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 http://interiorspaces.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/save-electricity-go-green/

If you have the will, here are some simple ways by which you can save energy and cut down on the ever-mounting electricity bills.

1: Replace an ordinary bulb with a CFL (compact fluorescent lamp), which uses one-quarter to one-third the energy to produce the same amount of light. Even if we replaced just one GLS bulb (incandescent lamp) with a CFL in every electrified home in India, we could save 10,000 MW of electric load, enough to light up 100 million homes.

2: Always remember to turn off the lights that you’re not using in the house. You will be surprised to know how far this goes in conserving energy.

3: After use, take household gadgets off their stand-by mode and switch them off. Not many know that plugged-in gadgets, even in stand-by mode, use energy. In fact, gadgets in stand-by mode can amount to about five to 10 per cent of your electricity bill.

4: Use task lighting instead of general room lighting and use multiple switches in order to conserve power.

5: Make use of natural daylight in combination with artificial lighting at the design stage itself. Also ensure effective insulation as poor insulation causes a great deal of energy to escape outside.

6: Go Green. Switch to new methods like solar lighting or make use of renewable sources like wind and bio-gas. This will increase efficiency as well as control energy costs and save energy, all at the same time.

(The writer is the President of Indian Society of Lighting Engineers)

Source : India Today Home

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Here are some more tips on how to ensure that the emissions from your home and daily life activities are lowered.

 All the suggestions are made with US geography in mind. We will try to see if there are similar services available in India as well. Won’t be surprised if some of these can be done in India as well (going by my earlier experience with Reva). And for more information, please check the climatecrisis website.

Choose energy efficient appliances when making new purchases
Look for the Energy Star label on new appliances to choose the most efficient models. If each household in the U.S. replaced its existing appliances with the most efficient models available, 175 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced on an annual basis.

Insulate and weatherize your home
Properly insulating your walls and ceilings can save 25% of your home heating bill and 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. The Consumer Federation of America has more information on how to better insulate your home.

Get a home energy audit
Many utilities offer free home energy audits to find where your home is poorly insulated or energy inefficient. You can save up to 30% off your energy bill and 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. Energy Star can help you find an energy specialist.

Switch to green power
In many areas, you can switch to energy generated by clean, renewable sources such as wind and solar. The Green Power Network is a good place to start to figure out what’s available in your area.

Buy locally grown and produced foods
The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Buying locally will save fuel and keep money in your community. Needless to say, this applies in whichever country you are living in.

Seek out and support local farmers markets
They reduce the amount of energy required to grow and transport the food to you by one fifth. If you are in US, you can find a farmer’s market in your area at the USDA website.

Buy organic foods as much as possible
Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Start a carpool with your coworkers or classmates
Sharing a ride with someone just 2 days a week will reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by 1,590 pounds a year. eRideShare.com runs a free national service connecting commuters and travelers.

Try car sharing
Need a car but don’t want to buy one? Community car sharing organizations provide access to a car and your membership fee covers gas, maintenance and insurance. Many companies – such as Flexcar — offer low emission or hybrid cars too! Also, see ZipCar.

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Thought we’ll start out the year with some tips for better home maintenance from the environmental perspective. Given below are the pointers that we came across in the site climatecrisis.org. Clearly it is prepared with the US homes in mind, but some points are quite on target for other countries as well.

1. Cleaning a dirty air filter on your air conditioner can save 350 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

2. Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.

3. You can save another 550 pounds per year by setting the thermostat no higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

4. You can save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide when you air dry your clothes instead of using a dryer.

5. Even when turned off, things like hairdryers, cell phone chargers and televisions use energy. In fact, the energy used to keep display clocks lit and memory chips working accounts for 5 percent of total domestic energy consumption and spews 18 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year!

6. You can save 3,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year if your new car gets only 3 miles per gallon more than your current one. You can get up to 60 miles per gallon with a hybrid!

7. You can save 100 pounds of carbon dioxide per year if you use your dishwasher only when the load is full.

8. It takes 70 to 90% less energy to make recycled paper and it prevents the loss of forests worldwide. So use recycled paper more.

9. Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce. So it is far better to use fresh food than the frozen ones.

10. If just 1% of car owners properly maintain their cars, nearly a billion pounds of carbon dioxide will be kept out of the atmosphere.
    

Psst.. Have a few more pointers with us. But saving that for another day.

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On a slightly offbeat note today, I thought I’ll cover the electric car produced by the Maini Group in Bangalore - Reva. It’s an old India based innovation story, but one that is only beginning to get its due.

The car is amazingly small in size compared with the conventional choices available from the more established car manufacturers. This makes it a dream vehicle to commute about in the intensely crowded Indian city streets. However, I would not recommend it for long distance drives on the Indian Highways. The fact that its commutation distance is only 80 km (under ideal conditions) is only part of the reason; the real reason is that safety wise Reva is not as sturdy as its conventional cousins and driving on the highway is a far more risky proposition than driving in your typical evening traffic jams.

Interestingly, it is being sold aggressively in London recently under the brand name of G-Wiz. Apparently, the response has been overwhelmingly positive since certain restrictions in London make owning cars there a very expensive proposition. The car is so tiny that it actually qualified to be sold as a quadricycle, thus bypassing many of the existing car regulations there!

I think Reva is a very decent choice for an urban setting, especially if it is a family’s second car purchase. If the electricity you use to charge the car is coming from renewable sources, the usage of the car is carbon neutral. If the electricity is from more traditional sources, the carbon emissions are two thirds lower than normal and the power consumption is 75% lower than normal.

Not to mention, the cost per distance travelled is as low as 40 paise per km !

It was not a long while back that I said in a post here that we Indians are not getting enough options to get into a carbon neutral lifestyle in India (unlike say in America). Well, this just goes to show what a ridiculous statement that was. No doubt, I’ll make more ridiculous claims in future as well..

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Our coverage on environment friendly homes has been consistent. Williams wrote about it in the following articles:Some things to do for a Green home

A carbon negative home?

Going carbon negative

 The other environment topics which we covered so far were:

Water conservation at home

Waste Disposal

Today’s Hindu newspaper has a huge government advertisement on CFL Technology and requests people to “Switch on  to Save”.

This advertisement echoes all our thoughts and suggestions and we thought of elaborating on the details in case you miss the same on the paper.

 

The image above (please click to enlarge) conveys many details:

CFL Advantages:

• Four times more efficient
• Lasts upto 10 times longer than incandescents
• Uses 50-80% less energy than incandescents
• Uses 1/3 the electricity and lasts up to 10 times as long as incandescents
• Single 18 watt CFL in place of a 75 watt incandescent saves about 570KWH over its lifetime
• Replacing single incandescent bulb with CFLs keep out half-tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere
• Saving electricity reduces CO2 emissions, sulfur oxide and high level nuclear waste
• New CFLs give a warm inviting light instead of the “cool white”light of older fluorescent
• They use rare earth phosphors for excellent color and warmth
• New electronic ballasted CFLs do not flicker or hum
• CFL can be applied nearly anywhere where incandescents are used

The advertisement says

“Judicious use of electricity is our responsibility”

“Save energy for benefit of self and nation”

This message is brought to us by:

Bureau of Energy Efficiency India

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