Energy Efficiency and Renewable Resources

Energy Efficiency

What is energy efficiency? Basically, it’s all about doing more (or the same) with less. We increase energy efficiency when we are able to decrease the amount of energy needed to accomplish work (say, heating a home or running a dishwasher) while still getting the work done, or conversely, when we are able to increase the amount of work accomplished while continuing to use the same amount of energy. Technological advances allow us to do just that!

Why Is Energy Efficiency Important?

Energy usage has an enormous impact on the environment. For far too long, the Midwest – and the U.S. as a whole – has been dependent on dirty fossil fuel energy sources for electricity generation. Pollution from the use of these fuels directly contributes to global warming and creates numerous serious and negative impacts on human health and the environment.

Several options exist for reducing our consumption of electricity and thereby reducing the pollution generated through electricity generation. We can reduce our use of the services electricity provides (e.g. by turning off the lights when leaving a room). We can improve energy efficiency in our use of electricity (e.g. by using compact fluorescent light bulbs which consume less electricity while providing the same amount of light.

Improving energy efficiency is important well beyond our use of electricity. Many Americans heat their homes with natural gas furnaces. Obviously, heating a smaller home will tend to require less natural gas (i.e. energy usage) than heating a larger home. There are also numerous options available to homeowners that decrease the amount of natural gas necessary to stay warm. These improvements keep heat in and cold out, thereby increasing energy efficiency. What’s more, most of these improvements increase efficiency regardless of the season: retaining heat during the winter necessarily translates into retaining cold during the summer, and decreases the amount of electricity used for air conditioning.

With skyrocketing energy costs, improvements in energy efficiency – and reductions in energy usage – can not only reduce negative impacts to our environment and to our health, they can save us money! The more efficiently we use energy, the less we pollute and the more money we save. It’s as simple as that.

Learn more at Globalwarmingsolutions.org.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy comes from the sun, wind, plants, the tides, and other sources. Harnessing energy from these sources is profoundly more environmentally-friendly than harnessing energy from non-renewable sources such as oil, natural gas and coal. When compared with the use of energy from traditional sources, renewable energy usage results in cleaner air, cleaner water, less harmful waste, and a generally healthier environment.