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.

PHOTO BY ISTOCKPHOTO

Whether you learn the guitar or try new spices, trying new things has been shown to increase energy.

Do you ever get tired during the day, even when you got plenty of sleep? Well, if your office isn’t equipped with a comfy daybed, you might want to check out these nine super-simple tips from Real Simple magazine for quick ways to lift vitality. The best part is they’re completely and totally free of caffeine, sugar, guarana, ginseng, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, pills — you get the idea! Yes, yes, exercise is on the list (duh), but so is a little breathing trick you can do without even standing up!

Read 9 Energy Boosters, from Real Simple.

Attainable changes are headed our way. A decrease in energy consumption rates is now in the foreseeable future as long as the United States follows current energy efficiency programs. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) released an analysis this week concluding that the United States could potentially decrease its energy consumption growth by 22 percent in the next 20 years. The analysis took into account the existing market patterns, funding complications and the United States’ increasing energy consumption.

According to the EPRI’s press release, the study used projections of growth in electricity usage by residential, commercial and industrial sectors collected by the Energy Information Association (EIA).

Arshad Mansoor, vice president of Power Delivery and Utilization for EPRI, explains that the institute’s study will provide vital information for policymakers, utility companies and regulators when it comes to making important decisions about how to make effective changes in our energy systems.

You can download the EPRI report and its executive summary at www.epri.com.

On Dec. 15, President-elect Barack Obama announced his energy and environment team at a news conference in Chicago. Obama chose Carol Browner, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as head of a new policy council for climate, environment and energy issues. The rest of the team consists of Steven Chu, a Noble-prize winning physicist, as his energy secretary; Lisa Jackson, former head of New Jersey’s environmental protection department, as national EPA head; and Nancy Sutley, deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

With the team in place, Obama is ready to start creating a new energy economy. He admitted that he didn’t know when the economy would start getting better, but he did say, “We know that we’re going to create jobs that wouldn’t otherwise be created.” According to Obama, those jobs should eventually add up to 2.5 million.

While Obama plans to make the United States a leader in climate change, he admits, “The solution to global climate change must be global.” The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland just finished on Dec. 13, claiming that there is “a clear commitment from governments to shift into full negotiating mode.” Hopefully, they’re right.

To learn more about Barack Obama’s energy and environmental policy watch the video below, or check out these articles:

Environmentalists Help Obama Create New Green Economy

Obama Addresses Fight Against Climate Change

Obama's Changing Climate Change

Last week, I wrote about measuring the electricity my computer was using by plugging it into an electrical meter called a Kill a Watt.

This week, I decided to try my hair dryer with the Kill a Watt, and holy cow. So my computer was drawing about 92 watts. My hair dryer on low used 402 watts. Switch it to high, and it goes to 1440 watts!

Why is that number so high? Well, the hair dryer is producing heat, and that can consume a lot of electricity. Here’s a great list from the Department of Energy with the typical wattages of many appliances. Some of the big electricity users are obvious: your water heater, your refrigerator, dishwashers. But some of the smaller appliances on the list that are unexpectedly high produce a lot of heat: irons, toasters and hair dryers, for instance.

On the other hand, just because an appliance uses a lot of electricity while it’s on doesn’t mean much, because it all depends on how long you leave it on. Remember, your electric bill is based on kilowatt-hours, and that’s electric use over time. And while I use my computer for many hours a day, I typically spend five minutes or less drying my hair. So where am I using the most electricity?

Hair Dryer vs. Computer: Here’s How It Breaks Down

So, I’ve left the Kill a Watt plugged into my computer for 10 days now, and the meter shows that during that time the computer has used 13.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Have I used that much electricity over the last 10 days while drying my hair? Not even close. 1.5 kilowatt-hours is a better guess, because I've probably spent a total of an hour* drying my hair over the last 10 days.

So, yes, I’m using far more electricity with my computer than with my hair dryer.

Want to do some more math? You can find out how all that translates to greenhouse gas emissions here.

*Update 11/26/08

OK, it's true. An "hour" was just a lazy guesstimate on my part. I didn't really intend to measure how long I spent drying my hair over 10 days with the Kill a Watt. I mean, these numbers are close enough, right?

But now certain family members have challenged whether I really spend only five minutes a day drying my hair. Maybe I'm using a lot more electricity with the hair dryer than what's recorded here. All right, so now it's on. I'm measuring the exact electricity use of the hair dryer with the Kill a Watt for 10 days to prove that yes, the hair dryer still winds up using less electricity than the computer. When I have an update, I'll post it here. Stay tuned!

