Having a “green home” can mean all sorts of things. To some people, it means living in a home that’s free of chemicals or materials that produce any sort of toxic fumes (formaldehyde from furniture or volatile organic compounds from paint, for example).

To others, a green home must be extremely energy-efficient: superinsulated, energy-efficient appliances, and with minimal space. It may even include living off the electrical grid.

If a home isn’t built of natural, local materials (such as stone, logs, cordwood or adobe), some people will say it’s not green.

So, with all these variables in mind, what would be your fantasy green home? Tell us what it would be made of, what types of energy-conserving features it would have or about the design. You can write all about it in the comments section below.

These days, many people are trying to use less energy at home. Not only is saving energy good for the environment, it can save you a lot of money on your electric and heating bills. So what are you doing to save energy at home? Have you turned down your thermostat this winter? Installed compact-fluorescent light bulbs? Added insulation to your attic? Tell us what you’re trying and how well you think it works by posting a comment below.

Need inspiration? Here are a few articles with some simple ideas for saving energy: How to Make Your Home Energy Efficient, Easy Projects for Instant Energy Savings, and Bright Ideas for Home Lighting.

This week the U.S. presidential candidates have had a lot to say about energy. Barack Obama released his official energy plan on Monday. John McCain released many of the details of his position on energy back in June.

Both candidates are voicing strong support for improving energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, developing more renewable energy and moving toward energy independence. But the energy issues they’re focusing on and the details of their plans are very different. For instance, McCain is putting much more emphasis on developing nuclear energy, while Obama has set much higher goals for developing electricity from renewable sources.

If you’d like to read more about their plans, CNN has a good summary of the two candidates' positions on energy here.

You can also read the details of the plans on the candidates’ Web sites. You can find more about McCain’s energy plan at www.johnmccain.com, and Obama’s at www.barackobama.com.

Right now a lot of people are worried about high home energy bills, including the costs of air conditioning, heating and electricity.

The good news is that there are a lot of easy, inexpensive projects you can do to bring your energy bills down immediately. But if you’re willing to invest a little more time and money, you can save even more, and one home improvement project that can make a big difference in your energy bills is adding insulation.

Yesterday, I was trying to find an answer to a specific question about insulation — how would you add insulation to a cement block wall? — when I ran across this extremely helpful fact sheet from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

I highly recommend checking it out. This fact sheet is a really good general introduction to the topic, but it also helps answer a lot of specific questions about when and how to add insulation. For example, it did include tips for installing insulation on masonry walls, which is what I was initially looking for. It also had a good suggestion about when to insulate your attic — wait until you’ve sealed other air leaks in your home, because once you’ve insulated the attic these drafts don’t go away, but they’re harder to find and fix.

For even more information on insulation, check out this Mother Earth News article All About Insulation. It’s got quite a bit of information about different types of insulation, including some interesting natural options.

Want to learn more about the benefits of compact fluorescents (CFLs)? This very short video from Common Craft is a fast and fun explanation of how the new efficient light bulbs can be better.

For more information on CFLs, check out these related Mother Earth Living links:

Light Bulbs with Style: New Types of CFLs

Mercury and Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Change Your Light Bulbs, Change the World

It's time to think about New Year's resolutions again. This year, why not resolve to go on an energy diet? The idea is to set a few measurable goals to make your home more energy efficient in 2008 and then keep track of your progress. Not only will you save money by reducing your energy bills, you'll be protecting the environment by reducing carbon emissions and other pollutants that come from burning fossil fuels.

How can you get started? Here are two books and two Web sites that will help you measure and then reduce your home energy use.

Web Resources. One good place to start is the Climate Crisis Web site, where you can calculate your carbon footprint, and then find lots of suggestions for how to start reducing it.

Another resource I find very useful is The Half Plan section of BuilditSolar.com. The great thing about this site is that it shows you the exact steps one household followed to cut its energy use in half, and tells you exactly how much money and energy they saved by doing each project. 

Helpful Books. Both of the books below are on my own bookshelf, and both are packed with good ideas for saving energy. You may be able to find them at your local library, or click on the links below for sources where you can purchase them.

Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to lose 5,000 Pounds, by David Gershon The Home Energy Diet: How to Save Money by Making Your House Energy Smart, by Paul Scheckel

Are you finding new ways to save energy at home? You can share your experiences in the comments section below.

