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Simple Solutions: Lighting
Every year Canadians celebrate Earth Hour by turning off their lights. In 2009, 258 cities, towns and municipalities signed up for Earth Hour and hosted dozens of public events including star gazing, magic shows, and even yoga lessons in the dark.
Fast and Free
- Flick that switch. Save money by turning off lights when you leave a room or if you don’t require lighting. Set up a reward system for your kids to encourage them to turn the lights off in their rooms.
- Concentrate bright light where you need it to lower overall energy demand.
- Keeping light fixtures clean will increase brightness.
- Paint lighter colours on your walls and furnishings to help reflect light in your home for more illumination.
- Conserve energy by turning lights on and off instead of keeping them on all the time.
- Celebrate the joys of candelight by having a candlelight dinner once a week with your family.
- Recycle and use compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). If every household in Alberta changed just one light bulb to a CFL, it would be the same as taking the emissions from 66,000 cars off the road.
Simple and Low Cost
- For outdoor lighting, an energy-efficient motion sensor can save you money.
- Dimmer switches are an inexpensive way to conserve energy.
- Solar lanterns are a great way to add light and ambience to your walkway without having to install electrical lines.
- Consider a skylight or mirrors to reflect sunlight into your home during the day.
- Slowly replace all the bulbs in your home. Each time you visit your grocery or hardware store, look for sales and purchase a few more CFL bulbs. Check your electricity bill today, and after replacing 10 lights in your home over one month, check again for energy and cost savings.
- For all night lighting, you can cut costs by replacing bulbs with lower wattage bulbs or by choosing a compact fluorescent or a nightlight.
Spend to Save
- Consider occupancy sensors, which are indoor light controls that turn on automatically when someone enters a room and turn off soon after the last person leaves.
- Use ENERGY STAR® lighting fixtures.
- Building a new home? Consider that south-facing windows allow most winter sunlight into the home but little direct sun during the summer, especially when properly shaded. North-facing windows admit relatively even, natural light, allow little glare, and do not increase heat in the summer. Limit east- and west-facing windows as they may cause glare, allow a lot of heat during the summer, but add little solar heating during the winter.
Learn More
- Appliances, Office of Energy Efficiency, Natural Resources Canada
- A Consumer Guide to Green Power in Canada—How to Buy Green Power in Alberta
- Bullfrog Power: A source for green power.
- Climate Change Central
- ENMAX Greenmax: This is a utility owned by the City of Calgary that provides Green Power to residents at a comparable rate to traditional suppliers.
- Solar Energy Society of Canada
- ecoENERGY Retrofit Grant for Replacing your Furnace. You may be eligible for an ecoENERGY Retrofit grant of $300-$500 from National Resources Canada for replacing your existing furnace with an EnergyStar model. Rebates are available until March 2011 and may require an energy audit by an NRCan-licensed advisor.