Update: 1/19/09

Well, I finally finished counting this up, and I'm happy to report that after 10 days of drying my hair, I had only spent a total of 32 minutes with the hair dryer on. The total on the Kill a watt was .68 kilowatt-hours. As expected, that's far less than the 13.5 kilowatt-hours my computer used over a 10 day period. So yes, I use far less electricity drying my hair than I do running my computer.

What's the point of this story? Just that if you're trying to understand how much electricity you're using, you need to know two things: the wattage of an appliance and how long you're leaving it switched on. Low wattage appliances or electronics can surprise you with how much electricity they consume over time.

Photos by Megan Phelps

The X Prize Foundation chose three videos out of 133 for their $25,000 “What’s Your Crazy Green Idea?” Contest. The competition encouraged people to create a two-minute YouTube video that explained their idea for the next X Prize in Energy and Environment.

Submissions ended on Oct. 31 — and now it’s up to you to decide which idea is best. The three ideas involve creating a more efficient battery, reducing home energy usage, and making it easier for homes to have complete energy independence. Which one is most important to you?

The public can vote here through November 30.

How much electricity is your computer using right now? It’s surprisingly easy to find out using a simple electrical meter, such as a Kill a Watt. Right now, I have a Kill a Watt hooked up to my PC, and it shows that I’m using 92 watts of electricity.

 Actually, the figure fluctuates, depending on how hard I’m making the processor work at any given moment. But since I plugged this particular meter into my computer 39 hours ago, it’s used about one kilowatt-hour of electricity.  So what does that mean? What exactly is a kilowatt-hour anyway? Here’s a quick review:

• One kilowatt-hour is equal to one kilowatt consumed over one hour. And one kilowatt is equal to 1,000 watts. (For more energy measurements check out this handy chart from the Energy Information Administration.)

• On your electric bill, you’re charged based on the number of kilowatt-hours (kWh) you consume. For the United States, the average cost of one kWh is about 10 cents.

• For even more math fun, you can consider that this one kilowatt-hour is equal to roughly 2 pounds of greenhouse gases, because electricity in the area where I live comes primarily from coal.

So here’s another interesting question: How does my computer compare to other computers? Well, last week we hooked up a Kill a Watt to another editor’s computer, and his laptop was only drawing about 30 watts of electricity. Humph. Oh well, I suppose it’s not a competition.

But the possibilities for measuring and figuring out how to reduce your energy use are endless. For some great ideas, check out this article from Gary Reysa, with his Eight Great Energy Saving Projects. He measured the energy savings of eight different projects and calculated the dollar savings and reduced carbon emissions for each one. You can find even more of these projects on his Web site, BuilditSolar.com.

Photo by Megan Phelps

Wow, this is a handy page. Check out this helpful list of energy calculators from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

It’s no secret that many home improvements can save a ton of energy while also saving you a lot of money. But — no surprise here either — sometimes these projects cost some money up front. If you’re trying to pencil out the actual costs and savings of buying a new appliance or making your home more air-tight then these online calculators are a great shortcut.

Will junking your old refrigerator save you money? Check out the Refrigerator Retirement Calculator.

What’s the most cost-effective level of insulation for your home? Find out with the ZIP Code Insulation Tool.

 Are you looking for a comprehensive tool that can tell you how to save energy at home? Try the Home Energy Saver.

If you’re trying to figure out how to save energy and money at home, I think this energy calculators page is a great place to start. For even more energy info, be sure to check out the EERE home page, too.

Photo by Nathan Winter/IstockPhoto

A couple weeks ago, we told you about a new, funky kind of solar panel that’s about to hit the market (Solar Panels Get a Make-over). A few months ago, we told you about a completely different kind of solar energy with gobs and gobs of potential — utility scale CSP, or concentrating solar power (Solar Thermal Power Coming to a Boil). We’ve also recently sung the praises of solar power potential in Solar Power Could Provide 10 Percent of U.S. Electricity by 2025. Clearly, we’re crazy for solar around here!

But can you handle even more good solar news?

A team of researchers at MIT has invented an award-winning solar electric system that is vastly more efficient than typical solar panels. And believe it or not, it should be vastly more affordable, too. Props go to associate professor of electrical engineering Marc A. Baldo, graduate students in electrical engineering Michael Currie, Jon Mapel and Timothy Heidel, and postdoctoral associate in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, Shalom Goffri. (Mad props also to the National Science Foundation, for supporting the research!)

