WHAT'S ENERGY?
Energy used to heat your home and power your TV is not too
different from the energy your body gets when you eat a bean
burrito. Your body is like a powerhouse, turning food (fuel) into
usable energy—the ability to do work—and eliminating waste
byproducts.
A power plant does the same thing: Coal, oil, or natural gas
(nonrenewable fossil fuels) goes in and gets burned up to power
a big generator that sends energy to your house, with carbon
dioxide, some noxious gases, and/or sludge as byproducts.
The
problem:
Fossil fuels (from fossils, or remains, of dead animals
and plants) take millions of years to make. The volume of
byproducts created when we burn fossil fuels is not easily
reprocessed in our environment and causes pollution and related
health problems.
Energy production and use account for nearly 80 percent of air
pollution, more than 88 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,
and more environmental damage than any other human activity.
Energy Efficiency vs. Energy Conservation
Energy efficiency is a far cry from old energy conservation
images. It’s not turning down the thermostat and sacrificing
comfort.
Energy efficiency means getting the most from every
energy unit by using state-of-the-art technologies to provide
daily needs—comfortable homes, profitable businesses,
convenient transportation.
It is the quickest, cheapest,
cleanest way to reduce energy use and pollution.
If your house were energy efficient, you could lower your
thermostat and be comfortable day and night, without drafts,
cold spots, or guilt while doing your share for your family, your
finances, and your environment.
For the Planet
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If you replaced just four 100-watt incandescent bulbs that burn
four or more hours a day in your home with four 23-watt
fluorescent bulbs, you’d get as much light and save at least
1,356 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity and $108 over three
years.
If all our nation’s households did the same, we’d save as
much energy as is consumed by some seven million cars in one
year.
Discover ways to save home energy
and money.
OH,
WHY BOTHER?
Life can be overwhelming with all the “should”— things we’re
supposed to do like eating the right foods, flossing, creating a
balanced “work-school-home-play” life, and doing something
about major issues facing the world and our community.
Sometimes it seems like too much. So why bother with one more
thing?
Because one thing—energy efficiency—creates three
positive benefits at once for you and the planet:cuts your home utility bills so you have extra
money to spend on other things.increases your comfort.
reduces pollution.
And, it’s easy. When you choose energy-efficient technologies
and products for your home, you can relax while they continue
producing these benefits for you day after day, year after year.
Enlightening Comparisons
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See table
at bottom
Fact
If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bulb or fixture
with an Energy Star qualified model, we could save more than 8
billion kWh--equivalent to removing 1 million cars from the road
per year!
Consciousness Tips
Let “Mother Nature” light your home. Sunlight
is brighter than a multitude of light bulbs, and it’s free.
Don’t like coming home to a dark house?
Instead of leaving lights on, put timers on a few of the lights in
your home, or install motion detectors on exterior flood lights to
improve your home security. After you get inside, the sensor will
“remember” to turn the lights off.
ENLIGHTENING WARNING!
Halogen torchiere lamps have grown in popularity. Although
relatively inexpensive to purchase, they are expensive to
operate and very inefficient. The halogen bulbs in these lamps
operate at temperatures much hotter than regular bulbs and can CAUSE FIRES,
warns the U.S. Consumer Product Safety
Commission (CPSC).
Consider a safe Energy Star
torchiere.
HOME COOKING
ou need to eat, right? The kitchen uses a big chunk of your
home energy budget. Your refrigerator alone—which is on 24
hours a day—accounts for about 15 percent of the total home
electricity bill, or about 10 percent of the average home energy
bill.
So where can you apply energy efficiency in the kitchen?
Power Tips
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Shopping for a major appliance before it breaks down gives you
the best chance to find a higher efficiency model with the
features you want.
The typical refrigerator sold in 2002 has
more features yet uses less than half theelectricity of a
comparable model sold in 1980.
Choose appliances with the
ENERGY STAR to ensure greatest efficiency.
Energy Consciousness Tips
Buy a new fridge that is the right size for
your needs to avoid wasting energy cooling nothing.
Use a microwave or toaster oven to cook small portions and a
conventional oven or stove-top for larger items.
