Okay so for those of you who are skeptics and want to brand me a tree hugger or a pansy or an Al Gore zombie- whatever it is that comes to mind, how about you keep your mind open and look at it this way.
Maybe you still live at home with your parents and don't have to pay the bills. That could very well keep you ignorant if you don't believe about Global Warming. If this is the case, you'll have to be on your own eventually and it might help to start a life on your own with this in mind.
What I'll be talking about is an article I read in Real Simpe called Power Saving in your home so that not only are you helping with the enviornment, you're saving yourself a lot of money year round on the electricity bill. With a little commonsense conservation, average homeowners can cut their power bills by up to 30 percent. Coal-burning electric plants, which emit carbon dioxide (a building block of greenhouse gases), still supply most of the power used to heat, cool, and light your home, wash and dry your clothes, refrigerate your food, and run your TV, DVD, and laptop. But, luckily, conserving energy can happen with the flick of a switch.
HEATING AND COOLING
1) Programme your thermostat to turn heat down or air-conditioning up when you're out. If your furnace is more than 10 to 15 years old, or your boiler is more than 20 years old, replace with a model approved by the federal government's Energy Star programme (marked by rating stickers in stores). It will pay for itself in energy savings in 5 to 10 years.
2) Seal your house: Close the fireplace damper; install a timer (available in hardware stores) on the bathroom exhaust fan; seal ductwork.
3) Cool your home naturally: Open windows on cool summer nights. Use energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs (they emit less heat). Hang washing out to dry, and grill food outside. Install window awnings. Plant deciduous trees on the east and west to shade your house and cool it by as much as 20 degrees.
4) Install an Energy-Star-certified ceiling fan (50 percent more efficient than others) and comfortably keep your home four degrees warmer in the summer.
5) Consider switching to a natural-gas water heater (which uses less than half the energy of an electric one), and turn the setting down to 120 degrees.
Potential Savings: About $500 a year.
Green Point: If one household in 10 bought Energy Star-rated heating and cooling equipment, the change in greenhouse-gas emissions would be equivalent to taking 1.5 million cars off the road.
LIGHTING
1) Replace regular incandescent bulbs and fixtures with Energy Star-qualified compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), available at most hardware stores. CFLs cast a warmer glow than the cold, harsh fluoros of old. They cost more than regular bulbs, but they use 70 percent less energy, last much longer (10,000 hours, compared with 750), and look just as good.
2) Use task lighting. (You wouldn't refrigerate the whole house to keep your food cold, would you?) One exception: If you have a torchere-style halogen lamp anywhere, get rid of it. It probably runs 300-watt bulb and heats up to about 970 degrees.
3) Install dimmers on all bulbs to save energy and extend their life. Timers work well for front-door and security-related lights; sensors, which turn on lights only when needed, are ideal for oudoors. Solar-powered outdoor lights (www.solarilluminations.com has a wide selection) are an energy-free option.
4) Don't underestimate the power of daylight. Use skylights and well-placed mirrors to reflect natural light and help reduce lighting costs.
Potential Savings: At least $90 a year.
Green Point: If every American home swapped just five incandescent bulb fixtures for Energy Star CFLs, it would keep 1 trillion pounds of greenhouse gases out of the air and save $6.5 billion in energy costs.
HOME ELECTRONICS
1) Unplug DVD players and TVs, or plug them all into a power strip you can switch off. Sixty to eighty percent of the electricity they use is consumed while they're idle, powering light displays and "instant on" features.
2) Unplug "wall warts," or plugs attached to a black transformer box (like a cell-phone charger). If they are plugged into an outlet, they are sucking up electricity whether charging another device or not.
3) Ideally, unplug or turn off your computer when it's not in use. If you can't do this, use its power-saving sleep mode, which uses sixty to eighty percent less energy than full-power mode. Visit www.energystar.gov to learn how to activate your computer's power-saving mode or to download free software that enables these options on computers that don't have them. At the very least, turn your monitor off instead of using a screensaver.
4) Turn off printers, copiers, and fax machines when they're not in use. Don't rely on sleep mode.
Potential Savings: As much as $175 a year.
Green Point: Using power management on your desktop computer could save 900 kilowatt-hours a year. That amounts to 1500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of driving a medium-size car from New York to Salt Lake City.
APPLIANCES
1) Replace an old refrigerator. One made before 1993 could be costing $140 a year in electricity. Even refrigerators built between 1993 and 2001 cost about $60 a year to run. A new Energy Star-rated model runs on about $20 worth of electricity. A new $600 refrigerator will last for decades and could pay for itself in less than five years. For efficient chilling, keep the refrigerator full, remove things stored on top of it, and clean the condenser coils annually.
2)Replace a top-loading washing machine to a front-loader, which generally uses 50 percent less energy and a third less water. With those savings, it will pay for itself in six years and should last for 10.
3)Do several loads of laundry in one stint every week, and dry the loads back-to-back to capture residual heat in the dryer.
4) Run only full dishwasher loads. The most efficient machines use a third of the water of hand washing. About eighty percent of a dishwasher's energy use goes to heating water. Select "unheated air-drying" to cut that by twelve percent.
Potential Savings: $400 a year.
Green Point: A front-loading Energy Star-certified clothes washer saves enough energy annually to light your entire home for a month and a half, and it saves as much water in a year as the average person drinks in a lifetime.
TIP: Choose the right appliance for the job and save: An electric kettle uses about a third less energy than a stovetop kettle; a toaster oven uses up to half the energy of a conventional electric oven. For fast meals, a pressure cooker uses at least half the energy of a regular pot. And an electric slow cooker makes soups and stews using much less wattage than a stove or an oven.
If you need even more incentive to save energy, how about getting paid to spend?
-The federal government can give tax breaks of up to $1,000 to householders who install energy-efficient window, insulation, or heating and cooling systems. It also gives up to $2,000 in tax credits for the installation of a solar-powered water heater.
-Many states-and even power companies-also offer good deals. Some states offer free installation of programmable thermostats, and in some areas, state governments and power companies offer cash rebates on the purchase of compact fluorescent lightbulbs.
-For a list of tax credits in your state, go to www.energystar.gov/tax credits or www.energytaxincentives.org
-For other stat-by-state programmes and incentives, check out www.aceee.org/new/eedb.htm.
I hope some of you will consider what I've just written. Whether you're an active enviornmentalist or someone who just needs to save more money, it really works out fairly well. Take care!
AgentPingoX69Oo Community Member 
|
|
Community Member