The team’s “solar concentrator” collects the sun’s energy over a large dye-coated glass or plastic surface, such as a window, and gathers it at the edges. Therefore, expensive photovoltaic cells are only necessary around the glass panel’s edges. And the concentrated light actually multiplies the electrical output of each cell by up to 40 times. The best news may be for homeowners who already operate a solar electric system, because they’ll be able to boost their system efficiency significantly with even an inexpensive retrofit. Covalent Solar, the company founded by Currie, Mapel and Goffri, expects to be able to bring this technology to market within three years.

Watch professor Marc Baldo explain how these solar concentrators work:

New whiz-bang technologies are always cool, but the best news behind this development is about affordability. Says the research team: “Unsubsidized solar electricity is over three times as expensive as the average grid prices for electricity derived from conventional energy sources, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Dramatic cost reductions are needed. Clean, renewable electricity at affordable prices would be an attractive alternative to conventional electricity and the related fossil-fuel dependence, greenhouse-gas emissions and peak-time grid constraints.”

Further Resources:

* You can read the full report about the team's solar concentrator technology in the July 2008 issue of Science magazine: High-Efficiency Organic Solar Concentrators for Photovoltaics.

* Wish you were smarter? Catch more cool videos at MIT TechTV or participate in MIT classes through their free service, MITOpenCourseWare.

* Check out the January/February 2009 issue of our sister magazine, Natural Home, for more about solar concentrators.

Curious about whether your home is a good candidate for solar power? Check out Roofray, a handy tool that takes advantage of Google’s complex map data to project your home’s solar power potential. Roofray also makes educated guesses about energy bill savings and installation costs for your location.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all the energy we used could come from local, renewable resources? Here’s a great article from the San Francisco Chronicle about people who are trying to make that idea a reality. (You can also read the article here on Common Dreams.)

It explains that just as a “locavore” is someone who eats locally grown food, a “locavolt” is someone who seeks energy created from local, renewable resources. One “locavolt” idea mentioned in this article is a concept Mother Earth News readers may already be familiar with, community supported wind.

If this gets you started thinking about producing energy locally, here are a few other resources you might want to check out.

* Do you live in a good location for producing solar or wind power? Here’s an article with more information on evaluating your home’s renewable energy potential.

 * To learn more about community supported wind power, a great resource is the non-profit organization Windustry and their Community Wind Toolbox.

 * The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has state and country energy profiles with good background information on energy issues in different areas. For example, here’s the profile for my home state of Kansas. Not surprisingly, it shows that we burn a lot of coal from Wyoming, but don’t yet have a lot of wind turbines.

What are some of the energy issues where you live? You can share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

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.

It looks like a big step forward for clean energy. MIT researchers have announced that they’ve found a new, cheaper way to extract hydrogen from water. The new process should make it far easier to store solar energy. You can read all about it here:

Solar Energy Storage Made Cheap, Efficient, Science Daily

Solar Power Breakthrough, Technology Review 

Hydrogen Power on the Cheap — Or at Least, Cheaper, Scientific American

Cheap way to 'split water' could lead to abundant clean fuel, The Guardian

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.

San Francisco is paying its way to become a more energy efficient place by helping its citizens afford solar panels. The city’s board of supervisors recently approved the Solar Energy Incentive Program, GoSolarSF, which is now the country’s largest municipal solar program. With an annual budget of $3 million for the next 10 years, the program offers up to $6,000 to residents and up to $10,000 for businesses in the form of tax incentives for private solar installations. It will give out even more than that to low-income San Franciscans and nonprofit, multi-family residences. The program’s goal is to eventually have 10,000 solar rooftops in the city compared to the 770 they have right now. The program started accepting applications on July 1, 2008. Once they begin building, other cities will hopefully start to spend a little also.

If you're concerned about climate change, and want to reduce carbon emissions, you might be surprised how easy it is to figure out how much carbon dioxide is produced by, say, driving to work. Sure, there are a lot of carbon calculators out there where you can plug in all the numbers on how much you drive, and how much electricity you use. But it's also surprisingly easy to estimate yourself.

Here’s how you can do it. If you go to the EPA carbon calculator it gives you recognizable units, like gallons and pounds. (And slightly more confusing units like carbon dioxide equivalent.  Essentially, they’re adding the other greenhouse gases into the number for carbon dioxide. But there’s more about that on the calculator page.)

It’s very simple to use, so here are results I got from spending a few minutes with the EPA calculator and playing with the numbers.

