You don’t have to wait for next Halloween to track down energy vampires in your home. Any time of the year will do.

Just follow these Alliance to Save Energy guidelines, which are fun for kids and will surely be enlightening for adults too.

First step, turn off all the lights and appliances in the house. Take a flashlight outside to see if the meter is still running. It probably will be, because you’ve got things on “stand by” all over the house — hair dryers, phones, computers, televisions, DVRs.

Now investigate. Walk around the house with the flashlight and find the little LED lights that indicate an appliance is “ready.” Even in sleep mode, it’s drawing energy and you can

KillAWatt EZ will tell you how much energy your electronics are gobbling

often tell by feeling the item or the plug-in. Is it warm? It’s drawing energy.

The solution, aside from unplugging individual appliances, is to put equipment on a power strip. Then turn the power strip off whenever possible.

The costs of “phantom energy” are real. The Department of Energy estimates that the constant energy draw of appliances and electronics that aren’t even turned on can account for 20 percent of your energy bill.

According to the Alliance To Save Energy’s worksheet (developed with Energy Star), it costs about $6.85 a year (on average) to keep a VCR on standby and $4.28 for a TV that’s plugged in. Seem like chump change? Multiply those by how many VCRs and TVs there are in the house, then add in all the other clocks, toasters, phones and computers you’ve got plugged into the wall.

If you want a more precise fix on your vampires, consider proving their harm with a KillaWatt, a device that you can plug suspicious appliances into to give you a read out of how many watts are being consumed. The KillaWatt, by P3 International, an electronics firm in New York, is sold in several versions. See the P3 website.

The latest Harris Poll on green behavior in America is a good news/bad news story.

The good news: Most people have done something that’s green, by recycling a computer or cell phone; switching to tap water from bottled; made their home more energy efficient in some way.

The bad news: Only a tiny fraction of US residents (2 percent) own hybrid cars and vast numbers of people have not  “engaged” in most of the green activities the survey asked about, like for example composting (only 17 percent do), walking or biking to work (15 percent), or even getting a low flow shower head (17 percent).

And now for the good news: We’ve got incredible potential for energy and water savings, because we’re doing so little!

Here were the most popular green changes that emerged when 3,110 adults were asked what environmental activities they have done in the last year:

• Installed more energy-efficient light bulbs (63%)
• Purchased energy-efficient appliances (36%)
• Started paying bills online (46%)
• Switched to paperless financial statements (40%)
• Donated an electronic device for recycling (41%)
• Switched from bottled to tap water (29%)
• Installed a low-flow showerhead (17%) or a low-flow toilet (16%)
• Made home improvements (e.g., windows, solar panels or insulation) that provided government tax credits (14%)
• Bought a more fuel efficient car (13%)

In other encouraging findings, people reported that they:

• Always or often turn lights off when leaving a room (83%)
• Recycle (68%)
• Reuse things they have instead of replacing them (65%)
• Make an effort to use less water (60%).

But Harris Polls also found that many people are doing little or nothing to protect the environment and reduce their carbon footprint.  Only small minorities of adults reported that they always or often:

• Walk or ride a bicycle instead of driving or using public transport (15%)
• Carpool or use public transport (16%)
• Make compost (17%)
• Purchase organic products (17%)
• Purchase all natural products (18%)
• Purchase used as opposed to new products (25%)
• Purchase locally manufactured products (26%)

In other findings, which could be viewed as positive or negative, depending on the standards, the poll found that less than half, but at least one-third of Americans queried:

• Buy food in bulk (33%)
• Purchase locally grown produce (39%)
• Unplug electrical appliances when they are not using them (40%).

The poll further found that most of these green actions were taken by people who identified themselves as somewhat green or most green. In other words, when those polled were broken into  groups of “least green,” “not very green,” “somewhat green” and “most green” (based on their statements about protecting the environment) – a pattern emerged that showed the green groups were the ones installing energy efficient appliances, switching to tap water and buying organic products at much higher rates.

This seems like a tautology, but actually reveals philosophical split among Americans on green issues and suggests that there are those who do and those who don’t — as opposed to say, a vast middle where a mix of people take various green actions.

The skew between the two groups was fairly large. For example, 44 percent of those in the “most green” group “always or often” buy organic products, but only a minuscule 3 percent of the “least green” do.

Similarly, 65 percent of the “most green” adults “always or often” buy local produce, whereas only 20 percent of the least green do.

And only 15 percent of the least green segment have switched away from plastic bottled water.

Furthermore, the poll takers caution that some of the numbers may overestimate green behaviors because “there is a tendency for people to give ‘socially desirable’ answers…”

The Harris Poll was conducted online within the US between July 7 and September 8, 2009, using responses from adults (18 and up) with weighting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income, when  necessary, to bring the sample into line with actual proportions in the population. See charts on the responses at the Harris website.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Last week the Obama administration took one of the steps environmentalists have been hoping would follow closely after Inauguration day: More or less, he told the nation’s bureaucracy to start following the law when it comes to energy efficiency.

In a memorandum to the Secretary of Energy, he directed the Department of Energy to write rules on energy usage that have been delayed in some cases since 1975.

The energy efficiency standards would apply to various household appliances, including light bulbs. In 1975’s Energy Policy and Conservation Act, Congress required the DOE to maintain guidelines for many kinds of devices, but administrations through the years have seemed to treat that as more of a suggestion than a law; the department moved so slowly that in 2005 14 states filed a lawsuit to force compliance. The parties entered into a consent decree with staggered deadlines, but some deadlines have already passed without action.

In his memo, Obama eliminates any ambiguity about his commitment by asking that “the DOE take all necessary steps, consistent with the consent decree, EPACT, and EISA, to finalize legally required efficiency standards as expeditiously as possible and consistent with all applicable judicial and statutory deadlines.” Moreover, when it comes to work that is not yet overdue, the President instructed the department not to drag their feet but to “work to complete prior to the applicable deadline those standards that will result in the greatest energy savings.”

When making this memo public, the President made remarks about how much energy such regulations would save: “We’ll save through these simple steps over the next 30 years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America,” he has been quoted as saying.

Since then, skeptics have gone through audits of the Energy Star program by the Environmental Protection Agency and argued such claims are overstated; others feel the entire Energy Star program lacks credibility and force, particularly since it relies heavily on self-certification by appliance makers.

According to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, the Department of Energy has until August 8 to issue federally mandated guidelines for microwave ovens, gas ovens and stoves, linear fluorescent light bulbs, beverage vending machines and other equipment that has avoided or been overlooked for stricter standards.

The ASAP (whose acronym partly defines its mission) says that “President Obama’s commitment to meet and beat the legal deadlines for new standards is a hugely important break with the past” in which federal leaders fell behind on more than 20 standards.

In a statement, it gave examples of how tightening requirements for simple appliances can save money. Strong standards for fluorescent tube light bulbs and reflector light bulbs, for instance, could save 60 billion kilowatt hours per year by 2020, enough energy to power 5 million homes for a year, according to ASAP.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media