Home energy saving information

This section of my website covers basic home energy saving information, for the curious, the fact-obsessed, or those wondering where to start. If you already know the basics — why you want to save, and where to save — use the menu to navigate to major topic areas covering household appliances, lighting, electricity, and so on, or do a Search.

But if you’re still wondering where your energy savings might come from — or wondering why saving energy matters — the pages linked below provide plenty of helpful material, from definitions and starting ideas, to a plan to get you started and a checklist to help you cover everything.

Here are the specific pages covering home energy saving information on my site:

First, I explain what we mean by an energy efficient home and just how efficient such homes can be. Did you know there are homes that are so efficiently built that they have no utility bills at all? How close can your home get?

I cover some unconventional energy saving ideas that can help you get started. If you want to maximize savings, you need to look outside the box!

An easy way to find what can save you the most at the lowest cost is this energy saving checklist, which helps you score your home on a 300-point efficiency scale.

A checklist helps find the savings, but how do you make sure you tackle things the right way? Your personal home energy saving plan is the best way to apply home energy saving information to your situation, so you maximize your savings.

To help motivate you even more, I offer some curious energy saving facts you can use to remind yourself how small gestures can make a big difference, especially when we all pitch in. For instance, did you know that throwing a single aluminum can in the trash, instead of recycling it, wastes the equivalent energy of half a can worth of gasoline? That’s right. Recycling actually helps cut your total energy use.

My motivation for helping you save energy

Iceberg calving in Ilulissat, Greenland

Iceberg calving in Ilulissat, Greenland

One of the man reasons I offer the home energy saving information in this section — and indeed throughout my website — is that I’d like to help you cut your greenhouse gas emissions (that’s how I’m hoping to do my bit to stop global warming).

Climate change is a serious threat to the human endeavor, and I’d like to think that at least a few of the thousands of visitors who drop by my site every week find tips that help them reduce their contribution to climate change.

If global warming’s got you down — if you think it’s just too complicated for one person’s choices to make a difference — don’t give up! I tried to make a difference in my own home, but that wasn’t enough, so I built this website to help others, and to make a bigger difference.

That’s my motivation. If you need your own motivation, consider these energy saving benefits, which extend well beyond just cutting your home utility bills. Energy saving benefits mean you’ll have more money, more time, more comfort, better health, and a better outlook on the future!

1 reply
  1. Jim
    Jim says:

    I just came across your site. I had an epiphany as well. 8 years ago I moved from Toronto to Burlington and built a new green home and traded in our two gas cars for Prius hybrids. I have an engineering consulting business in renewable and efficient energy. I try to make it clear that carbon reduction is the goal, not energy reduction. Significant cost savings can be achieved by using fossil fuels but they don’t reduce carbon. Natural gas heating is more expensive now than using a cold climate air source heat pump and about the same capital cost. The heat pump produces 90% less carbon, and more if powered by solar. In southern Ontario, our natural gas comes from fracking in the northern US, not our Alberta resources. When Trump gets wind of this, there will be tariffs and costs will rise.

    Reply

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