Energy and your Environment
Discussion: You may help students get started on the Community Connection by discussing the environmental effects that are experienced locally.
Page 5: Everybody Needs Energy
Discussion Tips for Is It Fair?
If you have students who have lived in other countries, ask them to compare the ways that people use energy in the two countries.
Page 6: Paying the Price for Our Energy Use
Answers to How Many Hours . . .?
• It would take 400 hours at $5/hour to pay a $2000 energy bill. This would take 10 work weeks, or about 22% of a work year.
• Ideas for reducing the country's energy bill may include: encouraging alternatives to automobile use, improving vehicle fuel efficiency, increasing demand for recycled products, improving insulation in buildings, encouraging people to buy things that require little transportation, processing and packaging, etc.
Page 7: Living in a Global Greenhouse
Answer to Make a Mini Greenhouse
• The ice in the covered bottle should have melted faster. Students should explain that the plastic wrap holds in heat just as the clear greenhouse gases trap the Earth's heat.
Extension: The problem is not that greenhouse gases exist but that their concentrations have increased due to human activities. Discuss what life would be like if there were no greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Without greenhouse gases the Earth would have an average temperature of -18ºC, instead of the current 15ºC.)
Page 8: Energy Efficiency
Sample calculations for problems
Refrigerators:
• At 9¢/kWh, the savings would be: (1807 kWh - 734 kWh) x 9¢/kWh =$96.57
Automobiles:
• Yearly gallons of gas for average hybrid vehicle = 15,000 miles/year x 1 gallon/44 miles = approx. 341 gallons/year.
• Yearly gallons of gas for average midsize car = 15,000 miles/year x 1 gallon/18 miles = approx. 833 gallons/year.
• Savings in gallons = 833 – 341 = 492 gallons. Dollar savings with gasoline at $3/gallon = $1,476.00.
Page 9: Conserving Energy at Home
Discussion Tip:
Ask students to discuss in groups how they tried to change their families' energy consumption patterns, and how their families responded to these efforts.
Bonus question answers:
Transportation changes would conserve fossil fuel use. Lighting and appliance and some water use changes would reduce electricity use, and natural gas use in the case of gas dryers. Heating, shower and water heater changes would reduce natural gas, fuel oil, or electricity use depending on the type of fuel used.