Caring for God’s Earth – Energy Saving at Home and Beyond

Eco Church

Energy consumption and cost is becoming a major issue for many households due to the continued rise in energy prices, so we all need to look at our own use of energy in the home and see what we can do to reduce it. Before central heating became universal, people wore more warm clothes in the winter, so why not aim to turn down the heating one or two degrees and dig out some winter woollies, when the cold weather comes, and turn off heat completely when going away, or when a room will not be used for several days. Also do not leave anything on standby, be it TV, Broadband routers, computer monitors, printers, laptops, games consoles or smart speakers, as they all use small amounts of energy when on standby. The kettle is one of the most electrically intensive appliances in the house, so only put as much water in it as you are going to need. Coupled with energy use is the household carbon footprint and our recent changes in lifestyle are having a massive effect on our carbon emissions. Storing data on ‘the Cloud’ makes it easy to store far more videos, photos and emails than we need. On ‘the Cloud’ it is someone else’s problem, but would you really fill a room at home with photos and videos which are out of focus, duplicates or that you will never look at again? According to the Financial Times newspaper in May 2021 the carbon emissions from tech infrastructure and data servers that enable cloud computing now exceed those of pre-Covid air travel! Microsoft and Google have set targets to become carbon neutral. We can all help by regularly deleting things we don’t want or need.