Avoidable CO2 emissions are emissions that can be reduced with practical technology or behavior changes. This archived piece uses heated swimming pools as an example and argues for solar pool heating as one way to reduce fossil-fuel energy use.
Heated Pools Can Use Significant Energy
What do you see when you look out at a gorgeous heated swimming pool at a posh resort or hotel? Do you see a source of Avoidable CO2 that is worsening climate change for all of us?
What do you see when you’re swimming laps in your high school, municipal or university heated swimming pool? Do you see the consequences of the pool’s production of Avoidable CO2 and its negative impact on climate change with super storms and rising sea levels along our coasts?
What do you see when you look at your own heated swimming pool or those of your friends and neighbors? If these pools do not include cost-effective Hybrid Solar Pool Heating, do you see that they’re producing Avoidable CO2 and helping change the climate and ruin the planet for everyone?
The critical distinction to see is that these pools produce Avoidable CO2. This Avoidable CO2 can be immediately and cost-effectively avoided by adding CO2 emissions-free heat from the sun with Hybrid Solar Pool Heating, the most cost-effective use of solar technology today.
If just this country’s 186,641 heated commercial pools were equipped with Hybrid Solar Pool Heating, the reduction in Avoidable CO2 emissions would be the equivalent of removing 6.63 million cars from our roads. So what do you see now?
Source: LiveGreenSwimWarm.org
Related: ways remote work can reduce transportation emissions.
Efficiency Should Come Before Oversized Heating Demand
Pool covers, temperature settings, efficient pumps and solar heating can all reduce energy use. The best approach depends on climate, pool size and how often the pool is used.
For more carbon-reduction ideas, see our everyday emissions-reduction coverage.
Conclusion
The broader lesson goes beyond swimming pools. When energy use can be avoided or supplied more efficiently, those changes can reduce both operating costs and emissions.
Original source attribution is preserved above.