It's that time of year again. Temperatures are dropping, and household debates around the thermostat are heating up. Keeping your living space comfortably warm without wasting energy — and money — can be a tough balance to strike, especially since some of us like it warmer than others. But no matter how different our ideas of 'room temperature' might be, there are a surprising number of things we can all agree on. Here are a few talking points that can help peacefully resolve home heating arguments.

Does cranking up the heat warm up the house faster? Nope, not according to the Energy Star program. It's better to just set the thermostat to the level you'd like it to reach. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) suggests no higher than 72 degrees for when people are home.

If you turn down the heat, don't you use a lot of energy warming up the house again? No. The DOE says you use much more energy by leaving the heat turned up all day while you're gone. In fact, it only takes a few minutes to warm your house once you turn the heat back up and you burn surprisingly little energy in doing so.

How low can you safely turn down the heat? Even if there's no one home, you should leave the heat up high enough at all times that you're not in danger of the pipes freezing. This DOE page recommends keeping the temperature above 50 degrees.

  How much money does turning down the heat really save? It depends on a lot of factors, but a rule of thumb suggested by both the Alliance to Save Energy and the DOE is that for each degree you turn down the thermostat, you can save about 3 percent on your heating bill.

Do we have to keep it so cold in here!?! If you're keeping your house colder than you'd like because it saves energy, make sure you've considered all the options. It's not as hard as you might think to save energy, save money and make your home more comfortable all at the same time. Here are a couple of ideas:

• Install a programmable thermostat — or adjust the settings if you already have one — so that the temperature kicks on about 15 minutes before you typically arrive home each day. That way you save a lot of energy but don't have to come home to a cold house. You can do the same thing at night.
• Turn down the thermostat at night, but stay warm by piling on the blankets and using an electric mattress pad. Gary Reysa calculated significant savings for this practice on his Build it Solar site.
• Step away from the thermostat! Turning down the heat is probably the most obvious way to save on your heating bills, but there are dozens of others, and many of them will make your home more comfortable. Here is a good place to get started, and here are a few other places to look for ideas.

Do you know of other good resources to learn more about saving energy at home? You can post them in the comments section below.

Many people using renewable energy at home will tell you that if you're interested in installing a solar or wind system to generate electricity, a good first step is to start cutting your electricity use. For example, you might want to start by installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, getting in the habit of turning off lights when you leave the room, plugging all your appliances into easy to shut off power strips, or any of dozens of other proven ways to cut your electricity use.

Why Energy Efficiency is Exciting To be honest, cutting your energy use doesn't have the romantic appeal of immediately installing solar panels or a wind turbine to generate all your electricity, but I think there are two good reasons to get excited about the idea.

1. You can start doing it today. Renewable energy systems are an investment, and financial or other personal circumstances may prevent you from purchasing one right now. But there are lots of simple, painless ways you can start cutting your electricity use around your home right now.

2. It can save you a bundle of cash down the road. The size of a renewable energy system to meet all your electric needs varies a lot, depending on how much electricity you use. If you cut your use of electricity first, you can buy a smaller, less expensive system that still meets your needs.

No, Seriously... It Saves Thousands of Dollars I've written before about how useful the Find Solar Web site is for getting rough estimates of the cost of a solar-electric system. You don't even have to have exact numbers from your electric bill to get an idea of how much a PV system for your home might cost.

On the other hand, if you do have the exact numbers from your electric bill, you can enter them into the site's solar calculator to get a better estimate. You can also tweak those numbers to get a rough idea of how much it would cost to install bigger or smaller PV systems. (Because if you use more electricity, it will likely take a bigger and more expensive electric system to meet your needs.)

Crunching the Numbers It's easy to find out how much electricity you use each month. You can request these figures from your utility, or, if you pay your bills online, you can probably get them just by logging into your account. Then plug those numbers into the Find Solar calculator in the spot for average monthly electricity use.

I found the estimate for a PV system based on my average electricity use, and it was $16,000. Yikes. But that's the average. If I plugged in the number from the month I used the least electricity, the estimate goes down to $8,000. If I use the number from the month I used the most electricity last year, the estimate goes up to $34,000. Yep, that's a breathtaking difference in price.

(Don't panic when you look at the largest number. Remember that for a grid-tied system you don't have to generate all your own electricity. You could buy the smallest system, it just might not meet all your needs for electricity. You'd have to buy the rest from your electric utility at the usual price.)

How to Start Saving Electricity The cost difference between a small PV system and a larger one is even more thought provoking when you consider that many steps to use less electricity at home are surprisingly easy and inexpensive.

Ready to go home and look for more ways to save electricity? Check out a few ideas for places to start here!