12 Interesting Energy Saving Facts You Need To Know

• A hot water faucet that leaks one drop per second can add up to 165 gallons a month. That’s more water than the average person uses in two weeks!

• Every time you open the refrigerator door, up to 30%of the cold air can escape.

• U.S. energy consumption could be cut by 11% by 2020 through simple building efficiency measures such as more efficient lighting, water heating, and appliances.

• If every U.S. home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR® efficient light bulb, the amount of energy saved could light more than 3 million homes for a year and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the emissions of about 800,000 cars.

• More than 285,000,000 new computers will be sold this year.  The manufacturing of these machines will require 25 million tons of fossil fuels – more than the whole state of Iowa consumes in 1 year!

• Approximately 30% of energy used in buildings is used inefficiently or unnecessarily.

• In the average home, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. The average desktop computer idles at 80 watts, while the average laptop idles at 20 watts. A Sony PlayStation 3 uses about 200 watts and nearly as much when idle. Idle power consumes more electricity than all the solar panels in America combined.

• The average home in the U.S. uses about 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity per month – or the equivalent to: 79 gallons of gas, 18 trees or 29 barbecue grill propane cylinders.

• The most efficient appliance in your kitchen in your microwave, which uses just 1/3 of the wattage of most ovens.

• A compact fluorescent bulb (CFL) used 75% less energy than a traditional incandescent bulb.

• The television sets in the U.S. collectively draw the power equivalent of a Chernobyl-sized nuclear plant when they are turned OFF! They use this power for their instant-on capacity, so we don’t have to wait a minute or two for our screens to warm up.

• The U.S. houses 5% of the world’s population, but uses 23% of the world’s energy.