Welcome to Naked Sustainability Podcast. This bold podcast helps busy millennials navigate real-life sustainability with practical tips, no-nonsense advice, and a zero-fucks-given attitude, all through a transparent and authentic lens of living in the real world. Join Ginny for lively conversations, expert interviews, and hilarious anecdotes. From eco-fashion to zero-waste living, we’ll empower you to be an eco-warrior without compromising your badass lifestyle. Get ready to kick some eco-ass.
Join Ginny on a mini tangent about the effect of fossil fuels and how to start saving electricity (and fossil fuel usage) today! Learn her top two tips to save some money on your electric bill.
Table of Contents
The Power of Energy Efficiency
Hi friends, welcome back to Naked Sustainability, the podcast where we discuss living our busy lives as sustainably as possible. It’s Ginny, and today I wanted to touch on the power of energy efficiency. Get it, the power? Of energy efficiency?
Bad jokes aside, energy efficiency has always had a seat front and center for our home projects. To ultimately save money on our electricity bills every month, and create a more comfortable home environment. And also because we wanted to decrease how much fossil fuels we used.
Now though, we’re on a mission to make sure our solar array we just installed last month covers all of our electricity…well, at least most of it.
The energy needs of the world just keep growing year-over-year. And not everyone even has access to electricity, which is absolutely vital to our way of life over here in the west. Trust me, we’ve tried reorganizing when we use electricity the last couple of weeks so that everything was running on solar power. More on that later, but that shit is hard.
How Fossil Fuels Create Electricity
First though, how are fossil fuels used to even freaking create electricity? Coal, oil, and petroleum collectively are termed as fossil fuels. Generally speaking these fuels are burned to create heat. The heat generates steam that drive turbines which generate electricity.
Fossil fuels account for over 60% of the electricity generated in the United States last year, and over 60% of the world-wide electricity generation (at least as of 2021—the latest reputable data I could find).
The burning of these carbon-based fossil fuels actually drives climate change, can contribute to air and waste-water pollution, and is the primary cause of a considerable number of deaths EVERY. YEAR.
Fossil Fuel Pollution
Burning carbon-based items releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that massively contributes to global climate change. So when we are burning a significant amount of fossil fuels to charge our cell phones, or run our air conditioners at frigid we’re actively fueling climate change.
Fossil fuel plants also produce several other pollutants, such as oxides of sulphur and nitrogen, which mix in the atmosphere, causing air pollution and acid rain. The acid rain mixes with our waterways, causing disturbances in many micro-ecosystems…and potentially wrecking havoc on your garden vegetables, your flowers, and cascading into the insects and pollinators.
And then on to a surprising number I didn’t even know until researching this episode. A 2021 research study suggested that air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels is directly responsible for an estimated 8.7 million deaths globally in 2018 These premature deaths due to fossil fuel created air pollution account for almost 20 fucking percent of all deaths globally in 2018.
To put that number in perspective, the World Health Organization (as of this episode’s research) has tallied 6,948,764 deaths due to COVID-19—and that’s over the last three years of the pandemic. And more than that die from fossil fuel air pollution every year. Makes me want to switch to solar power WAAAY before we did the damn thing
Energy Efficient Tips
Okay, mini tangent aside. Let’s save some fossil fuel, electricity, and some dollar-bills with some energy efficient tips.
Phantom Energy Draw
First, I feel the need to address the number one “save energy” tip: phantom energy draw or energy vampires. Over the years, I feel like I’ve read every article on saving electricity. The first tip like 99.99% of the time is about unplugging things that aren’t in use because they are drawing phantom energy and raising your electric bill.
While I can’t speak for everyone, I can speak about our house and our experience with this. We own a 1970’s super inefficient split level work-in-progress. Every year we do an energy efficient, self-sufficiency upgrade. In 2020 we insulated our attic. In 2021 we had our ductless mini split heat pump installed. In 2022 we massively upgraded our garden by adding new plants and growing space. In 2023 so far we’ve planted 18 native trees and shrubs, installed a new metal roof, added solar panel…jeesh this year has been super expensive.
