You Light Up My Life
By: Sommer | September 28, 2007 | Category: Home and Family
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, if every household in the United States replaced just ONE regular incandescent light bulb with an Energy Star approved compact fluorescent bulb (CFL) we’d save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars. Now that’s all well and good, but come on, let’s be realistic here. How does that really apply to you and me?
I used the Energy Department’s lighting cost calculator* to see how much money my family might save if we replaced all our light bulbs with CFL’s. I tried to do a rough count in my head and I think we have around 25 light bulbs in our townhouse. So, after the cost of new light bulbs (estimated at $3.50 each) we’d save about $134 in the first year.
Now, I have to be honest that I was a little disappointed by that small dollar amount. Especially since we live in a housing co-op and split our utility bills with the other 159 homes in the neighborhood. Our family won’t directly see any of the benefit so what’s the use, right? There has to be a way we could save some money from this, though, so next I calculated the cost difference if all 160 homes in our community replaced their estimated 25 incandescent bulbs with new CFL’s, too. If everyone changes their bulbs we’re bound to see a difference, right? Right! After the first year, our co-op would save more than $35,000 just in electric bills!!! Now that seems like a bargain! Even if the co-op coughed up the money and purchased all 4,000 CFL’s for the homes to make sure everyone switched them out we’d still save around $21,000 the first year. Even better, over the estimated 6,000 hour lifetime of the 4,000 CFL’s we’d save $158,000! And that’s just in our little corner of Falls Church, VA. Imagine the impact we’d have if all 100 million households in the U.S. chipped in and did their part. The results would be astounding – maybe even $600 million dollars!
*The calculator is a Microsoft Excel document so if you don’t have Excel you won’t be able to open the link.
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Then it hit me. I was notified a couple weeks ago that my rent will go up substantially next month. It’s too much for me to pay and I need to find a new place. I plan to be a renter and I’ve looked at private rental sites, but there are government sites that have proved useful too. 
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