IT is energy efficient and can save you money. It is a good investment and can help the environment. It leads to less dependence on foreign oil and provides self-sustainability.
IT is renewable energy — solar, wind, water, or the earth’s warmth.
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Starting this spring I have been experimenting with using a reel mower to cut my grass. With all the rain we have had I have been using it just about every weekend and it’s been a lot of fun (and a lot of work).
The obvious benefit has been not spending money on fuel for a traditional gas lawn mower. Because this type of mower takes considerably more effort I have also gotten a nice total body workout. Additionally it is much easier to store, and can even be kept inside your home as there are no hazardous materials involved.
MyEnergyPlan
It is called MyEnergyPlan.net. There are 4 main sections to this website: the Personal Energy Planner, the Energy Notebook, the Energy Project Connector, and the Green Homes Tourist.
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 Energy Emporium, 10/24/09 |
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Sat, Oct 24, 2009: Today is the International Day of Climate Action! I added a couple of signs to my store window to try to spread the message. Look for lots of interesting pictures from around the world: 350.org
Also, I signed up for the Huffington Post’s week of ‘no impact’. Each day they send me a suggested no impact action that I can take. For instance, Tuesday was focused on transportation — riding to work or sharing a ride. Monday was trash day — pay attention to everything you throw out and try to recycle instead. Today was food day — see if you can buy and eat only local foods to keep down the amount of transportation that was needed to get it to you.
I think this is a great idea and I would like to pick a few weeks in the year to try this. It is not unlike the program I am working on with my spinning class (exercise) — tracking everything we eat and counting all the calories that we exert. Basically if you measure stuff you have an opportunity to improve it.
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350.org
Unfortunately we past 350ppm a few decades ago and we are quickly exceeding 385 ppm right now. I was recently told about a website, 350.org, which is trying raise awareness of carbon dioxide numbers today, goals that we should be striving for, and what we can do to help. It is a world-wide organization and the information is available in many languages. I like their intro video because it was done without text or speech — all pictures. Check it out: 350 mission.
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Solar PV Modules
Here are some reasons why you might have already started your plans towards fuel savings and a greener future:
Clothes pins
There are a number of residential associations that don’t allow the home-owner to dry their clothes out in the air. Vermont just passed a law that will not allow associations or groups to restrict a person’s right to dry their clothes outdoors: “Vermonters win their right to dry”.
My dryer uses 2500 Watts for about 40 minutes to dry clothes. If I do 2 loads of laundry a week, thats 172,000 Watts every year just for the dryer ($25-30). More importantly it is electricity I don’t need to use and I get the added benefit of clean fresh smell and no shrinkage. I’m guessing there are people who really don’t have an option to dry their clothes outside… but it would be great to know that it can’t be restricted if you want to take advantage of this energy saving measure and help reduce your carbon footprint. Go Vermont!!
Guest posting today.
I work for Linden Lab, the company that makes Second Life.
Second Life is the largest non-game virtual world today — we have more than a million unique users every month, and over 7000 individual servers. At a couple of hundred watts per server, that adds up to a lot of power.
A couple of weeks ago, Linden Lab had a blog post on its corporate site that talked about Second Life and its business in the context of power consumption.
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Stop Idling sign
I have been thinking about it a lot lately because I really do like to put the car in park, jump out for the quick run into the post office or to buy a newspaper. I found a bunch of signs on the internet that I found interesting and added to this blog.
My cousin Leslie sent me this link over the weekend for Wattzon.com. Here is how they describe this site: “WattzOn is a free online tool to quantify, track, compare and understand the total amount of energy needed to support all of the facets of your lifestyle”.
I really like the concept of measuring energy usage for each of us and I’ve looked at a number of different online calculators that help determine an individual’s energy usage or carbon footprint.
