In case you have heard about Energy Star but aren’t sure what it means, this is a joint program by the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy designed to encourage the use of energy-saving appliances, building supplies and other products. To receive an official “Energy Star” badge, each of these products must adhere to specific guidelines for energy usage. Since these standards are relative to other products in the same category, you’ll always know you’re buying the most efficient products available. Such products are not only good for the environment, they can also help you save money on your energy bills. To learn more, visit the official Energy Star web site below.

EnergyStar.gov Website [www.energystar.gov].

Investigating this site is a key part of any plan to be sustainable or to use the “green” resources that are supplied by the US government. You can use this site to find rebates, lists of Energy Star-badged products, to outfit your home with money saving features or to find out about tax rebates that you may qualify for with energy efficient technologies. In the consummate American style, individuals have to lead the charge on being green, as there is no socialized imperative for saving energy besides self-interest.

After availing yourself of these governmental resources, you may consider checking out a site called GreenEnergyTV [www.greenenergytv.com]. This site contains a growing archive of videos about all types of environmental topics, including one very funny video about a Pedal Powered Television, which might make all those exercise TV shows obsolete.

As we mentioned yesterday [www.sundancechannel.com], we’ll be dedicating this week to a few of the ins and outs of carbon emissions: what you need to know about your impact on climate change, how you can learn more about your footprint, and what you can do to cut it back without moving to a cave or sitting around in the dark. Today, we’ll take a peek at the things that TreeHugger has covered to help reduce your personal impact on global warming.

Reducing the energy use in your home is one of the most effective ways to cut back; the short answer for why this is so is that the majority of our energy utilities burn coal to generate electricity, which is a dirty, carbon-intensive process. Cutting back doesn’t mean you can’t watch television or use your computer, though; there are ways to insure you get the most out of your electricity use. Devices like the Kill-a-Watt [www.treehugger.com] home energy monitor show which appliances use the most energy, which can help contextualize your home’s usage. Another handy device is the PowerCost [www.treehugger.com] home energy use monitor (pictured, right), which provides a real-time readout with your home’s current energy usage, along with what it’s costing you. TreeHugger also has tips on how to reduce your computer’s energy use [www.treehugger.com], which can be helpful for us all (since you wouldn’t be reading this without the benefit of a computer).

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: changing incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs [www.treehugger.com] (CFLs) is a great way to reduce your energy usage. Each bulb uses about 2/3 less energy than a conventional incandescent and can last five to ten times as long; though slightly more expensive to buy, each bulb can save you about $30 over its life. It may seem trivial, but changing a bulb really can make a difference; change two bulbs, or four, or ten, and it really starts to add up.

Beyond reducing your home’s energy use, signing up for green power (which was also mentioned on this blog [www.sundancechannel.com]) is a great way to keep your carbon footprint down. TreeHugger has a handy primer here [www.treehugger.com]; essentially, you pay a little premium to help your utility buy more power from alternative, renewable sources like wind and solar. Though they can’t insure that the “green electrons” that you’ve helped provide go directly to your home, they’ve done the math so that your investment matches up with your home’s energy use. Plus, more renewable energy is better than less, we always say. Beyond that, TreeHugger’s How to Green Your Electricity [www.treehugger.com] guide offers a myriad of tips for reducing, saving and otherwise greening your electricity use (and your carbon footprint). Tomorrow: the pros and cons of carbon offsets.

When it comes to lighting, compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are a giant step forward when compared to traditional incandescent bulbs, and TreeHugger recommends them for everyone. Even though CFLs offer superior energy efficiency and life expectancy, another light source is on the consumer products horizon with the potential to revolutionize the way we flip the switch: light emitting diodes.

Better known as another three-letter acronym, LEDs offer a similar efficiency upgrade over CFLs that CFLs offer over incandescents; whereas CFLs boast about 66% less energy usage and a lifespan of about 10,000 hours, LEDs can reduce energy consumption by 80-90% and last around 100,000 hours. They light up even faster than incandescents (and way faster than CFLs, which take a minute or two to warm up), which is a nice feature in your house, but could be a life-saving feature if they’re installed as your car’s brake lights.

Since they’re just now beginning to break into the consumer market, LEDs (and the fixtures that they usually come built in to) are almost always more expensive, though they have the potential to be cheaper over their lifespan because you’ll only buy one every 100,000 hours, rather than ten CFLs or dozens of incandescents. As is typical with a burgeoning movement, we’ve seen some high-end, designer-oriented implementations of the technology help break it in; Herman Miller and Yves Béhar’s Leaf Light (pictured; learn more about it here [www.treehugger.com] and Lucesco’s Halley Light (read more about that one here [www.treehugger.com] are a couple pretty chic examples, but Sylvania [www.treehugger.com] and Koncept [www.treehugger.com] have more affordable desk lamps for sale. Though many fixtures and lamps come with bulbs pre-installed, companies like Mule [www.treehugger.com] and Enlux [www.treehugger.com] are leading the charge for screw-in bulb replacements, allowing you and I to slowly start replacing LEDs in your everyday life and light fixtures.

The prices are steadily heading south, and we know that it’s no coincidence that the Millennium Technology Prize went to the inventor of the LED. Learn more about green lighting at TreeHugger’s How to Green Your Lighting Guide [www.treehugger.com], and get ready to get the LED out.