For many reasons such as the high oil prices and the threat of climate change, most people nowadays want to make electricity savings. This is good not only for the individual's pocket but also for the global environment as a whole. You can substantially reduce your carbon footprint by making electricity savings.

Insulation

One of the easiest ways to cut your electricity consumption is to improve the insulation of your home. This is because heating and cooling devices consume a lot of electricity. Add an insulating layer to your attic. Another step that you need to take is to eliminate draughts from you home. This too will drastically reduce your heating and cooling bills. Caulk all doors and windows and make sure that there are no gaps between the doorway and the door.

Space Heating

Use space heaters instead of central heating. This way you will only be heating the rooms that you are currently using. This will lead to a great savings in your electricity bill.

Washing

Another fairly easy to use strategy to save on heating bills is to use cold water for washing your clothes. Your clothes will come out just as clean and you will again be saving a lot of electricity.

Do not use a dryer to dry your clothes. Instead use a clothes line or a laundry rack. This simple but effective strategy will again save you a lot of electricity.

Passive Solar Energy

Another great way to save on electricity is to make your home use passive solar heating techniques. This is as simple as having larger south facing windows and smaller windows to the north. This will let in more sunlight and heat into the home, and reduce your heating and lighting bills considerably.

CFLs

Yet another great way to save on electricity is to switch over to CFLs (compact fluorescent lights) instead of using the traditional incandescent bulbs. Though CFLs appear to be more expensive than incandescent bulbs, this is not true when you take into account the life length of the CFLs. A CFL typically lasts 10 times as long as an ordinary incandescent bulb. However, no CFL costs ten times that of an incandescent bulb. Add to this the cost of the electricity saved and you have a sure winner in a CFL.

To take a concrete example let us compare the prices of a CFL and a normal bulb. While a GE CFL costs $3.77 against $0.27 for a normal bulb, the replacement cost of the normal bulb works out to $1.89. However, if we crunch a few more numbers we see that while power for a CFl costs only $12, it costs $48 to use a normal bulb to light a home. This gives as an estimated savings of $34.39 for the GE CFL.

If you replace all the bulbs in your home with CFLs, your electricity savings will be substantial.

Refrigerators

Replacing old refrigerators too will help you save electricity as newer models are not energy guzzlers. This too is an aggressive step that will help save a lot of power in your home.

Conclusion

It is always better to use less electricity as it will benefit the earth and cause less pollution. Change over to energy saving appliances so that you too can do your bit to avert climate change. When replacing electrical appliances that consume more electricity, change the ones that you use most often, first. This will immediately reflect in a lower power bill for you and spur you on to make the other changes.

Once you have made all these changes, try to install solar power to lower your electricity bill. This too will help reduce pollution apart from saving you money in the long term.