Category Archives: energy education

I Always Come Home To The Residential Market – It’s because that is where we live

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I know I write about all kinds of things like: the Russian Invasion of Ukraine or environmental disasters. But where this Blog started out was in the residential market. You know all the boring stuff. Improved air conditioning, or painting your roof white or insulating your water heater. Then I veer off in to “bugs that eat plastics” or Wind Turbines when I should be talking about energy efficient appliances. So without further ado here are 15 ways to use energy more better in your home.

Top 15 Home Energy Efficiency Upgrades and Their Costs in 2021

Top 15 Home Energy Efficiency Upgrades and Their Costs in 2021

Energy efficiency is not just a trend that people with money follow because it’s cool to be green. No. It’s a real way to reduce your carbon footprint and your monthly costs in the long run.

It’s true that big changes like switching to solar energy require significant investments but you will recover and even save money in the upcoming years.

Enough talking, let’s see exactly what can be done to make your house more energy efficient. It’s recommended to start with little things and work your way up to the most expensive changes.

Maximize the use of natural light

The first thing to do to lower your energy bill is let the light in (obviously). For that purpose, install large windows.

Avoid light blocking treatments and use instead shades that can be opened at will. This way, you get darkness and light whenever you want. Place mirrors on the walls adjacent or opposite to windows. The idea is to have many reflective surfaces that create the illusion of light and spaciousness.

Install energy efficient windows

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Go there and read all 15. More next week.

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Advice On Saving Energy At Home – Not from me mind you, someone who creates content for CIELOWiggle

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I know it has been awhile since I did a residential post. I know this started out as a blog about residential energy needs and services. You know, energy efficient roofs, HVAC equipment and other such stuff. But years ago, I got off on energy related environmental stuff and then eventually Global Warming. Then anti-Nuclear stuff. Finally just raw Environmental stuff like obnoxious polluting and horrible deaths. Well today a gentleman named Chris Winters reached out and touched me so I am touching him back, so to speak. As always, I can vouch for his tips because they are somewhat general, but anything specific he is pitching I can not (For instance AC controllers – which his company sells). Also I may have put up this as an addenda to any earlier piece, so if i did forgive me.

https://www.cielowigle.com/blog/energy-saving-tips/

No matter what the season, energy usage tends to increase one way or another. With long running air conditioning and increased wash cycles of sweaty laundry in summer, to high heating usage and wash cycles of bulkier laundry in winter, we simply cannot operate without electricity.

We can be extremely energy efficient and follow energy saving tips and tricks to ingrain some environmentally friendly habits.

Following energy saving tips is essential to lower your costs, but it is also important to decrease your ecological footprint.

With millennials and Gen Z nicknamed “generation green”, there is a strong focus on energy saving, and rightly so. However, global warming is rising more rapidly than ever, and the term ‘climate emergency’ is being used rather than climate change to highlight the situation’s intensity.

All industries such as HVAC are revolutionizing their technology to act on climate change. Since home appliances and devices are a major contributor to our energy consumption, utilizing smart devices such as smart thermostats or smart controllers for air conditioners can make a huge difference on your bills!

Let’s get right to it. Here are 21 energy saving tips that can easily help you decrease your energy consumption:

1. Use Energy Efficient Appliances

Energy efficient appliances are specially designed to consume minimum energy to complete the same tasks that you’d perform with normal appliances.  In addition, some

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Good there and read. More next week.

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Energy Web Site Home Builders And Owners Will Love

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Every once in awhile I return to CES’ residential roots. So, here is another pass. You know what I say in these situations – Buyer Beware. This site looks really really good. I think it is sexy that it is a nonprofit organization. But I have never used this organization. I am a homeowner who has made very little in the way of energy IMPROVEments – insulation, metal roof and efficient air conditioner but the furnace in my house is 20 years old. Nonetheless these people look cool.

https://zeroenergyproject.org/our-mission/

The Zero Energy Project is a non-profit educational organization whose goal is to help home buyers, builders, designers, and real estate professionals take meaningful steps towards radically reducing carbon emissions and energy bills by building zero net energy homes and near zero energy homes. We envision the day when positive energy homes, which produce more energy than they consume, will power electric vehicles as well as homes, so that everyone can live well with less expense and without fear of energy price spikes, while greatly reducing our carbon emissions.

