Preserving electricity is important both for saving money and saving resources. Here is why we should save electricity daily.
Electricity has become a pretty readily available economy, particularly in the United States. We've become obsessed with consuming power through consumables and electronics.
When you save and conserve electricity, you inherently save money. It's a win-win all around. Monitoring my cash flow on Personal Capital is important. I'm definitely more income-driven than frugal.
There is a fine line between living stingy and frugal, so you have to pick your poison.
I think it's harder to grow your income than it is to reduce your expenses, so at a young age, you should focus on building a variety of income streams.
When you save and conserve electricity, you inherently save money. It's a win-win all around. Click To Tweet
I'll highlight why you should consider trimming your energy consumption to help the environment while also living more sustainably.
Table of Contents
Why Saving Energy is Important
Energy doesn't come from anywhere. We've realized the benefit of emerging renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind energy. Even in light of these technologies, they don't simply get made from anywhere.
They require some form of industrial and electrical manufacturing. We will need to properly dispose and recycle these products at the end of their useful life.
As a culture, we have become so consumed with products and electronics.
We simply assume that electricity and energy resources will be with us forever. That is not true. Join Arcadia Power and move to renewable energy without the need of installing it on your home. You don't even need to own your home. You can opt-in even as a renter.
If you use my link, you'll get an instant $20 credit on your electricity bill. That's a great way to save electricity.
Reasons Why You Should Save Electricity
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Saving electricity is not completely clear to a lot of people. We live in a society where power has never been a huge issue. We need to think outside the box and understand that it can't be taken for granted.
Here are several important reasons why you need to save electricity. Let's start with the most important part. Money.
Saving Electricity Means Saving Money
If you like to live stingy or frugal, by deploying energy efficiency retrofit programs you can save money instantly. You might need to put up some money upfront in order to reap savings down the road.
What's not to love about that? No one likes paying significant sums of money for a commodity like power or natural gas. It really is as simple as cutting consumption means saving money.
There are plenty of small things you can do to consume less electricity over time. It's usually the things you do to avoid consumption that ultimately provide the most amount of benefit.
Energy Efficiency Tips
- Lower the temperature on your water heater to 120°F or less; for every 10ºF reduction in temperature, you can save from 3%–5% on your water heating costs
- Use cold water to wash clothes (this can save you hundreds of dollars per year)
- Insulate the first few feet of water pipes connected to water heater (this will help keep the water warmer going in and yes it will keep it even warmer in the summer months)
If you need to understand how expensive your energy bill is, use a free app like Trim to help reduce and renegotiate high bills such as cable and utilities.
See Related: How to Become Financially Literate
Does Solar Make Sense as an Option?
Then, you should consider the higher cost options of moving to an off-grid or a solar-powered home. This would go a long way in building your home in a sustainable manner that has limited reliability on commodity costs.
With installing solar, you can instantly start saving money on your electric bill by using net metering, which essentially credits your electric bill. There are several providers that allow you to lease or loan the equipment, which will minimize your upfront capital costs.
Alternatively, you can install solar with by paying the full capital cost upfront. You can opt to try to go completely off the grid.
In this situation, you'd likely need to consider installing a battery energy storage system as you can only generate power with solar when the sun is shining.
You'll likely turn on your dishwasher, laundry and lights at night when the sun is no longer shining. You need to store the power that is generated during the day.
Let's get into a couple of the reasons why and how saving energy saves the environment.
Want to go solar?
You can save on energy and go solar without upfront capital cost by using Arcadia Power. Simply link your utility account and you will start to save money on your electric bill.
If you use my link, they will give you a $20 credit off your first electric bill. What's not to love?
See Related: How to Live Without a Job
Less Pollution and Fewer Greenhouse Gases
Burning fossil fuels for the production of electricity and power results in massive amounts of pollution into our atmosphere.
Some examples of ways electricity production can poison the environment include acid rain, soot, carbon dioxide, toxic gases and tarnished land. This is just from burning fossil fuels.
In order to get the fossil fuel, you will end up producing greenhouse gases. These resources require emissions heavy equipment to extract and mine, which tears apart land and trees.
By supporting these sources of energy, you are dangering the environment and our ecosystems.
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Decreased Usage of Fossil Fuels
Environment aside because it's obvious that by using fossil fuels you hurt the environment. It's actually proven that burning fossil fuels can be harmful to overall health as well.
People living near coal facilities have a much higher risk of health complications, including decreased fertility and higher cancer risk. Fossil fuels are a finite resource.
It pains me to see these resources getting consumed by big machinery over time.
They deplete our natural resources and destroy ecosystems over time.
See Related: 16 Pieces of Helpful Financial Advice
Lower Likelihood of Radioactive Pollution
Beyond fossil fuels comes with nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is massive in the United States. I still believe that people don't realize the frequency and how much power we get from nuclear energy.
It's a massive business. If you consume less, you are likely supporting less need for large baseload generation sources like nuclear energy. We can easily transition to things like solar and wind energy over time if we focus on consuming less energy.
Both wind and solar energy have increased in capacity in recent years. That's not going to cut it because these sources cannot fully serve as baseload energy.
See Related: How to Drastically Cut Expenses
Why is Saving Energy Important for the Environment
You do help save the environment by reducing your energy consumption. Clearly.
Rising human population has made dents in the environment in a variety of ways and overconsumption of electricity just one of those examples.
Follow this guide on some human-environmental interaction examples that will help you understand how people have altered ecosystems on Earth.
We've been living in a lifestyle that just assumes power will always be available, particularly in the United States. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
There are other countries that would kill for our low-cost power and technology. We take it for granted. Our consuming harms others abilities to consume low-cost power.
In fact, other countries around the world work hard to help keep up with American consumption. They profit off it.
Conclusion on Why Saving Electricity is Important
Why not save money while helping the environment? This is a great way to do something that has mutual benefit for you and others around the world.
Saving money on power is a logical decision that will have longer-term benefits beyond our lifetime. Start thinking about sustainability to live a better life and save money along the way.
Why do you like to save electricity? Here are some quick ways to save money and electricity at the same time:
- Consider turning off large scale appliances
- Find energy rebates that reward you for switching to energy-efficient components in your home like insulation, windows, water heaters and more
- Consider opting into solar energy programs or installing renewable energy sources at your home
- Ensure you have Energy Star appliances or less consumption heavy electronics
Are you ready to start saving electricity and the environment?
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