Re-Thinking Energy in Homes

Pretty much everything we do requires energy. Over the centuries, we have tapped different energy sources to heat, cool, cook and light up the dark. Fire was one of the earliest one-stop energy sources, as was sunlight. In fact, as early as the 1890s, solar water heaters were used in California. By the 1920s, though solar systems had spread to Arizona and Florida, low-cost oil and natural gas systems edged solar out.

Today, we turn on lights that are connected to the electricity grid. We fire up stoves through electricity or natural gas lines. And the heaters we use to warm our homes and the air conditioners and fans we use to cool them run on oil, natural gas and electricity.

Because fossil fuel-based energy sources produce a lot of heat-trapping pollution, and renewable sources little or none, our energy choices are critical to stopping global warming.

Energy savings add up

U.S. households produce 21 percent of the country's global warming pollution. That's more pollution than the entire heat-trapping output of the United Kingdom. The good thing is that energy-conscious families can reduce their emissions by up to two-thirds. If every household in the U.S. made energy-efficient choices, we could save 800 million tons of global warming pollution — more than the heat-trapping emissions from over 100 countries. That would go a long way toward stabilizing our climate.

New and emerging technologies can also reduce our production of heat-trapping gases. By choosing green power, you can use electricity that produces little or no global warming pollution.

What is efficiency?

Energy efficiency is about using less energy to achieve the same results. Because energy cannot be created or destroyed, using energy converts it into useful output and useless output, such as pollution.

Take the very inefficient incandescent light bulb, for example. If you've ever touched a traditional bulb that's been on for a while, you have discovered its inefficiency — it produces more heat than light. That means that all the bulbs burning in your home are wasting electricity and costing you more money. Newer, more efficient bulbs such as compact fluorescents, convert more energy into light and less into heat.

Yesterday's power plants

Sadly, many of our energy-hungry machines — including power plants — are not very efficient. Our most common way of generating electricity provides a good example of this. At many turbine power plants, coal is burned in a boiler to produce steam. The heat turns the turbine blades, which turn the shaft in the generator to produce electricity.

So what's the problem? Transforming coal to steam in this way is inefficient — it produces a little electricity and a lot of pollution. Producing electricity more efficiently both cuts pollution and provides more useful energy. New clean-burning technologies are one way to achieve this. Replacing old power plants with modern ones is another. In addition, there's also something called co-generation, which uses the waste heat of generated electricity to heat homes and businesses.

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