We Americans use a LOT of energy, and it's becoming pretty obvious that the days of abundant cheap energy are coming to a close. We need to start thinking of ways to reduce the amount of energy we use.
We often hear a number of common energy-saving ideas. Things like driving less, replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, and turning the heat down in the winter are ideas we hear from all sort of people on an almost daily basis (and are good ideas...DO THEM). However, there are a whole bunch of other ideas you almost never hear about, some of which can also save you quite a bit of money. Let's look at a few of those.
You'll often hear of the benefits of buying locally grown food...it's fresher, you're helping to keep money in your community, it's cheaper (especially when you buy at farmer's markets), etc. What may not occur to you is that you're also saving energy. The average food product travels 1500 miles to reach you, and fuel is needed to power the ship/truck/train that gets it there. Buy local, and a lot less fuel is used to get the food to you.
One of the interesting things about modern life is that we often do things or buy things because it just seems like we're supposed to. For example, look at the clothes dryer. They've been around for decades, and it seems like a foregone conclusion that everybody NEEDS one. However, think about what they do....they use a up a ton of energy to heat up some air, blow it quickly over your clothes, then shoot that nice heated air right out of your house. Seems awfully wasteful, doesn't it?
The fact of the matter is that you can knock a lot of money off of your utility bills by not using a clothes dryer. In warm weather, the alternative is obvious: hang our clothes on outdoor clotheslines and let Mother Nature dry them for free. But what do you do in the winter or when it's raining?
If you have a basement, hang a number of clotheslines from the ceiling. Hang them parallel to each other, about 10 inches apart and maybe 20 feet long. At one end, place a common box fan so that it blows air down the clotheslines. Hang your wet clothes on the lines, heaviest items closest to the fan. Turn it on before you go to bed, and in the morning, your clothes will be nice and dry.
The energy savings are dramatic. My clothes dryer is rated at 5400W, while my box fan is 90W. Say I hang 3 loads of laundry on the lines to dry overnight. 10 hours of drying time on the clotheslines uses up 900W of electricity, costing about 9 cents. Those three loads done in the dryer, taking an hour each, uses 16,200W of electricity, at a cost of about $1.60. I calculated that we'll save about $150/year by not using the clothes dryer.
It's a little known fact that almost all modern electronics use electricity, even when they're off. Anything that has a remote control does this, since something in the unit needs to detect when the remote is trying to turn it on. Anything with a digital clock (microwave, gas oven, etc.) is also a culprit. If your device uses one of those "wall warts", or an external brick power supply, then it's using electricity even when the device is off...it's the nature of how they work. Don't believe me? Plug in that cell phone charger, leave your phone disconnected, then feel how warm the wall wart gets.
When you actually go around your house and measure how much electricity each device is using, it may be a shock to see how much they're costing you. In our house, I discovered that all of these devices are costing us about $40-$50 a year when they're turned off. It's become such an energy waster that Great Britain has actually passed a law to outlaw devices that draw power when they're off.
The solution is obvious....unplug them when you're not using them. Better yet, use a power strip with an on/off switch to easily turn off a number of devices at once (like your TV, VCR, DVD player, amplifier, etc.).