Many students using our footprint calculator said that they could not pledge to reduce their home footprints because they were not making the decisions for the household. Here is your chance to design your own sustainable virtual household!
If you had your own home, what would you do to make it more energy efficient? Where would you get your electricity from? Where would your house be? Would you live near to your school or work or local transit options? Where would you get your food from?
MY Family Footprint >
Energy Smart Air Conditioning
When the summer months come around and the outdoors are hot, most people retreat indoors where there is cold air conditioning all the time. However you may not realize that your air conditioning system may be running all the time, consuming more and more energy. This is great when you're inside your house and using it, but what about when you're not home?
My family just recently bought a new air conditioning system that has sensors that track movement within the house. If it doesn't sense people inside, then it shuts off the energy going to the air conditioning and doesn't cool the house. You can also program it to not drop below or rise above a certain temperature. This can even cut off about 20% of your energy usage and air conditioning bills. This is a great system for people who live in warmer areas and use their air conditioning frequently, but leave it on when they leave.
It can be programmed to be off whenever you leave for work so that your don't think about the energy consumption levels growing.
I'm very happy that I am helping the environment and reducing my carbon footprint in this small and simple way.
LINKS:
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/new-data-s … 0-percent/
https://www.directenergy.com/faqs/alber … thermostat