The mission of the Zero Energy Project is to provide information and education to prospective home buyers, builders, designers, real estate professionals and advocates about zero net energy homes and to advance the prevalence of these homes in the mainstream housing market. We seek to facilitate connections between industry professionals and buyers, remove perceived barriers to entry, and provide resources to people from all walks of life, empowering action towards a robust zero energy built environment.

 

We aim to provide all stakeholders with the necessary resources for understanding, designing, constructing, and selling affordable zero energy homes. We are committed to providing homebuilders, designers, and realtors with the marketing tools they need to convince their clients of the benefits of zero net energy homes.

This mission takes on new urgency in light of “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.”

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Go there and fool around. More next week.

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Unions And Climate Change – Some of their stances are just bad

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As A HUGE disclaimer, my wife are both union members. Our prents were Union members. My great grandfather was a card carrying Socialist and ran for City Alderman in Chicago as such. So I believe in Unions. But when they get stuck on saving jobs no matter what. They get a little lost and sometimes real lost. These becomes apparent with police unions – though appropo to this topic. They protect bad cops for jobs sake. Well, the IBEW and other unions are no better. Instead of saying, “We will change power plant jobs for better jobs in the green sector”. They say, “We will not lose the jobs we have”. They act like it is heroic when it is pathetic.

https://www.vox.com/2019/5/22/18628299/green-new-deal-labor-union-2020-democrats

The Green New Deal is fracturing a critical base for Democrats: unions

National labor leaders oppose the Green New Deal but some state unions endorse it. That’s a challenge for presidential contenders.

By Umair Irfan Updated

As a statement of principles and goals, the Green New Deal seems to take economic justice and workers’ rights pretty seriously. It calls for a federal jobs guarantee. It says we need workforce retraining, strengthening collective bargaining rights, retirement security, and universal health care.

The resolution decries “antilabor policies” and says it must be fleshed out with input from “frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, [and] worker cooperatives,” with the goal of creating “high-quality union jobs.”

Which is why it was so surprising that the leader of the national AFL-CIO — the largest federation of labor unions in the United States, representing more than 12.5 million workers — recently came out against the proposal.

“We weren’t part of the process, so the worker’s interest wasn’t really figured into it,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said in April. “We would want a whole bunch of changes made so that workers and our jobs are protected in the process.”

(Disclosure: I was on the bargaining committee of the Vox Media Union. We organized with Writers Guild of America, East, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.)

But this week, Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed her state’s version of a Green New Deal with the backing of labor unions.

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Go there and read. More next week

 

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Chernobyl Awakes – What is going on at mankind’s biggest screw up

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I do not normally post videos. It seems to defeat the purpose of a print blog. But in this case, because some people maybe trying to spread panic, and disinformation. This is a succinct way to show that the Russians have the situation at least somewhat under control.

https://digg.com/video/heres-a-comprehensive-breakdown-of-why-nuclear-reactions-at-chernobyl-are-spiking

It’s only 12 minutes long so it is not a large portion of you life.

Here is a bonus link for you gardeners out there:

https://backyard54.com/p/square-foot-gardening/231

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Go there and listen. sigh. More next week.

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New Improved Better Outstanding Sites – Or at least that’s what they say

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I preface this whole page by saying – I AM RETIRED. So I have gotten lazy. Periodically I get requests to LINK to other sites, or – we read your post and would you publish this ARTICLE, and other related requests. The best that I can do is everyonce in awhile I post their links in a combined page like this:

40 Differences Between Commercial and Residential Air Conditioning

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Then there is this:

NO NEED TO BE A HERO TO SAVE ENERGY

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Then there is this:

By the way, I am not sure I think running is good for you but it does save transportation costs. Run Forrest Fun.

How to Develop a Lasting Running Habit

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Or this, which is more on topic:

How to stop climate change from the comfort of your home

Finally for today:

https://www.buildingmaterials.co.uk/nuts-and-bolts/resources/how-to-make-your-home-more-energy-efficient/

How to make your home more energy efficient in the UK

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Go there and enjoy. More next week.

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We Can Make A Change – If we all pull together we can make big change

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Periodically I try to be up beat. With the Pandemic and all the doom coming out of the environmental community I thought I would say, “We can do things together”! The place to start is small. Ride your bike. Recycle and reduce your garbage. Compost. Walk places when you can. Take the steps not the elevator. I do all of those things and everyday I try to think of more things I can do. Anyway, here are some thoughts on the things we can achieve. Stay safe out there.

What lifestyle changes will shrink your carbon footprint the most?

