The winter months are upon us. We are now continually running the heat and leaving the lights on a longer. During the winter months, you will take notice of your increased energy bills. No worries though, below are some online resources that can help ease the pain. They probably won’t cut your bills by 50%, however they do offer suggestions that will help you out.

ENERGY SAVERS

When you go to Energy Savers, you can learn all about energy conservation. The site has content on renewable energy, ways to reduce your energy consumption, and more. It also has information on how to perform home-energy audits to see what you could do to reduce your energy bill. All in all, Energy Savers is an extremely useful site if you plan to reduce your energy bill.

ENERGY STAR

Energy Star has quickly become a buzzword in the home-energy space, but its Web site is one of the most useful in this roundup.you get to Energy Star, you can do quite a bit. I used the site to find information on energy-efficient appliances. The content it provided was outstanding. Aside from that, Energy Star features tips on how to address some inefficient energy issues in your home. One of the site’s best resources is its list of potential tax credits that you can get by acquiring Energy Star products. The page provides several links for you to find the products that help you qualify for the credit. I really liked Energy Star. If you’re looking to find appliances that match your financial goals, this site is for you.

HOME ENERGY SAVER

The U.S. government’s Home Energy Saver tool is a great way to determine if your home is up to par when it comes to energy efficiency. When you get to the page, you’ll need to enter your zip code. From there, the app calculates the average energy cost in your area. It also displays what an energy-efficient home would cost in that location. Next, you’ll need to input information about your house, including its square footage, how many windows it has, what kind of heat you have, and more. It takes a little while to fill out the form, but once you do, the audit tool helps you find several ways to maximize your energy efficiency. I took it and was surprised to see if I completed all the tasks that were required, a savings of $900 was in store for me. Definitely worth the time to try it out.

LOW IMPACT LIVING

Low Impact Living provides several tools for you to figure out just how efficient your energy use is. It also offers tips on how to improve your usage and awareness through one of the best impact calculators outlined in this summary. When it’s complete, the quiz turns out a bunch of ideas of how to reduce your energy bill. For me, those suggestions included replacing my refrigerator, changing a few lights to compact fluorescents, and use low-flow showerheads. Following all the suggestions the site offered could save me up to $1,100 per year.

MICROSOFT HOHM

Microsoft might not seem like the most obvious choice for a company that will help you reduce your energy costs, but its Hohm service will do just that. When you sign up for Hohm, you’ll be asked to fill out an energy profile, detailing how you’re using up energy each month. Once complete, the service displays a full evaluation of your energy efficiency. It also gives you tips on how to improve and thanks to formation of the Hohm Community, you can also connect with others to share your best practices. It’s more than worthy of trying it out.

OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

If you’re wondering how much insulation your home may need, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a page that will help you find out. When you get to the site, you’ll need to fill out some basic information about your home, including your zip code, whether it’s new or existing, and what kind of insulation you currently have. From there, the site will determine what kind of insulation you should install in your house to make it more efficient. Worthy of a look.

GOOGLE POWER METER

Another site I like is Google’s power meter application. PowerMeter is a free electricity usage monitoring tool that provides you with information on how much energy your home is consuming. Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices and visualizes this information for you on iGoogle (your personalized Google homepage). And, Google PowerMeter is free.

Also check out the SAVING $ tab on this website for other money saving tips for this winter and all year around.

Using Goats to Mow

Gas-powered lawn mowers are polluting monsters. Mow for an hour or drive your car for four hours: the emissions are equal. Mowers have been largely unregulated with few emissions controls, although all that will change as of 2012, when new emissions standards for small spark-ignition engines goes into law. The rules intent is that it will  provide a 35 percent reduction in hydrocarbon emissions, lower evaporative emissions, and hence less ozone and greenhouse gas formation as a result of all that grass cutting.

Goats are ruminants, and emit methane as part of the enteric fermentation that occurs in their first “stomach,” the rumen. In 2003, according to the EPA, U.S. goats emitted 0.3 Teragrams CO2 equivalent of methane emissions. By comparison, landfills emitted 131.2 Tg, termites about 20 Tg, and mobile sources 2.7 Tg. Goats are not blameless, but they are better than lawn mowers and termites. However the old fashion push mower may remain your best choice for lawns if you really want to produce NO emissions and burn some additional calories!

Traditional manicured home lawn mowing is perhaps the wrong application or wrong image to convey. Goats are best used for hillsides and or rough terrain as they not only love to eat grasses, they also love all those plants we don’t want as well. So hence we see companies, like Google and other SIlicon Valley firms, using them not on a lawn, but in weedy fields. Goats easily and happily eat a huge variety of invasive and noxious plants down to the nub. Blackberry and poison ivy are just two examples of unwanted plants that goats love to eat.

Google is not the first to prefer goats over machines: Many goat herders are renting out their goats for landscape renovation and maintenance. Goat herds are used to maintain areas alongside airplane runways, like at SeaTac in Washington state, to remove scrub in fire-prone areas, and to replace pesticides in weed eradication on ranches. They do all this and more without the impact of heavy equipment or deadly herbicides. Their byproducts provide a type of fertilizer, as their hooves stomp into ready made compost. See the video below for more insight.