Kievgid

Excess energy use is just bad news and we cannot run away from this problem any more and pretend it doesn’t exist. Change begins at home and it begins with every one of us. By renting or owning a home and just by living and taking advantage of all the comforts that we are so used to, we use an increasing amount of energy and must take responsibility for this, as it results in a large carbon footprint individually. No longer can we expect big business to shoulder the blame and it’s no longer good enough to say that we take the bus to work and don’t drive. We all need to make big changes and look for ways to save electricity wherever we can find them. A journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.

To start off with, you should make sure that all your windows and doors are fitting properly and you should go and check this right now. You might not be able to see any issues and should check by running your hand along the edges or by using an open flame of some kind to see whether you have any drafts. There is no sense whatsoever in heating the inside of your house or using air conditioning to try and cool it down during the brief hot spells that we get, if your hard earned money is flying out the window. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that your house is as airtight as you can make it before worrying about your cooling and heating costs.

Rooms that are only rarely used should be isolated and you can put timer activated lighting appliances in these areas. You could also put them on a motion detector, so that they will go on and off if someone enters or leaves the room. Unplug all electrical items when they’re not actually in use, as they can still drain electricity when connected to a wall socket. It’s best if all computers are turned off at night. There’s no need for you to maintain them and they tend to build up heat within the casing anyway. Every little bit helps and will account for a good savings at the end of the year.

Most people understand the benefits of renewable energy, but for some reason or another, we have a tendency to look to other people to take advantage of this knowledge. Solar energy panels could be a good idea? It is possible to run your entire property by using solar power, whether you mount them on the roof or set it up so that they are appropriately angled within your garden. One of the ways to save electricity is to cut down on its extraction from the grid and to reduce the size of your footprint. We all need to buy energy-efficient shoes that fit us, rather than continuing with this extravagant way of life. Turn your water heater thermostat down a notch and try to avoid using electricity to heat your water, as it is very inefficient. Did you know that two thirds of the energy used to produce that electricity, the product that you use to heat your water, is actually lost as it is being distributed to you? For efficiency’s sake, oil or gas fired water heaters are much better, more highly efficient and will be far more beneficial when it comes to helping the environment as well.

We seem so engrossed as we run in place, just to make ends meet, that we are not capable of standing back and looking at the bigger picture any more. Why are we so grossly inefficient at the way that we run our lives? This must be a consequence of many years of relatively good times, when we didn’t need to worry about the sheer amount of petrol that our cars used, or the fact that we have become completely reliant on our cars just to exist these days. It’s been so long since we had a recession, we can’t remember what it is all about and some of us are too young anyway, being forced to read about these downturns in reference books! Perhaps it was time for a wake-up call, but time or not we have certainly received one.

We can clearly see that we can no longer rely on mechanical energy to help us to do absolutely everything. Energy inefficiency has led to huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, causing damage to the environment and forcing us to consider major changes, right now. We have been able to analyse the situation quite well and talk about the benefits of renewable energy, but we’re certainly not helping the environment by diverting the funds we should be investing in development, failing to allow these options to do any good.

“The Great Recession,” as it has become known, has now shown us how vulnerable we are to a downturn and how we all have little to fall back on in hard times. Now, efficiency is everything and this most definitely includes the use of energy. We need to learn to turn things off, to think of alternatives and not to opt for the path of least resistance. We must review our transportation habits and not clog the roads with single occupant vehicles each and every day as we go back and forth to work.

If you happen to be the decision-maker either at home or in the office, come up with ways to save electricity and then put an action plan in place. Insist that your family turns off all the lights, turn up the thermostats by a notch - don’t allow them to be altered, and make sure that all family members wash clothes at the same time and not individually, and generally be a better keeper of the space that you occupy.

We shouldn’t rely on politicians to do our work for us. Few seem to doubt the validity of those environmental claims, but political agendas are still getting in the way of making any headway. Just look at what failed to come out of that summit of “leaders” in Copenhagen - inaction once again.

While politicians may well try and force big business to address the issues, we shouldn’t wait for this. If we all do our own bit, we can save ourselves money by steadily reducing our energy use and our own carbon footprints every day, and although we can’t get this all done by ourselves, we can achieve real results if we all work together. Start right away by putting “people power” into action and let’s all enjoy the journey, taking advantage of the fact that there are billions of us around the world with an almost unbelievable combined potential – but only if we act now!