Anywho, our 1970s house is super inefficient and the electrical work is “wonky” at best. Late last year we got an Emporia Energy Monitoring system to see how much power we were using and for what exactly, so that we could be prepared for our solar installation. Suffice it to say, anecdotally, that unplugging our toaster, blender, dishwasher, phone chargers, computer chargers, etc. made no difference at all in our power usage.
Again, this is just our experience. But I was a little upset that I had spent years of my life unplugging soooo many devices only to learn it didn’t seem to make a difference.
There is some level of phantom energy at our house, but I’ve only ever seen it with our ductless mini split system. When all the head units are off and we aren’t using the mini split at all, the system still pulls about 30 watts an hour. And our dinosaur furnace (that we don’t use and just haven’t ripped out) pulls about 15 watts an hour. That’s really not a lot in the grand scheme of our electric bill…but it is power consumption without a return on investment. We’ve flipped the breaker to our furnace, so there is no more phantom power being consumed by a system we don’t use.
LED Light Bulbs
But now, let’s get into the nitty gritty with everything I’ve learned over the years to save you money. First up, LED fucking light bulbs. These can literally run for like 24 hours and use barely any power. We recently replaced some of our kitchen lights with spider-like tract lighting since there was NO light in our kitchen. One light has FIVE LED light bulbs on it and uses 9 watts an hour…our furnace was drawing more than that in phantom power. LED lights are super energy efficient over traditional incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs. We still have fluorescent shop lights in the garage and they take so much more power than ANY of our LED light bulbs, including our LED plant lights that draw about 80watts per hour—to be as bright as the sun for some of our baby plants.
Plus LED light bulbs last way longer than traditional light bulbs, and they absolutely better for how expensive that shit is. A couple years ago we replaced most of the lights in our house with LED light bulbs and it was like $40 USD for the 10 or so lights in our house that we were switching out. That was outrageous to my broke ass, but it’s paid off because we haven’t had to replace any of those light bulbs yet. And we’ve had to replace the specialty non-LED bulbs several times now—like the little baby bulb above the stove or the weird globe bulbs in our bathroom medicine cabinet. I would say one of those gets replaced at least once a year, and those bulbs aren’t cheap either.
Like everything, I recommend having some LED bulbs on hand for when your older light bulbs get fucked. And then you can change them out to the more energy efficient bulbs and not have to worry about it again for a very long time.
Shower Together
The next one is my favorite. Save electricity, shower together. I know this isn’t possible in every household, or even everyday…but adding it in just occasionally can save some serious electricity AND create some serious steam outside the bedroom, if you catch my drift.
Think about it, there are times in the shower when you aren’t actively using your water to rinse off. You’re lathering your hair or shaving your legs and need that soap to stay where you’ve put it…so the water running in the background is just a waste. When you shower with your partner, that water goes to good use. The Boyfriend will rinse himself, while I suds my hair…and then I’ll rinse my hair while he suds his. Not only are we saving water, but we’re saving electricity. We have an older hot water tank, and not a tankless on-demand one—trust me, it’s on the upgrade list. We have the temperature of the water turned down as low as it can go, so the water doesn’t have to maintain a higher temperature all the time.
And this low temperature is perfect, we just don’t need to add much cold to the shower water to get it just our level of steamy. A bonus tip here is to not shower everyday, if that is something you are able to do. This is actually way better for your skin, and your wallet. And, at least for me, washing my hair about once or twice a week, instead of every time I’m in the shower, saves me a ton of shower time.Three extra ways to save money on your electric bill: showering together, turning your hot water tank down, and not showering or washing your hair every day.
Overall, a together shower with the lower temperature and a hair wash involved with run us about 6kW—once you factor in the well pump, the hot water tank, and our water softening system. Which is massive when you consider it is literally like maybe 10 minutes of your day.
A single hair wash shower runs about 4kW for each of us. I’m a get-in-get-out kind of person, I’m pretty sure the Boyfriend is a shower thinker—plus his hair is WAAY thicker than mine. Overall, I’m here for more steamy time, and less fossil fuels being burned since we’re saving water and electricity!
That’s it for today’s episode. We will be picking up with more electricity and energy efficiency tips next time! Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and join us next week as we explore more badass ways to care for the planet, while living this busy millennial life.
Until next time.
