The Water-Carbon Emissions Connection

An awesome article came out on 12News the other day about the City of Surprise’s new program that aims to fix water leaks.

Living in Tucson (or the desert southwest), we are all very familiar with the perennial concern about water inventories and supplies. For some, it is a point of pride that Tucson uses more water friendly landscapes as opposed to metros in the Phoenix area that appear to use water demanding features (like grass and ponds).

The City of Surprise was reaching the end of their rope and came up with what I estimate is a brilliant plan- new water usage technology that they used to monitor for, find, and fix- water leaks.

In a short period of time they managed to find over 11,000 water leaks:

“Over 11,000 Surprise leaks found thanks to new water tech”

https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/water-wars/water-leak-finder-bills-surprise-drought/75-74564aac-c81f-4fd3-8cca-84e96fe6ff44

That is a phenomenal good impact on the water usage for Surprise…

And it is a good idea that can be spread to other water districts, and I hope it does.

More-

Homes have a lot of ‘electrical leaks’ too.

How many appliances could be (should be?) turned off when leaving the home or not using them? How many should be unplugged when not in use?

For every bit of power that goes into a computer that sits in sleep mode instead of being turned off- there are unnecessary carbon emissions being produced…

Sure, that amount might not be so big as to cause the electric bill to be overly impacted but- across the country (world?) I wonder how much this would all add up to?

The weird thing is- I am lazy and suspect many people are just like me… I usually don’t think to unplug my tv so it sits 24/7 in standby mode waiting for me to hit the remote button so it can snap into operation.

If I don’t have solar power for my home, I am not only wasting the oil/gas/coal burned to make that energy- I am also contributing to the carbon emissions caused by burning that oil/gas/coal.

If I do have solar power for my home, I am sparing the natural resource of oil/gas/coal for one and for two I am not contributing those emissions…

Food for thought.

If you are looking into solar power for your home or business, I am writing a book that aims to reveal everything a Tucson home or business owner might need to know before talking to a solar sales company. If that sounds interesting…

Click here to get notified when I release Tucson Solar Insider Desk Guide for Buying Solar.

Be Good!

Curtis