How To Save Energy At Home

MarketWatch's Marshall Loeb Shares Some Tips To Improve Efficiency

(MarketWatch)  Electricity costs are expected to jump this summer. The skyrocketing price of oil and seasonally higher demand will likely drive your power bill to the moon. But don't despair. With the right preventive measures you can control how much you end up having to shell out.

Making your house more efficient is one easy (and relatively painless) way to cut down on your energy use. Consider these four home improvement tips from Powerscorecard.org that will save energy:

Insulate your walls and ceilings.
This can save 20% to 30% of home heating bills and reduce CO2 emissions by 140 to 2,100 pounds per year. If you live in a colder climate, consider superinsulating. That can save 5.5 tons of CO2 per year for gas-heated homes, 8.8 tons per year for oil heat or 23 tons per year for electric heat. (If you have electric heat, you might also consider switching to more efficient gas or oil.)

Modernize your windows.
Replacing all your ordinary windows with argon filled, double-glazed windows saves 2.4 tons of CO2 per year for homes with gas heat, 3.9 tons of oil heat and 9.8 tons for electric heat.

Plant shade trees and paint your house a light color if you live in a warm climate or a dark color if you live in a cold climate.
Reductions in energy use resulting from shade trees and appropriate painting can save up to 2.4 tons of CO2 emissions per year. (Each tree also directly absorbs about 25 pounds of CO2 from the air annually.)

Weatherize your home or apartment, using caulk and weather stripping to plug air leaks around doors and windows.
Caulking costs less than $1 per window, and weather stripping is under $10 per door. These steps can save up to 1,100 pounds of CO2 per year for a typical home. Ask your utility company for a home energy audit to find out where your home is poorly insulated or energy-inefficient. This service may be provided free or at low cost. Make sure it includes a check of your furnace and air conditioning.

[cantshutup]

also i''m lucky to be able to get around easily in my town on my bike...

[cantshutup]

i changed to flourescent bulbs, waiting for LED!! always open curtains during the day, close them at night...gross, but "if it''s yellow let it mellow, if it''s brown flush it down" lid down of course, and using towels twice before washing a full load in cold...we don''t water the lawn anymore, but we have also been getting lots of rain...and i am proud to have an old fashioned rotary blade push mower which is also a good work out! My son will think i''m crazy but i have my eye on a hand-sith at a local flea market! there are tons of ways to conserve to make your utility bills cheaper...i need my money, oil can''t have it!

[renegade1952]

If this is a hot summer there will be a lot of people die, especially the elderly, the disabled and the poor, because they won''t be able to afford to run their cooling systems. Over the past two years here where I live electricity has went up 100%. Unfortunately, during the same period the amount that the elderly, disabled and poor receive has red-lined due to increased cost.

Some of you may say, well the poor could get a job, but the prospects of that are pretty slim. The present unemployment rate in my county is 7% according to "government" statistics, which puts the actually number of employed upwards of 12-15%.the economy is stagnate, and there is little to no growth in the local economics. Farmers in the area are from 4 to 6 weeks behind due to the cool wet weather, and many of the farmers are going to be forced to replant parts if not all of fields of corn.

Money is tight, and going to get tighter. Things are not looking good.

[libh8er]

My personal carbon belch this weekend will be approx. 170 lbs of CO2 delivered to our atmosphere (hear that, Al?). This is my ''jihad'' against the global warming fanatics.