The wonderful thing about saving energy is that, in addition to helping the environment, you save money. It's like contributing to a good cause and ending up with more money in your pocket. Many of the energy-efficient appliances and heating or cooling systems cost no more than their inefficient counterparts. With most others, the extra cost is easily repaid in energy savings over just a few years. To top it off, many energy-saving upgrades increase the comfort, convenience, and aesthetics of your home.
Operating Cost: Life-Cycle of Appliances, Light Bulbs, etc.
When you buy an appliance, you pay more than just the sales price -- you commit yourself to paying the cost of running the appliance for as long as you own it. These energy costs can add up quickly. For example, running a refrigerator 15-20 years can cost as much as the initial purchase price of the unit. That 75-watt light bulb you just put in will cost about $7 in electricity over its (short) life.
The sum of the purchase price and the energy cost of running an appliance or light bulb over its lifetime is called its life-cycle cost. The life-cycle costs of energy-efficient appliances are lower than those of average models even though the latter may cost less to buy. To determine a basic life-cycle cost, use the following equation:
LCC = Initial Cost + (Annual Operating Cost x Years of Operation),
where the operating cost can include energy costs, maintenance, and repair. For "years," you would use the expected life of the equipment in question.
Rebates from Utility Companies and Tax Incentives
To increase the economic benefits of buying more energy-efficient appliances and boosting your overall home efficiency, check for rebates offered by your local energy and water utilities or tax incentives available from your state or the federal government.
Rebates are most common for high-efficiency refrigerators, clothes washers, lighting products, cooling equipment, and home energy improvements like air sealing and insulation. Rebate programs are much more common among electric companies than gas companies, although some gas utilities offer rebates for high-efficiency furnaces and boilers. If you plan to buy a major appliance soon, ask your utility if it offers rebates for efficient models.
For More Information:
ENERGY STAR offers a "Rebate Finder" on their website where you can look up whether special offers are available in your area. www.energystar.gov
For tax credit information, contact your state energy office and refer to the Tax Incentives Assistance Project (TIAP) website. www.energytaxincentives.org
Energy Use and the Environment
Every time you buy a home appliance, tune up your heating system, or replace a burned-out light bulb, you're making a decision that affects the environment. You are probably already aware that most of our biggest environmental problems are directly associated with energy production and use: global warming, urban smog, oil spills, acid rain, and mercury deposition, to mention a few. You also probably know that driving your car less is one of the best ways to reduce your environmental impact. But you may not realize just how big a difference each of us can make by taking energy use into account in our household purchasing and maintenance decisions.
For example, did you know that every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity you avoid using saves over a pound of carbon dioxide (CO2) that would otherwise be pumped into the atmosphere? If you replace a typical 1998 20-cubic-foot refrigerator with an energy-efficient 2012 model, you'll save more than 300 kWh and 500 pounds of CO2 emissions per year!!
For a typical two-car, single-family household, energy used in the home accounts for more than half of that family's total greenhouse gas contributions and energy costs!
Four & A Half Tons of CO2 per Person per Year on Earth
CO2 is the number one contributor to global warming, a process that scientists say could raise the Earth's temperatures by 3-7°F over the next hundred years. Worldwide, we pump some 31.6 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year — about four and a half tons for every man, woman, and child on Earth. The United States is responsible for more than 17% of that, or close to 5.5 billion tons per year. On a per capita basis, that comes to more than 15 tons for each American, though some of us produce a lot more than others. Reducing CO2 emissions by a few tons per year may not seem like a lot, but the collective actions of many will have a dramatic effect.
Carbon dioxide is only one of the environmentally harmful gases resulting from energy use. Others, such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone, have much more direct effects — effects that can be seen and smelled in every major urban area of the country.
There are numerous energy-saving products and improvements around the home that can help the environment.
For More Information:
If you are interested in becoming "carbon neutral," the following resources will help you calculate your carbon footprint and find the most trusted carbon offset companies.
CoolClimate Network www.coolclimate.berkeley.edu
Global Footprint Network www.footprintnetwork.org
Energy Efficiency for Economic Prosperity
The federal government and many state governments have recognized the importance of energy efficiency to our nation's security and economic prosperity. Appliance efficiency standards that took effect in the early 1990s saved more than 88 billion kWh in 2000 — about 28 million tons of CO2. Updates to these standards will save more than 250 billon kWh in 2010. Despite these impressive gains, standards only eliminate the lowest-efficiency products from the market.
It is up to consumers to do the rest and demand more from the marketplace. If the roughly 40 million households in climates with large heating needs boosted their furnace or boiler efficiencies to 90% or higher, some 45 million tons of CO2 emissions would be eliminated each year. Substituting compact fluorescent lamps for the ten most frequently used incandescent lamps in every house in the country would reduce CO2 emissions by about the same amount!
©1990-2012 by the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
New Society Publishers. www.newsociety.com
This article was adapted with permission from Chapter 1 of the book:
Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings (10th edition): Save Money, Save the Earth
by Jennifer Thorne Amann, Alex Wilson & Katie Ackerly.
Completely revised to incorporate the latest developments in green technology, this book is the definitive resource for consumers who want to better their home's performance while reducing their energy bills. Well-organized and highly readable, updated and expanded chapters focus on specific aspects of any home, such as heating and cooling, ventilation, electronics, lighting, cooking, and laundry, and provide helpful explanations for each.
Click here for more info and/or to order this book.
About the Authors
Jennifer Amann is a Senior Associate in the Buildings and Equipment Program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Her current work includes promoting improved commercial building performance, valuing the energy and non-energy benefits of whole house retrofits, analyzing the impacts of stronger appliance efficiency standards, and exploring new targets for market transformation efforts.
Alex Wilson is the founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and Executive Editor of Environmental Building News, the premier green building industry resource. A widely acknowledged green building expert for over 30 years, he has authored countless articles and several books including Green Building Products and The Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings.
Katie Ackerly conducts research at the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley, while completing advanced degrees in building science and architectural design. Previously at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, she has written several papers related to the interface of green technologies and human behavior.