By Christie Aschwanden

Three years ago, Kim Cobb was feeling “completely overwhelmed” by the problem of climate change. Cobb spends her days studying climate change as director of the Global Change Program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, but she felt paralyzed over how to be part of the solution in her personal life. The barriers felt immense.

She decided to start small. On January 1, 2017, she made a personal climate resolution: She would walk her kids to school and bicycle to work two days a week. That change didn’t represent a lot in terms of carbon emissions, she says, “but it was a huge lesson in daily engagement.”

In the beginning, her modest goal seemed daunting, but she quickly discovered that the two simple activities nourished her physical and mental well-being. She wanted to do them every day. “It’s no longer for the carbon — it’s for the fact that I genuinely love riding my bike and walking my kids to school,” she says. And that made her wonder: What other steps was she thinking of as sacrifices that might actually enrich her life?

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I Am Not Having Kids – Some people get way to carried away with environment issues

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There are people that live their lives to right environmental wrongs. Then there are people who live their lives according environmental principles. Sometimes the two meet in a happy medium. Then there are people who over do it. To those people I say stop. (no exclamation mark) Don’t be vegetarian to “save the planet”. It will not. Don’t have children to make the “world a better place”. It will not. Do those things if they make you feel good and you will have a better life. But if you want to have 3 kids- and you can love them and afford them,  then do that thing.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/13/21132013/climate-change-children-kids-anti-natalism

Having fewer kids will not save the climate

Some say you shouldn’t have children in the era of climate change. Don’t buy it.

By Sigal Samuel

A growing contingent of young people are refusing to have kids — or are considering having fewer kids — because of climate change. Their voices have been growing louder over the past year. UK women set up a movement called BirthStrike, announcing that they won’t procreate until the world gets its act together on climate, and high-profile US figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez amplified the question of whether childbearing is still morally acceptable.

One of the main worries cited by this contingent is that having a child will make climate change worse. Their logic is that anytime you have a kid you’re doing something bad for the planet. You’re adding yet another person who’ll cause more carbon emissions, plus their children, plus their grandchildren … and so on, in a never-ending cascade of procreative shame.

Driving this logic are studies claiming to show that having a child leads to a gargantuan amount of carbon emissions — way, way more than the emissions generated by other lifestyle choices, like driving a car or eating meat. Media reports have trumpeted the takeaway that if you want to fight climate change, having fewer children is far and away the best thing you can do.

But that’s just not true, according to a new report by Founders Pledge, an organization that guides entrepreneurs committed to donating a portion of their proceeds to effective charities.

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America Wastes More Energy Than It Uses – This is so disturbing that it could kill us

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Think about it. Global Warming is speeding up and this could be why. We are literally consuming ourselves to death with no mechanism to stop it. Should we start singing “Good Night Irene”?

https://digg.com/2020/how-america-uses-its-energy-visualized

WHAT AMERICA RUNS ON

How America Uses Its Energy, Visualized

Digg · Updated:

America is consuming more energy than ever before, according to the Energy Information Administration. With scientists sounding the alarm that we need to reduce our usage of greenhouse gas-intensive fuels soon, it’s interesting to take a look at what sources from which we derive all of our energy.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory crunched the numbers, looking through data from the EIA, and produced an energy flow chart depicting energy by sector and source — including solar, nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, geothermal, natural gas, coal, biomass and petroleum. See the full-sized image here.

One key takeaway from the energy flow chart is how much energy we waste (labeled in the chart as “rejected energy”), the vast majority of which seemingly comes from fossil fuel sources. The reason why “rejected energy,” the waste heat resulting from the process of electricity generation, occupies such a large part of the system is mostly due to the inefficiency of our current energy systems.

And as you can also see from the chart, despite the dogged efforts of figures like Elon Musk, who has grand ambitions for his solar business, America’s biggest energy product is still petroleum.

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Go there and stare. There is no more to read. More if there is a next week.

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We Are Going Over The Climate Cliff – At least these people are trying

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Natural Gas will be the death of us. Let me repeat that. Natural Gas will be the death of us. Why? Because Capitalists will sell it as a bridge to renewables and humans will die half way across the bridge. Let’s be honest, METHANE is a much more corrosive long lasting green house gas. While using natural gas will decrease the Volume of green houses gases. It will speed up Climate Change. Humans do not want to face up to what is killing us – Greed sped on by a pernicious economic system. If we stopped venting green house gases tomorrow it would be a 100 years before the effects wore off. We are not stopping today, are we?

Illinois offering affordable solar installation for low-income housing

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Go there and read. More next week.

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