Residential Energy: Are You Bogarting?
One of the magic wands being waved around as an elixir to cure climate change is the notion of efficiency gains. This remedial ‘wedge’ (each remedial wedge closes the alligator jaws on the greenhouse gas chart just a little more) is nothing to scoff at as it is one of the least expensive ways to make headway on the challenge. One place where most of us can get to work immediately is in the home. There are some nice supporting gadgets I’ll get to in a minute.
So to get started point to this Residential Energy Efficiency Calculator: ResEff Calculator (you will need to have a program that can work with Excel files on your computer). The program will spit out your household’s per capita energy consumption for the year (all the common residential fuels are covered) and compare that to results from around the world (for the most recent year of data I could find) and if you are like most of us you will soon discover your energy profligacy. If you run the calculator and find that your consumption exceeds the world average then you can undoubtedly bring yourself into harmony by installing and using the set of devices I will describe below.
To get an accurate calculator result, you need to have some data at your disposal. Things like how much electricity or gas or other fuels your home consumed during a given year. You also need to know how many people lived in the residence (most of us shouldn’t have much trouble with that one) and how many hours per week each of the residents worked outside the residence. If you live in a condo or coop or any form of associative style, you need to include the common energy consumption on a separate line as well as your percentage share of common ownership. This info is usually available in annual reports or from the management office.
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