1) Change a Light.
Lighting accounts for more than 15% of the electricity used in a home, so you’ll see an immediate difference in your energy bill by changing incandescent lamps to the more energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).
The standard incandescent bulbs currently your home have changed very little from Thomas Edison's first light bulb in 1879. Only 10 percent of the energy used by these standard bulbs contribute to light; the other 90 percent is wasted as heat.
ENERGY STAR® -qualified compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use 75% less energy than an incandescent lighbulb, so they save you money. And CFLs last up to 10 times longer!
If you’ve never tried a CFL before, you might start by replacing lights that you don’t use directly every day, such as in a fixture you might leave on at night in your house, or in hard-to-reach areas to avoid excess replacements. Not climbing a ladder to replace a lightbulb is a great incentive to try a new technology!
Did you know? The average home has approximately 30 lights. By replacing the five most frequently used bulbs with ENERGY STAR-qualified bulbs, you can save more than $60 each year in energy costs? (based on a minimum life of 6,000 hours at $0.10 kWh). If every household in the US did this, we'd avoid the air pollution from power plants equivalent to 8 million cars! |