Carbon Cops

Carbon Cops is a new show on the ABC at 8pm on Tuesdays. I thought it might be too similar to SBS’s Eco-House Challenge, but it has a different format, more like “Green Eye for the Carbon Guy” than the long-term challenge of the SBS show. The show sends in two “Carbon Cops” to audit a family’s energy use, help them make their house more efficient, then challenge them to cut their carbon emissions by 50%.

This week’s family, the Barries, thought their emissions would be average, or better than average, but found out that they create more than 4 times the emissions from an average Australian family. They switched their lights, made their fans more efficient, used a compost bin instead of the “insinkerator” (what the kids call the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink), walked to school and shopped locally. I thought the father didn’t change much of his lifestyle – I would have liked them to recommend teleconferencing or video-conferencing to him. But maybe his job wouldn’t allow it.

They found they weren’t going to meet their challenge target because of the father’s previous air-travel – but they got around this by using carbon offsets for his travel and car. I’m a little concerned that they just bought their way out of that problem, but it would have been a disappointing show if they hadn’t met their targets! They also switched to GreenPower, which is a great move. At the end of the show little graphs show the reductions of emissions and the money savings.

I thought the show was more serious than Eco-House Challenge, possibly because they don’t show the personalities of the family since there’s a new one each week. If that’s the case, maybe the presenters will grow on the audience. The website is pretty good, with fact-sheets for each episode, a carbon-emissions calculator, a quiz and summaries of each episode.