Top 10 facts about energy costs:
  1. 1/3 of your residential power bill is spent on energy that is wasted and produces no benefit for you.
  2. Utility prices are going in one direction—up (unless you generate your own electricity).
  3. An energy efficiency upgrade is the most effective way to increase the value of your home. Every $1 spent on a solar system increases your home value by $20.
  4. Electricity costs are not going down (14% rate increase in southern Nevada, 2009).
  5. Solar panels are a fixed investment. They are warranteed for 25 years but their potential service life is unlimited. Once payback is reached, they provide free power. Some panels have been in service for 50 years.
  6. Water in the Southwest is a finite resource that will continue to cost more—and water heating is a major energy use in your home, so water costs you twice.
  7. Oil has reached its peak production based on the world's available reserves. There will be less and less oil available, and the costs will skyrocket
  8. 80% of energy is lost from electrical generation, including generating and transmission inefficiences. When you generate electricity from panels on your roof, there is no loss from fuel waste, transportation or transmission
  9. Upgrading your home for energy efficiency can return 10% or more yearly on your investment in energy savings. What other investment earns that much?
  10. The kilowatt-hour you don't buy is the cheapest kilowatt-hour of all.
Top 10 environmental reasons to reduce energy use:
  1. If carbon emissions are not reduced, scientists predict 25% of the world’s plant and animal species will be extinct by 2050.
  2. Homes account for 20% of US energy consumption, but this could easily be reduced by 20% through conservation alone.
  3. If global temperatures rise 2 to 3°C, there will be 30% less snow pack in the Rocky Mountains and 60% less water content in that snowpack. The Maple forests of New England will move into northern Maine and Southern Canada.
  4. Living green is a step toward gaining control over your life. It costs less, is less complicated, minimizes your impact on the environment, helps you live within your means, and encourages an attitude of mindfulness about what is really important in life.
  5. Drilling and mining for fossil fuels destroys habitats, which leads to extreme weather including droughts, reduces our food supply, destroys resources we depend on which in turn destroys the balance of governments, financial and social systems throughout the world.
  6. Buildings are the single largest contributor to emissions that cause global warming, and use half the energy generated in the U.S.
  7. Rising world temperatures at the current rate will cause oceans to rise 3' within 100 years, which will inundate shorelines where half the U.S. population lives. Millions of people around the world will be displaced.
  8. Burning fossil fuels generates methane and carbon dioxide (greenhouse gases), sulfur dioxide (acid rain), small particulates (lung diseases), nitrogen oxide (acid rain, smog, green house gas), carbon monoxide. volatile hydrocarbons, mercury, arsenic and lead—all of which you breathe and ingest, as do your kids.
  9. Atmospherice CO2 is higher than it has been in the last 65,000 years. At current rates, CO2 in the atmosphere will trigger potentially irreversible glacial melt and sea level rise “out of humanity’s control” by 2035. (Architecture2030.org)
  10. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not." —Theodor S. Geisel

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