How to Save Money on Electricity by Reducing Your Carbon Footprint by 90%

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The Riot For Austerity was a project originally started in 2007 by Peak Oil writer Sharon Astyk, who wanted to reduce her carbon footprint by 90%, which was the level of reduction deemed necessary for affluent nations by peak oil expert, George Monbiot.

Astyk has revived the project and is again challenging people to reduce their impact by 90% in seven areas Transportation Energy, Electricity, Other Fuels, Water, Garbage Food, and Consumer Goods. Of course, reducing the impact of your electricity use may not mean reducing your electricty bills by 90%, it may mean increasing them by paying for “green energy”. But even so, you would still want to reduce your electricity use as much as possible. Investing in solar panels may be the easiest way to reduce your bills – even by 100% – but of course it carries with it an up front cost.

So how can you save money on electricity as well as reducing your carbon footprint?

Start with a home power audit. You can do this yourself with a hand held power metre that will cost you around $20-40 from your local hardware store. Begin by figuring out how much electricity you are using now, either by taking a reading on your electricity meter one week, and then repeating it at the same time a week later, or by refering to your power bills.

Next, go around to each appliance in your house and plug them into the power metre, while turned on, in standby and turned off, and record how much energy they are drawing in each mode. This will give you an idea of just how you are using your energy – and you may be surprised to discover just how much of it is being spent on appliances either in standby or actually turned off, but still plugged in at the wall.  How much is that toaster drawing for instance?

Once you have your power audit completed (and if this sounds too complicated or too time consuming to you, you can always hire a professional to do it for you), you can make some decisions about how you will reduce your power use.

You might want to start with the following ideas:

  • Unplug your appliances when they are not in use, or turn them off at the wall if you can.
  • Never leave anything on standby that doesn’t really have to be.
  • Change out your tradional incandescent light bulbs for CFLs or (where possible) LEDs
  • Check your house for drafts – a lot of heat is lost through poorly sealed windows and doors.
  • Insulate your home – this will help with keeping the heat in during winter and out during summer.
  • Make sure there is enough room around your fridge – many fridges operate at significantly lower efficiencies than their advertised level, simply because they heat up the space around them so effectively.
  • Consider replacing some of your older appliances with more energy efficient models – but consider the embodied energy in your exisiting appliance (and of course the cost of upgrading), when deciding what to upgrade and what to keep.

When you begin looking at your energy use you may be surprised to discover how much you can reduce it with simple changes. Okay, you probably won’t bring it down by 90% without some radical changes, but you can make a significant difference. So why not get started now?

Kirsten McCulloch is a freelance Australian writer with a passion for eco-friendly living. You can find more of her writing at online sustainable living magazine, Sustainable Suburbia.