Energy-saving tips to reduce your carbon footprint
It’s typically been important to reduce energy consumption and costs in your home, but now many consumers are considering how their activities and purchases can impact the environment.
Energy-conscious homeowners now desire products that reduce energy, and also help lighten their carbon footprint.
A carbon footprint is a yearly measure of carbon dioxide emissions — usually in pounds or tons — caused by your activities. This includes emissions from driving a car or flying in an airplane, and the manufacture and distribution of the products you buy for yourself and your home.
Many websites, like the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Household Emissions Calculator or the ENERGY STAR Home Energy Yardstick, will help calculate your current household energy use.
The calculation is based on the number of people living in your home, where you live, your primary heating source, your vehicles and gas mileage, home energy and fuel usage, and recycling habits. Once completed, you’ll know about how many pounds of carbon dioxide every member of your household uses each year. The average emissions per person in the United States is 20,750 pounds.1
The “ideal” carbon footprint varies greatly and is open to much debate. Many consumers set a goal to reduce their overall carbon footprint by changing a couple of habits each year.
Start with your home
Home energy use accounts for nearly one-fourth of your carbon footprint. Installing energy-efficient windows and doors will help reduce your emissions by decreasing the potential energy needed to heat and cool your home.
Pella energy-efficient windows and doors that qualify for the EPA’s ENERGY STAR label can save families about a third on their greenhouse gas emissions with similar savings on their energy bills, without sacrificing features, style or comfort.2
- For a typical home, replacing single-pane windows with ENERGY STAR-certified windows can save $146 to $501 a year on energy costs, and reduce a home's carbon footprint by 7 – 15 percent, according to energystar.gov.
- When properly selected and installed, adding new Pella energy-efficient windows helps your home stay warmer in the winter and reduces cold air leaks into your home. Plus, the glass featured in these windows has coatings that help keep out the summer heat and act like sunscreen to protect your valuables from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet light that can fade fabrics, wood floors and photographs.
- Closing window blinds and shades during hot months to conserve energy and opening them on sunny days during cold months to let in solar heat also can help reduce heating bills.
- Solid wood construction offers superior insulating qualities. Pella’s Designer Series windows — with triple-pane glass — are the most energy-efficient wood windows in the marketplace.3
Pella’s carbon footprint
Pella earned the 2014 ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year award (for the seventh time) for continued leadership in protecting the environment through energy efficiency.
Each year, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) honor companies that have shown a long-term commitment to providing highly energy-efficient products. Pella’s media relations, consumer education programs, advertising, Web sites and training programs have helped communicate the value of its ENERGY STAR labeled products to consumers and businesses.
Providing energy-efficient windows and doors to help consumers reduce their carbon footprint is only part of Pella’s mission. Just-in-time energy savings implemented at Pella’s corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities allowed the company to reduce its carbon footprint by about 4,000 tons in 2009.
1Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
2Visit this website for details: http://www.energystar.gov
3Pella Designer Series windows and patio doors with triple-pane glass are No. 1 for energy efficiency and noise reduction among top national brands with similar glazing, providing superior NFRC U-values and SHGC ratings.
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