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I’m a small box, often coloured white or cream, I am normally stuck onto a wall and I often have numbers or a dial on me, what am I?
I’m a room thermostat. I’m not meaning to be arrogant but I think I’m quite clever, I can sense air temperature and then send messages to your heating system; and if you turn me down I can save both carbon emissions and money.
Can you have a hunt around your home for your room thermostat? When you’ve found it – ask your parent/carer if they can show you how it works.
Your challenge this week is to turn your thermostat down by 1 degree. You might need to wear an extra jumper, pop on a woolly hat or wear socks in bed – but you’ll be helping to combat climate change. Reducing your thermostat will mean that your heating system is not having to work so hard, and so is not using so much fossil fuel energy.
STOP…PRESS…If each Young Climate Warrior household turned down their thermostat by 1 degree, for a year, your Young Climate Warrior team would have saved carbon emissions equivalent to taking 225 flights from London to New York. Go on, give it a go!
HIT THE RED BUTTON when you have turned down your thermostat by 1 degree.
How we heat our homes is going to have to change. Over 85% of UK homes are heated by natural gas – a fossil fuel.
New technologies like smart meters are helping us to heat our homes only when needed. Completely new ways of heating our homes are being developed – such as ground source and air source heat pumps, hydrogen heating, heat networks and bio-mass and bio-gas boilers. Insulation is improving, enabling us to reduce our heating requirements – within walls, on walls, in ceilings and integrated into glass. New homes are now being designed as ‘zero carbon’ or ‘low carbon’ - they are positioned and designed to make the most of the sun’s energy – trapping heat from the sun and then storing it until it is required. How we de-carbonise heating our homes is one of the toughest climate change challenges for scientists and policy makers.
Watch this space – as you grow up there will be all sorts of new inventions to help us change how we heat our homes – as a Young Climate Warrior, maybe you’ll become a scientist or engineer who helps do this!
Please remember to HIT THE RED BUTTON when you have turned down your thermostat by 1 degree.
