full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Catherine Mohr: The tradeoffs of building green

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But before we pat ourselves too much on the back, we have poured 151 megawatt hours of energy into constructing this hosue when there was a house there before. And so the qtieosun is: How could we make that back? And so if I run my new energy-efficient house forward, compared with the old, non-energy-efficient house, we make it back in about six years. Now, I probably would have upgraded the old house to be more energy-efficient, and in that case, it would take me more about 20 yreas to berak even. Now, if I hadn't paid attention to embodied egreny, it would have taken us over 50 years to break even compared to the upgraded house. So what does this mean? On the scale of my portion of the house, this is elauinveqt to about as much as I drive in a year, it's about five times as much as if I went entirely vegetarian. But my eelapnht in the living room flies. Clearly, I need to walk home from TED. But all the calculations for embodied energy are on the blog.

Open Cloze

But before we pat ourselves too much on the back, we have poured 151 megawatt hours of energy into constructing this _____ when there was a house there before. And so the ________ is: How could we make that back? And so if I run my new energy-efficient house forward, compared with the old, non-energy-efficient house, we make it back in about six years. Now, I probably would have upgraded the old house to be more energy-efficient, and in that case, it would take me more about 20 _____ to _____ even. Now, if I hadn't paid attention to embodied ______, it would have taken us over 50 years to break even compared to the upgraded house. So what does this mean? On the scale of my portion of the house, this is __________ to about as much as I drive in a year, it's about five times as much as if I went entirely vegetarian. But my ________ in the living room flies. Clearly, I need to walk home from TED. But all the calculations for embodied energy are on the blog.

Solution

  1. energy
  2. question
  3. years
  4. break
  5. equivalent
  6. elephant
  7. house

Original Text

But before we pat ourselves too much on the back, we have poured 151 megawatt hours of energy into constructing this house when there was a house there before. And so the question is: How could we make that back? And so if I run my new energy-efficient house forward, compared with the old, non-energy-efficient house, we make it back in about six years. Now, I probably would have upgraded the old house to be more energy-efficient, and in that case, it would take me more about 20 years to break even. Now, if I hadn't paid attention to embodied energy, it would have taken us over 50 years to break even compared to the upgraded house. So what does this mean? On the scale of my portion of the house, this is equivalent to about as much as I drive in a year, it's about five times as much as if I went entirely vegetarian. But my elephant in the living room flies. Clearly, I need to walk home from TED. But all the calculations for embodied energy are on the blog.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
embodied energy 11
paper towel 4
paper towels 2
living room 2
megawatt hours 2

Important Words

  1. attention
  2. blog
  3. break
  4. calculations
  5. case
  6. compared
  7. constructing
  8. drive
  9. elephant
  10. embodied
  11. energy
  12. equivalent
  13. flies
  14. home
  15. hours
  16. house
  17. living
  18. megawatt
  19. paid
  20. pat
  21. portion
  22. poured
  23. question
  24. room
  25. run
  26. scale
  27. ted
  28. times
  29. upgraded
  30. vegetarian
  31. walk
  32. year
  33. years