles (equal to the area of the US and India combined)
Vaclav Smil, an energy scientist at the University of Manitoba, explains that renewable energy sources will create energy sprawl because they require more land area to produce than fossil fuels do. All of the oil wells, strip mines, refineries, and pipelines needed to extract fossil fuels worldwide cover an area the size of Belgium, says Smil. That sounds big until you consider the alternative. Electricity-producing solar cells provide about a tenth as much energy per acre as fossil fuel extraction does. Wind farms produce 1/30th to 1/100th the energy per acre. And biofuels like corn ethanol fare even worse: from 1/300th to 1/1000th the energy per acre. Even if you use the entire US corn crop for ethanol, declares Smil, “you would supply 13 percent of [US] gasoline.”
6. Turning off your car engine and restarting it uses as much gas as about the equivalent of
a) 10 seconds of idling
"Idling gets zero miles per gallon," says the California Energy Commission. "Idling for 1 hour burns nearly 1 gallon of gasoline."
7. Which nation is the top foreign supplier of oil to the US?
a) Canada
A Zogby Associates poll in 2009 showed that just 13 percent of Americans surveyed correctly identified Canada as the top foreign oil supplier to the US. Almost 50 percent believed the US imports 50 percent of its oil from Saudi Arabia, but only about 16 percent of US oil imports come from Persian Gulf countries.
8. Which of these countries has the lowest energy consumption per capita?
b) United States
The World Resource Institute reports that 2005 data indicates Qatar has the world's highest annual per capita use of energy with 19,466 kilograms of oil equivalent (kgoe) per person. The US per capita usage is 7,886 kgoe; Iceland's is 12,209 kgoe; and Trinidad and Tobago's is 9,736.
9. A CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) that produces the same amount of light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb will use only about:
b) 25 watts
The website cflfacts.com says: "A CFL that provides the same light as a 100-watt incandescent lamp will use only about 25 watts."
