A reader named Mary recently asked the following:

Could you please tell me how much it costs to run a 100 watt incandescent lightbulb for 8 hours/day over the course of a year? Could you then compare the cost for a year with a compact fluorescent lightbulb? Which wattage CFL would to replace a 100 watt incandescent bulb? I’m new at this. Thanks for your response.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of CFLs, so I think that this is a great question.

Here’s the answer… [more]

This is just a quick reminder to change your furnace filters this weekend if you haven’t done so in awhile. Your heat and air system will run much more efficiently with clean filters, meaning less energy consumption and lower energy bills.

While my goal is to do this monthly, I typically forget to do it until I here the wind whistling through the clogged filters in our air returns. So…

This reminder is as much for me as it is for you.

I heard on the news last night that some well meaning (but misguided) souls have been trying to arrange for yet another gas boycott to protest increasing prices. Unfortunately, gas boycotts don’t work — and for good reason. People don’t actually drive less. Rather, they fill up the day before or the day after, but end up using just as much gas. In other words, overall demand is unchanged, and the boycott has no effect whatsoever.

If you want to make a difference, the answer is simple: drive less.

I just ran across an interesting article about renewable energy over at the Green Tech weblog. In it, they break down the type of investment that would be required to replace the energy provided by a cubic mile of oil (CMO).

In case you’re not aware (as I wasn’t), a CMO is a measure of energy consumption. Apparently the world consumes slightly more than one CMO worth of energy from oil per year, and the equivalent of three CMOs from all energy sources. Over 80% of this total energy usage comes from fossil fuels, including oil, coal, and natural gas (see graph, below). [more]

The extent to which frugality and Earth-friendliness intersect has always been interesting to me. Thus, I read with great interest an article call “Conserve Your Energy” in the most recent issue of Reader’s Digest. In short, this article was pitched as a “guide to effortless environmentalism,” essnetially targeting the well meaning but lazy amongst us.

I’ve written about simple ways to save money and the planet in the past, and this article is a great followup. So what do they recommend? [more]

On our way home from vacation this past weekend, I paid over $50 to fill up on gas for the first time ever. I knew this day was coming sooner or later, as I’ve flirted with this number at times in the past, and I also regularly see $70-$80 (or more) purchases when I pull up to a pump after a big SUV pulls away. But still… It was a bit unsettling to stand there and watch the numbers scroll by until they settled just shy of $58. [more]

In case you haven’t heard, Congress recently approved an 822 page energy bill (known as the Energy Independence and Security Act) that President Bush is expected to sign into law. This bill is expected to reduce energy usage by 7% and carbon dioxide emissions by 9% in 2030. Excuse me? It’s going to take 23 years to achieve a less than 10% improvement in energy use and carbon emissions? I haven’t read the bill, but I’m assuming that this is on a per capita basis, so with continued population growth, there will likely be a net increase in energy usage over that timeframe (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong).

With that said, let’s take a look at some of the changes that are in store. Again, I haven’t read the bill myself, so these bits are captured from various media reports that I’ve run across. [more]

Are you in the market for compact fluorescent lightbulbs?

If so, then check this out…

During a recent trip to Lowe’s, I discovered that they’re running a 2-for-1 deal on 4-packs of 13W compact fluorescent bulbs (Item #146558). This brings the price down to $7.98 for 8 bulbs, or a buck apiece. These bulbs are equivalent to 60W incandescent bulbs in terms of brightness, and this particular make performs quite well — they come on instantly, require minimal warmup to achieve full intensity, and the light quality is pretty darn good. According to the sign, the offer runs through January 1st.

All of this being said… It might be a “your mileage may vary” sort of thing, as the other store in town wasn’t aware of the special (though they honored it when I brought it to their attention). Nonetheless it can’t hurt to check.

For reference, these bulbs come in two different package types… [more]

Did you know that, according to the Earth Policy Institute, if the United States shifted entirely from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs, we could shut down 80 coal-fired (500 MW) power plants? And that if these changes were adopted worldwide, we’d be able to shut down 270 coal-fired power plants? [more]

Wow. We just got a whopper of an electric bill for August. For background, we live in a 3,000 square foot, entirely electric house in the relatively deep South. We’ve also been experiencing a scorching summer with numerous record-setting days, especially during the month of August. So how bad was it? $376,73. This is despite our best efforts to reduce our electrical usage by doing things such as switching over to compact fluorescent light bulbs throughout our house, insulating our garage door, and a variety of other energy saving tricks. We also have a relatively shady, somewhat wooded lot. [more]