Towards sustainability, reloaded

Back to 2009, I had started – but not finished – a series due to help you going towards sustainability. I am proposing you to re-publish it this year and finish it. This series’ goal is to help you cut your carbon and environmental footprint.

I must have four times more subscribers, so hopefully this will reach and help more of you. Please let me know if you have other tips and / or if these ones are actually helping you.

I am starting today with the first one, on heating as it is behind an important part of the energy consumption of buildings, this is where we begin.

First tip : lower your thermostat

Insulation is quasi inexistent in most constructions they can be considered as thermal colanders. (expression coined by the former French energy and environment Minister, Jean-Louis Borloo). So this is important to lower the thermostat before anything else.

This can brings drastic changes as decreasing the thermostat by one single degree Celsius lowers the bills by seven percent.

So decreasing by three degrees Celsius would save 20 percent of heating bills.

To Grist (see below) the Fahrenheit equivalent is one percent per one degree. To adapt to these lower temperatures, do like Jimmy Carter (and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing) once advocated: wear a sweater indoors !

Another great way to keep warm is drinking hot beverages (tea, coffee…) as it will significantly warm you up.

Second tip : have a look at your windows and doors and seal the leaks.

Third and last tip: close shutters and curtains at nights. If they block lights during day, they can decrease the heat loss as well. The French ADEME estimates it can enable savings of 10 percent.

And you, do you have other tips to lower your heating bills ? I look forward to reading them !