Enough clean energy from the sun hits the earth in one day to power our planet for 16 years
Reduce your Carbon Footprint and Save Money
Reducing your carbon footprint not only saves the environment, but can also save you money.
Green house gases are gathering in the atmosphere from our coal and oil power stations supplying our homes with heat and electricity. Reducing your CO2 footprint will reduce these emissions.
There are many ways you can help the environment, and also save yourself some money, some are even free.
Electricity Costs
It’s worth finding out which items in the house consume the most electricity. For example, some DVD players use around half the electricity in standby mode as they do when fully running, some TV’s are also very hungry in standby mode.
When running in idle mode some laser printers use as much electricity as a fridge freezer!
Wireless electricity monitoring systems are a useful tool. They give you a real time reading of your electricity usage – this enables you to locate the worst offending appliances. By turning these off when not in use, particularly when the property is empty or when everyone is asleep you can make significant savings. We provide a complimentary owl electricity monitor with every Solar installation.
The OWL Wireless Electricity Monitor is a popular choice for monitoring your electricity usage in the home.
Some other simple ways to save money include…
- Not filling the kettle to the top just to make one cup of tea.
- Turning off lights when leaving a room.
- Turning the fridge and freezer dials to a warmer setting.
Heating Costs
As with electricity usage, the way we behave has a huge effect on our bills and can increase our carbon footprint. A study by the carbon trust in 2007 showed that between 12 identical houses, the heating consumption ranged from 20 units a day to 40 units. In other words, some households were using twice as much energy to heat their houses.
The following tips will help you ensure your property is not heat hungry.
If you don’t often use certain rooms in your house, such as spare bedrooms, not heating them until you need them will reduce your bills. In this case a draft excluder will help keep the warmth from leaking into the colder room.
By turning your thermostat down you can reduce energy emissions. As a rule of thumb, in the average British home and from a starting temperature of 20C, every 1C reduction in the thermostat setting reduces your bill by around 10%.
Consider this…
On a pleasant summers day, it is not uncommon to enter an office where the air conditioning is set to 18 degrees, a temperature setting many people would consider to cold in the winter!
Reduce the amount of heat that leaks from your home…
Insulating your house is probably the very best way of doing this, it’s not too expensive and the money spent pays for itself very quickly.
Insulating your roof and cavity walls may reduce your bills by as much as 40%. You could be eligible for a grant too, check out this link: www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
If you have a hot water tank it is worth insulating this too, it only costs around £12, is easy to do and according to the energy savings trust would save about £35 a year. It is also worth insulating your pipes.
Fit double, or even better, triple glazing. It may be more expense than the other options we have listed but it makes sound financial sense, and will also reduce your CO2 footprint.
Many of the suggestions above have come from a book by Professor David McKay called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. It is free and you can download it today.
