Consumer

Where does your home use energy?

• Air conditioning/heating – 49%
• Water heating - 13%
• Lighting – 10%
• Electronics – 7%
• Washing/drying– 6%
• Refrigerating – 5%
• Dishwashing– 2%
• Other – 8%

Source: Residential Energy Consumption Survey, 2001

* "Other" represents an array of household products, including stoves, ovens, microwaves, and small appliances (coffee makers and dehumidifiers).

Heating and Air Conditioning

• Don't open your doors or windows if your heat or air conditioner is on. A typical window left open overnight in winter will waste enough energy to drive a small car over 35 miles. (Source: The Carbon Trust UK)
• Don’t air condition an empty room or empty home.
• Set the thermostat at the desired temperature. Setting it higher won’t heat the house faster and can waste energy by overshooting.
• Clean the air conditioner before each cooling season.
• If you have a window air conditioning unit, remove it for the winter months, to prevent heat from escaping through and around the unit. If it can't be removed, buy a cover, to prevent drafts.
• Use your exhaust fans sparingly. In just one hour they can remove a houseful of warmed or cooled air.
• Keep your thermostat at 26°C in the summer and 20°C in the winter. Remember: “26/20.” Every 1°C difference in temperature between indoors and outdoors can add around 10% to heating or cooling costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Every 1°F you lower the thermostat in winter and raise it in summer can reduce your heating and cooling bills by 1% or more.
• Use blinds and curtains with white or reflective outer surfaces—dark colors absorb heat.
• During the winter, close-fitting blinds or curtains that create a layer of still air next to the glass are most effective.
• ($) The best way to reduce air leakage is to caulk holes around the interior of the home around the woodwork, baseboard, band joist area at the top of the foundation, and into the attic or basement.
• ($) An air-trapping door sweep costs about $15, is easy to install, and can reduce the air that escapes through the gap between the bottom of your door and the floor.
• ($) Install foam gaskets behind all outlets and switches, even on interior walls, and use child safety plugs backed with gasket punch-outs to keep the cold air from coming in through the sockets.
• ($$) Cover internal walls, particularly those that face south. Even a large woolen wall hanging can provide extra insulation, reducing heat loss in winter.
• External shading is twice as effective as an internal blind at blocking out summer heat.
• ($$$) About 15% of air leakage is through windows and doors. Replace your old entry door with an insulated door. Upon new construction, choose double pane windows instead of single pane
• ($$$$) Use window film on windows, if you can afford it.

Using Water

• More than half of hot water use is in the bathroom, a third is in the laundry, and the remainder is in the kitchen.
• Avoid using small amounts of hot water if cold water will do. Each time you turn on the hot water tap, a liter or more of cold water that had been heated but has cooled in the pipes runs down the sink, before hot water is delivered. If you have electric hot water, Running hot water just 10 times a day will generate about 200 kilograms of greenhouse gas each year.
• Take showers, rather than baths. A typical shower requires only half as much hot water as an average tub bath.
• Set your water heater at the mid-range of 120 degrees; anything hotter, and you're wasting energy.
• Put the water recirculation pump on a timer, so it does not run in the middle of the night. You can also set it to turn off in the middle of the day, if nobody is home. Wrap an insulating blanket around water tanks.
• A low-flow showerhead—which uses less hot water—can reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 376 pounds and lower your annual utility bill by $20 to $40. That's enough to recoup the cost of a new showerhead. (Source: Suze Orman.)
• Buy an energy efficient water heater.
  
  • Good: High-efficiency gas water heater with tank
  • Better: Tankless, instantaneous gas-fired water heater
  • Best: Solar-powered water heater
• Repair all leaky faucets.
• Install sink aerators and bathtub faucets to reduce indoor water use by 30-40%.
• Use motion sensor faucets.
• Consider storing wash water (laundry machines, dishwashers, bathtubs and sinks) for greywater use (toilets). (Legal in China.)

Lighting

• Wipe off your light bulbs, periodically. Dusty bulbs can emit 20% less light.
• Use lower wattage bulbs in fixtures where you don't need much light, such as hallways and bedrooms.
• Buy compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) to replace incandescent light bulbs. 95% of the energy used goes to heating an incandescent bulb, adding unwanted heat to your home in the summer. CFLs use two-thirds less energy and last up to 10 times longer.
• Spend a tiny bit more to buy high quality CFLs, which will last much longer.
• Make use of natural light, as much as possible.
• Install motion detectors on lights.
• Don’t connect more than three lights to each light switch. You can switch off lights you don’t need.
• Low voltage halogen lamps are not low energy lamps: each one generates a kilogram of greenhouse gas every 15 hours—about the same as an ordinary 60 watt bulb (although it does produce more light). Halogens are not easily replaced by more efficient alternatives, so installing them locks you in to high lighting bills.

Plugging In

• Even when they're switched off at the appliance, home electronic products use energy to power features like clock displays and remote controls. When they are left plugged in at the wall, appliances still typically use 1 -20 Watts of power, with most appliances using less than 5 watts (~45 kilograms of greenhouse gas/year/item).
• Cell phone adapters still use energy even when plugged in. Remove the adapter, or put it on a switch.
• Use a power switch, or an outlet with a switch, to make disconnecting easier.

Refrigerating

• Place the refrigerator away from heat sources: the range, oven, heat registers, and direct sunlight. Don't block air circulation around the refrigerator.
• Keeping refrigerators and freezers full, but not overcrowded, will help your food stay cold if the power goes out. Allow enough space between food for air circulation.
• Switch off your second fridge, except when it's really needed.
• Dust or vacuum refrigerator and freezer coils (on the back), at least once a year.
• Buy a top/bottom freezer/refrigerator, not a side/side unit. Top/bottom units are generally more energy-efficient.
• Buy a no-frost fridge. The frost and ice build-up causes your freezer to work harder to keep the freezer at a cold temperature.

Washing and Drying

• In general, you’ll save energy by running one large load, instead of two medium loads.
• Always rinse in cold water. A hot water wash with warm rinse costs 5 to 10 times more than a cold wash and rinse. (Source: American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy)
• Only wash and dry full loads. Do not underload or overload.
• Don’t waste detergent: It is expensive, and making it generates about a third of a kilogram of greenhouse gas per wash for top-loaders (front-loaders use half as much). Using more than the recommended amount of detergent doesn’t make clothes cleaner.
• Choose a washer/dryer size that suits your household.
• In general, front-loading washers are much more efficient than top-loading washers.
• Pick a washer with the fastest spin speed to remove as much water from clothes as possible, before drying.
• If you use a warm or hot wash, and have a gas or solar hot water service, select a clothes washer with dual hot and cold water hoses, instead of a single hose model. Single hose models must heat their own water, using expensive and high greenhouse impact electricity.
• Pick a dryer that senses dryness and turns off automatically, instead of using a timer, which can overdry clothes.
• Save up to 2 kilograms of greenhouse gas per load by hanging clothes on a rack for a while, before finishing them off in the dryer.

Dishwashing

• Pre-rinsing is no longer necessary with today's technology and detergents. You may be using more water to pre-rinse your dishes than the dishwasher uses for a full wash cycle!
  • Good: Rinse dishes with cold, not hot, water before loading dishwasher.
  • Better: Use the plug and fill the sink with water to rinse dishes.
  • Best: Scrape - do not rinse.
• Delay heat-generating activities such as dishwashing until evening on hot days.
• Run your dishwasher only when full.
• Air-dry clean dishes, by turning the energy-saver switch on.