In order for us to survive daily life, or a lifetime, we and all living things consume energy in the form of food. We use that energy to sustain our bodily functions, fuel our thought and actions, and buffer the ever changing environmental situations we encounter. If you lived outside you would use great amounts of energy just staying warm and searching for more food.
All living things, vegetable or animal catch and store energy. They catch it, process it and store it. Plants in roots, Animals in Fat. Plants take up minerals and nutrients from the soil, process light and carbon dioxide in the leaves, and store sugars in the roots. This buffers the cycles of scarcity and plenty. Such as winter and summer, or dry and wet seasons.
As mammals, consume eat the stored energy of other life forms. We eat their stored energy. As homo-sapiens, we store our food outside our bodies. If we are lucky, pantries, refrigerators, root cellars, and store rooms are piled high with canned or frozen foods. Stored energy.
The stored energy comes from a yield. The results of our labor. Hopefully we work smart and create a yield that is lasting and sustainable. A well planned garden yields crops. A well planned education yields a profession which yields an income which affords (yield) us the money to buy other people yields. Hopefully we stored some of each.
If we store energy but do not regulate its consumption, we spend even more of our stored energy to replace what we "wasted". Self regulation and limiting our consumption will extend stored energy. The power of limits. If we accept or create limits, we create options for our future and extend energy that would otherwise be consumed. Limiting consumption means working less to replace used energy, working less to maintain depleted resources, having more to share with others and build capacity.
Ok, Here is the big one. Catch this if you can. Every Input to your life is a Limiting Factor. Anything you count on for existence diminishes you as it diminishes. Therefore, all inputs to your life should be used as much as possible to build capacity or less of a dependence on the input or renew the levels available.
For example. Petroleum production and discovery is past peak output and its availability is diminishing. If that input is limited and diminishing, all efforts should be made to use it as a resource for finding its replacement or a system which makes it less needed. If the energy from oil is used to build solar panels, essentially the oil energy used is "stored" in the panel and released with the sun as electricity. Oil's resource is caught and makes for increased capacity by converting it to a long term solution.
Another, education is costly and takes great resources. The increased capacity of the individual is vastly more valuable, over time, than the energy spent in his or her schooling. The resources or limiting factors of time, brain cells, the energy of youth and limited responsibilities dissipate as years pass and are converted to knowledge, wisdom, skills and experience.
Catching and storing energy in all its forms builds capacity and allows the option that comes with opportunity.
Permaculture Principles:
- CATCH AND STORE ENERGY
- OBTAIN A YIELD
- APPLY SELF REGULATION AND ACCEPT FEEDBACK
Read 70-108 P&PBS
Homework
Energy can be defined as anything that facilitates an action. Water, light, heat, time, effort... You can do this by a journal, Map or Image (See Example)
- Make a list of stored energies "fueling" your life (or your dog's life...).
- List the energies that you can catch and store
- What energies do you have to replenish?
- Are they renewable, limited, or regenerating.
- On your chosen design, connect each input to an output or resulting yields.
- Assets, Skills, Equity ($), or Leisure.
- Do you have to deplete your stores to function?
- The goal is to assess the yield received from the energy you expend.
- Example: Clothes Dryer, We cool our house in summer with A/C, draw the cool air into our dryer, heat it up again and blow it outside. This draws more hot air into the house via vents and leaks. In the Winter we draw humidified and heated air into the dryer, dehydrate our clothing and blow the humid air outside, drawing cold dry air into the house and then use a humidifier to raise the moisture. See attached chart. What can we do to reuse, store or reduce the lost energies? Can I get the same yield, dry clothes, some other way?
- Observe patterns of lost energies or resources
- Read the PDFs.
- Continue with our course book:
Read 70-108+ HOLMGREN, Permaculture Book
Fieldwork
If possible at work or at home, see vulnerabilities from the lack of stored energy. Stored energy could be food, water, heat, cold, resources or access. Is electricity stored if the power goes out? How many days could you be stranded in your place? Stored energy increases your capacity to buffer change. It also buffers the cycles of plenty and scarcity.
- If you can, find a number of sources of stored energy.
- In addition to the toilet tank and batteries.
- List all the examples you can find.
- Ever played Boggle? Your list will be checked against others.
- Who will have the most obscure, hidden or forgotten sources of stored energy?
- Also. how many ways can something be used before its passed along?
- Where could energy be stored or conserved?
