My story - Tim Forcey
Though I trained as a chemical engineer and always worked to improve the energy-efficiency of industrial technology, these days I’m a self-employed home comfort and energy advisor. By now I’ve been in thousands of Melbourne homes, helping people to be more comfortable in winter and summer, to improve household health and safety, and to reduce energy bills along with climate environmental impacts.
In addition to helping people understand the benefits of, for example, insulation, draught-proofing, moisture management and solar panels, what my present job also means is helping Australians to get their homes off gas: heating their homes with reverse-cycle air conditioners, heating their water with heat pumps, and cooking with no gas.
Which is rather ironic, considering I migrated to Australia decades ago to work in the gas industry. But now I tell people “don’t use the stuff” - because you have cheaper and cleaner options.
As a chemical engineer, I was trained to look at worst-case-scenarios and to avoid run-away chemical reactions that might blow up a plastics plant or oil refinery. People might be killed. Not good.
So what are we doing with our Earth? We’ve set off a run-away chemical and physical reaction that in the worst case leads to the next mass extinction event. Also not good, those mass extinction events.
Once I became climate-emergency-aware, and after a couple years of trying to effect change as they say “from within”, I left the oil and gas industry and chanced upon the opportunity to act as a casual researcher at the University of Melbourne Energy Institute. Amongst other things, in 2015 we were the first to point out that people could heat their homes with reverse-cycle air conditioner technology (heat pumps) for far less than one can heat by burning fossil gas – and with far less societal and climate impact.
Here was a good news story and something positive I could continue to do: inform people about the benefits of getting their homes off gas. Today I publish articles and also spread the word house by house.
But there are a lot of houses out there! So as suggested by my kids, I also founded the popular Facebook group “My Efficient Electric Home” which by the time you read this will be at over 90,000 members with 1,000 new members joining each week. This has been very rewarding, watching the way that total strangers are happy to assist each other to improve nearly every aspect of their homes.
It's also rewarding to now assist Electrify Boroondara in even a small way as the electrification /de-gasification movement takes off in communities around Australia.
Tim’s My efficient electric home (MEEH) facebook group allows followers to post questions, talk with others and search topics.
