How can the World save energy?

The main consumers of energy in the world are cars, planes, heating and cooling systems and the general production and transportation of goods.

Reducing the energy consumption in these areas is vital to reduce the amount of energy the world uses. This requires making everything more efficient. However, this often requires lots of research and investment from governments in order to achieve this. Some of the ways forward could be:

• Improvement of electrical vehicles and providing better cycle lanes and public transport services.
• Regulations for adequate insulation in homes, design and implementation of combined heat and power systems that use the heat we generate in other ways rather than waste it.
• Reduce packaging on goods, limit importation of goods, use more environmentally-friendly ways to transport them and recycle materials to use again rather than digging up new ones. Remember the ‘Three Rs’ – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

How can we be ‘greener’?

We can all do our bit to reduce the energy consumption of the UK. Here are some tips:

• Walk or cycle whenever possible rather than use fossil fuel-guzzling vehicles.
• Take public transport, not private vehicles as they use less energy per person on board.
• Turn down the heating in your house by a couple of degrees and put an extra jumper or blanket on. Just use heating in the rooms you use.
• Turn off gadgets rather than leave them on standby. Some of the worst gadgets to leave on but not use are computers and printers, and on standby, the worst is the TV.

By doing some of these, you’d not only be saving energy, you’d also save money too!

Feed-in Tariffs

If you want to do a bit more than this, you could take advantage of the new Feed-in Tariffs recently introduced by the government. They are a way to make it worth your while to use renewable energy for your home or other building.

The government will pay you for any extra energy that you make but do not use and can feed-in to the national grid. This means that you can pay off your investment much quicker than used to be possible.

More Information

• Feed-in Tariffs
• Ownenergy
• Energy Saving Trust
• Managing and Reducing Home Energy Usage (Thanks to Aiden Schaffer for this link!)