A watched pot will eventually boil—but putting a lid on it
reduces cooking time and energy use. Also, match the pot size
to burner size to avoid energy waste.
Fact
Refrigerators in the U.S. alone use the equivalent of the output
of about 60 300-MW power plants.
If all of the nation’s
households used the most efficient refrigerators, electricity
savings would eliminate the need for about 30 power plants.
COMING CLEAN
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From tumblers to tutus, there’s no shortage of washing to do
around the home, all of which takes energy. Just making hot
water uses about 14 percent or more of your home energy
budget.
Many new innovations save energy in the cleaning department.
One of the simplest and least expensive is a low-flow shower
head—a familiar technology that has improved from earlier
versions. It can cut your shower water use in half while
maintaining the same pressure as before.
Power Tips
If you are in the market for new appliances, look for ENERGY
STAR qualified products with these energy-saving features:
Dishwashers that use soil sensors to shorten the washing cycle,
saving water and energy.
Clothes dryers that have moisture sensors, turning off the unit
when the clothes are dry.
Clothes washers that use less water and energy.
Energy Consciousness Tips
Set your hot water heater thermostat at 120 degrees (or
“low”). It’s hot enough for most needs—including dishwashers,
which are generally made with booster heaters—and it cuts
down on energy needed to keep water hot in the tank.
Wrap your hot water tank in an insulating “blanket” if it feels
warm to the touch.
Use warm or cold water for laundry when possible, rinse in cold,
and wash when you have full loads. Today’s cold water
detergents do a good job.
ON THE MOVE WITH ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Whether you are on the move in your car or making a move to a
new home, energy efficiency can significantly reduce your
operating costs.
Looking to rent or buy a new home? If you have previously
experienced costly repairs to achieve savings and comfort, you
may know the value of a quality, energy-efficient home.
Beyond
earlier points in this article, how might you know if a home is
built to the highest efficiency standards?
Power Tips
Look for new homes with the ENERGY STAR.
They are certified to use at least 30 percent less energy than
required by the national Model Energy Code and typically feature
high-performance windows, advanced insulation and sealing, and
high-efficiency appliances and heating/cooling systems.
(ENERGY STAR homes:www.energystar.gov)
Obtain a home energy rating to determine a home’s relative
energy efficiency prior to purchasing to see what upgrades
would have the greatest payoff. The cost can sometimes be
financed as part of an energy-efficient mortgage.
If you are refinancing your home, consider wrapping in energy
home improvements. Your interest may be tax deductible.
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KEEPING YOUR
C-O-O-O-L
our thermostat controls the heating and cooling system that
consumes more than half of the energy in your home ? the
biggest chunk of your family’s energy budget. How much of that
energy is used to keep your house comfortable when no one is
home or everyone is asleep? Probably a lot, if you don’t adjust
the thermostat when you leave the house or go to bed.
Introducing the programmable thermostat! It automatically
coordinates the temperature of your home with your daily and
weekly (weekend) patterns ? so you don’t have to awaken to a
chilly bedroom in winter or come home to a stuffy house in
summer. Once you make the settings, you don’t have to adjust
the thermostat again.
Power Tips
When adding a programmable thermostat or
replacing a furnace, air conditioner, or heat pump, look for the
ENERGY STAR label. You can get additional information from the
yellow EnergyGuide label to compare every model in a category,
its capacity, and estimated yearly energy cost.
ENERGY STAR geothermal heat pumps use
the constant temperature of the earth to efficiently transfer
heat to the home in winter or cool air to the home in summer.
They require adequate land and up front expenditure.
Energy Consciousness Tips
When adjusting the thermostat by hand,
remember that the house will not warm up or cool down any
faster if you crank up the thermostat past the desired
temperature. Besides, it is easy to forget to turn it back down,
which will waste energy dollars.
If you have a heat pump, dramatically
turning up the heat by hand is costly because it may trigger the
inefficient backup heater, which is most often electric, eating up
any savings from reducing the thermostat. (A programmable
thermostat designed for heat pumps will gradually raise the heat
without activating the backup heat.)
Clean or replace furnace and air conditioner
filters once a month during heating/cooling season.
Fact
Rule of thumb for thermostat savings: For each degree you
lower your thermostat in winter, you can save about 3 percent
on your heating bill.
