To Meet Home Purchasing, Remodeling Boom, Alliance to Save Energy's Free ‘Power$mart’ Booklet Provides Easy Home 'Investment' Tips to Cut Energy Bills, Pollution | Alliance to Save Energy

To Meet Home Purchasing, Remodeling Boom, Alliance to Save Energy's Free ‘Power$mart’ Booklet Provides Easy Home 'Investment' Tips to Cut Energy Bills, Pollution

The Alliance to Save Energy News

To Meet Home Purchasing, Remodeling Boom, Alliance to Save Energy's Free ‘Power$mart’ Booklet Provides Easy Home 'Investment' Tips to Cut Energy Bills, Pollution

Release Date: Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Are you Power$mart?

As the lowest mortgage rates in a decade and the stock market slide spur a boom in home buying and home remodeling, the Alliance to Save Energy encourages homeowners to invest in home energy-efficiency improvements that will pay personal and environmental dividends for years.

To help consumers make wise energy choices that meet their lifestyles and needs, the Alliance offers a free updated booklet based on new market research with homeowners—Power$mart: Easy Tips to Save Money and the Planet. Responding to consumer requests, the Alliance booklet now provides a tri-fold, tear-out checklist to track specific energy-efficient purchases, low-cost home improvements, and no cost energy conscious behaviors.

Packed with easy-to-read tips for use by homeowners, educators, students, and shoppers, the booklet demonstrates how smart, energy-efficient technologies can easily cut home energy bills, energy use, needless air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions and increase home comfort without sacrifice.

Delightful illustrations in Power$mart follow a family of four and its dog on a home energy treasure hunt as they capture lost energy dollars and discover ways to save money, increase their comfort, reduce pollution, and relax afterward while these benefits continue year after year with little additional effort.

Here's a sampling of tips:

  • 4 for the planet. Replace four 100-watt incandescent bulbs that burn four or more hours a day with four comparable 23-watt compact fluorescent bulbs to save 1,356 kW-hours of electricity and $108 over three years. If all U.S. households did the same, we’d save as much energy as is consumed by 7 million cars in one year!
  • Be an "energy star." As heating and cooling equipment, appliances, computers and office equipment, windows, lighting fixtures, and consumer electronics break down or no longer meet your needs, replace them with products bearing the ENERGY STAR label (symbol for energy efficiency) to cut related annual energy expenditures up to 30 percent.
  • Drought protection — save water and energy. Check out horizontal axis (front-loading) and other ENERGY STAR washers that use less water and energy yet get clothes as clean.
  • Tired of awakening to a chilly bedroom in winter or coming home to a stuffy house in summer? A programmable thermostat will automatically coordinate your home temperature with your daily and weekend patterns to increase comfort and monetary savings.
  • Plug energy “leaks” with appropriate insulation, weather-stripping, low-e windows, and technology to reduce electricity used by idle (turned off) electronics and appliances. Idle TVs, VCRs, cable boxes, CD players, cassette decks, cordless phones, burglar alarms, and microwaves continue to consume energy when switched off to keep display clocks lit and memory chips and remote controls working—costing consumers $3 billion annually.
  • Obtain a home energy rating to determine a home’s relative energy efficiency prior to purchasing to see what upgrades would have the greatest payoff.
  • Activate “sleep” features on computers and office equipment that power down when the equipment is on but not in use for a while. Turn off equipment during long periods of non-use to cut costs and improve longevity. Turn off lights, TVs, and other electronic items that are not being used to avoid unnecessary energy costs and waste.
  • Consider safer, more efficient ENERGY STAR torchieres over popular halogen torchiere lamps which can CAUSE FIRES, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. While relatively inexpensive to purchase, they are expensive to operate.

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