* Every gallon of gas burned produces about 22 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. (So for simplicity, let's round down to 20.)
* Every therm of natural gas burned produces about 11 pounds. (I think it’s fair to round down to 10.)
* Every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produces about 1.7 pounds.
(If rounding up to 2 seems too painful, consider where your electricity comes from. If it comes from coal, yep, round up to 2. For natural gas, you can figure 1 pound. There are some statistics that help justify those numbers here.)

So when you fill up your gas tank, you have a number in gallons. Take it times 20 and you're awfully close to knowing how much carbon dioxide burning that tank of gas will produce. Same thing goes for your electric bill. Take a look at the number of kilowatt hours. Double it (in most cases) and you’re looking at pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Want to think more about pounds of carbon emissions and how to lose them? Here are a few related articles:

Eight Projects for Instant Energy Savings, Mother Earth News 

On Carbon Calculators, Grist 

What Makes a Pound of Carbon Dioxide, The Green Guide

It's surprising how many different ways you can use solar power. People tap solar energy for heating, cooking and electricity, and for all those tasks there are both commercial products and DIY plans. Here's a quick overview of the many ways people choose to go solar.

Photovoltaics (PV). Put photovoltaic panels on your roof, and they can produce electricity for your home. Here's an article about a home-size PV system, a plan to use a smaller PV system for  DIY solar lighting, and information about how to calculate the costs and payback period of your own PV system.

Solar Hot Water. A solar water heating system can provide all the hot water your household needs. Learn about the benefits of purchasing a solar water heater, or how to build your own.

Solar Space Heating.  You can also use the sun for home heating. Learn more about the commercial options for solar heat collectors with this buyers' guide to solar heating, or find out how to build your own. (This simple DIY space heater heats the air directly, while this more complex solar heating plan heats water and warms the building with radiant floor heat.)

Passive Solar Design. Another strategy for heating your home with the sun's energy is to capture heat through the entire building's design, rather than through a single solar heat collector as described above. Here's an article with more about using the principles of passive solar design to take advantage of natural heating and cooling.

Concentrating Solar Power. When you buy electricity from your utility it usually comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels, but in a growing number of locations utility companies are offering clean renewable energy from sources such as hydropower, wind — and yes — solar. One of the most promising technologies for these large solar power plants is concentrating solar power.

Other Uses for Solar Power. There are many other ways people are harnessing the sun, including with solar cookers, solar food dryers, solar water distillers and solar tractors and mowers.

Do you use solar power in your home? Have you found other ways to tap solar energy? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

Photo by istockphoto

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

While harnessing the sun's power is clearly a bright alternative energy solution, not all solar power technologies are created equal. While photovoltaic panels are great for meeting small-scale energy needs (like those of individual homes or businesses), perhaps a more viable large-scale option is concentrated solar power (CSP) technology. CSP uses the sun's heat—as opposed to PV technology, which uses its light—and is already in use in abundantly sunny areas of the United States (like the Southwest.)

One type of CSP called parabolic trough technology uses curved mirrors to reflect solar radiation onto collector tubes. This energy then creates steam which powers a turbine, generating electricity. This kind of system is in place at the Nevada Solar One project in Boulder City, Nevada.

Another kind of CSP aims grounded mirrors at the top of a tower where the energy is collected, and again creates steam to power a turbine. In March of 2007, Europe's first commercial CSP tower opened in Seville, Spain. The tower is part of a planned set that will eventually meet the needs of around 180,000 homes—or the entire city of Seville.

Lately I've been writing quite a bit about what's happening in Washington, D.C. It's not so much that I have a one track mind as that Congress has been busy debating legislation that will have a real impact on the environment — especially on energy use. If you're an environmentalist, now is a good time to pay attention to what's happening on Capitol Hill.

What happens with the energy bill and the Lieberman-Warner climate bill will make a big difference in how far this country goes to make cars more efficient, expand the use of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It's a good time to call or write your elected representatives and let them know what you think about these issues.

You can follow all the latest developments in the newspapers, but here are a couple of other handy places to turn for the latest on these two bills:

• Good sources of information on the energy bill include the Union of Concerned Scientists and Renewable Energy Access.

• Grist is doing a play by play of the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. (And while you're there, be sure to check out their extensive series on How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.)

• Use these links to contact your representatives in the U.S. House and Senate.

• Check out this helpful cheat sheet from Project Vote Smart explaining how a bill becomes a law.

• Looking for all the official details? Try THOMAS, a database of legislation from the Library of Congress.

Do you know of other helpful resources for following environmental legislation? You can paste them in the comments field below.