Green Living: What is Embodied Energy?

If you are involved in green living and environmental activism, it's likely that you've encountered the concept of "embodied energy" at some point. To live a truly sustainable lifestyle, it is important that you understand what embodied energy is, and that you integrate your understanding of the concept into your day-to-day lifestyle.

As a conscientious consumer, I try to take a product's embodied energy into account, rather than just its "natural" origins or apparent sustainability.

What is Embodied Energy?

Red Dawn defines embodied energy as, "all of the energy invested in bringing a material to its final product, including transportation." A product's total embodied energy acts as an indirect method for measuring its carbon footprint and overall ecological impact. Products with greater levels of embodied energy require more energy-- in the form of fossil fuels, nuclear or even raw human labor-- than products with less embodied energy.

To fully consider a product's embodied energy, you must take into account all phases of its life cycle. This means considering the amount of energy required to extract its raw materials, manufacture the product, transport it, sell it, install it and eventually dispose of it.

What Does Embodied Energy Have to Do with Green Living?

Living green means reducing your carbon footprint to the greatest degree possible. In general, that also involves considering embodied energy when you are shopping for clothes, houses, cars and food. One important reason for eating local food is that it has less embodied energy than food grown in a different state-- or worse, a different continent. You might also choose to buy products packaged in lighter plastics, or choose glass over aluminum cans, for the same reason.

If you are conscientious of the embodied energy in products that you use or purchase, you will reduce your own use of carbon, energy, and human labor. As a result, your total ecological footprint will be smaller, and there will be more resources available for the rest of the world to share.

Products High and Low in Embodied Energy

Common materials involved in construction, packaging and food production involve varying levels of embodied energy. Green living enthusiasts might pick foods with low embodied energy levels-- such as local vegetables, cardboard-packaged grains and dried legumes-- over foods high in embodied energy, such as meats, products in aluminum cans, and highly processed TV dinners.

When selecting packaging materials, consider that glass has roughly half of the embodied energy in steel, one-fifth of the embodied energy in plastic, and one twelfth of the embodied energy in aluminum. Furthermore, some bioplastics actually require much more energy to manufacture than their synthetically-derived counterparts. Research packaging materials before choosing to use them on an ongoing basis.