An ENERGY STAR furnace or air conditioning system, when
properly sized and installed, can save consumers 30-40 percent
on heating and cooling bills.
LIGHT UP YOUR LIFE from 10 to 15 percent of the average home’s electricity costs
can be controlled with the flip of a switch a light switch. You
don’t want to live in the dark, so how can you light the house
more efficiently?
A good solution: Compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) use up to 75
percent less energy and last up to 10 times longer than
incandescent bulbs. CFLs have improved tremendously since
first introduced. They have become smaller, cheaper, brighter,
and offer improved color quality.
Power Tips
Replace all light fixtures and bulbs that
operate four or more hours a day with ones that use fluorescent
bulbs to save money and energy. Use lumens the amount of
light produced to compare lights.
For example, a 23-watt
fluorescent bulb produces about the same number of lumens as
a 100-watt incandescent. Your investment will generally pay for
itself in a couple of years.
Energy Consciousness Tips
Consider landscaping around the home. Planting evergreen trees
on the north side and deciduous (leafy) trees on the south side
of a home can block winter winds and summer sun.
You can rest assured that energy-efficient homes, products,
and cars will do the work of cutting your utility and gasoline
bills, increasing your comfort, and decreasing pollution day after
day, year after year. They pay off now and in the future.
Energy Consciousness Car Tips
If you are in the market for a new car, think high gas
mileage to save hundreds of dollars in fuel bills over the life of
the car and reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
www.fueleconomy.gov
If everyone purchased one of the four most efficient models
in each class (sedans, sub-compacts, SUVs, light trucks), fuel
economy would be 12 percent higher, according to EPA.
Americans would save 13.1 billion gallons of gasoline annually, or
the equivalent of 157 million tons of greenhouse gasses.
Improve your existing or new car’s fuel economy 9 percent
(about 2 mpg) to save 43 gallons, $53 dollars, and 820 pounds
of CO2 emissions annually by taking three easy steps:
(1) get a
tune-up to improve fuel economy 6-9 percent,
(2) drive a little
slower—for each mph you drive less than 65, you save about 2
percent, and
(3) properly inflate the tires so that you don’t lose
1-2 percent in fuel economy for each pound of under-inflation.
TOO "PLUGGED IN"
he economic boom in our consumer-oriented society, the growth
of new technologies, and the changing workforce—more people
working from home—have dramatically increased the number of
products that require power in the average home.
Some of
today’s homes sport multiple computers, printers, faxes, TVs,
VCRs, DVD and CD players, and hair dryers.
Computer equipment is the fastest growing electric load in the
world. Unfortunately, much of the energy for computers is
wasted because they are often kept on while not in use.
Furthermore, many idle appliances—TVs, VCRs, cable boxes,
DVD and CD players, cassette decks, cordless phones, burglar
alarms, microwaves—continue to consume energy when
switched off.
This energy keeps display clocks lit and memory
chips and remote controls working.
Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory calculates that these energy “leaks” account for 5
percent of total domestic electricity consumption, cost more
than $3 billion annually, and spew 18 million tons of carbon into
the atmosphere.
Idle TVs and VCRs alone cost U.S. consumers more than $1
billion a year, or some $30 per household. Emissions from power
plants supplying that electricity are equal to the pollution
caused by 2 million cars! New technology in ENERGY STAR
qualified TVs and VCRs will reduce wasted energy by up to 50
percent.
Power Tip
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Activate your “sleep” feature on ENERGY STAR qualified home
office equipment (PC, fax, printer, scanner)—so that it
automatically powers down when not in use to save up to $70
annually in electricity bills and improve product longevity.
Energy Consciousness Tip
Turning off your computer during long periods of non-use cuts
costs and improves longevity.
Fact
Each year, Americans spend more money to power home audio
and DVD products when turned off than when actually in use.
Every kWh of electricity you avoid using saves about 11/2
pounds of CO2 from being pumped into the atmosphere.
If over
the next 15 years, Americans bought only ENERGY STAR
qualified products, we would shrink our energy bills by more than
$100 billion and eliminate as much greenhouse gas pollution as is
produced by 17 million cars for each of those 15 years!
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