Help Save The Earth & Your Budget: Energy Efficiency For The Hottest Months

It’s a hot one this summer, and with global warming it’s only going to grow hotter in the coming years. Although very few areas have been affected by blackouts, conserving energy is a good idea any time of the year. Here are a few things your office can do this summer—and the whole year through—to conserve energy. It’ll benefit both your bills and Mother Nature.

Short-Term Option: Powering Down

The highest energy usage comes from office computers, servers, lighting and supplementary air conditioning—a whopping 90 percent.  The ‘power down’ or ‘sleep’ option on many PCs is a great way to save up to 70 percent of the energy that is usually consumed when at full power. A good rule of thumb to remember: screen savers save the screen, not energy. Another option to save energy is to reduce the brightness of your screen: bringing it down to 50 percent can reduce energy usage by around 40 percent.

When you leave, you should power down your machine for good. Turn off the computer and other office equipment at the power point; don’t leave your machines in standby mode. The rest of your offices accoutrements like lights, monitors, etc, should be turned off at the end of each working day. If you have too many to take care of, set them up on timers that make sure the equipment is off when no one is in the office.

Long-Term Option: From Energy Gut Buster To Energy Efficient

Of course, the best option is to switch any energy-eating equipment to energy efficient as soon as you can. This can be as easy to installing more efficient light globes to installing solar power. A few other options: sky lights, better insulation and retrofitting, LCD display screens, and a vast amount of Energy Star compliant models of computers, monitors, printers, fax machines and copiers.

Although this sounds like pretty simple advice, you’d be surprised to find out how few people actually follow these rules. Changing a few light globes and unplugging your laptop may not seem like much, but these actions could have some cool returns in the end.