Newsweek International has an article online detailing seven methods of conservation for the future:

When a slump in business travelers forced Ulrich Römer to cut costs at his family-owned Hotel am Stadtpark in Hilden, Germany, in 2002, he found that he didn’t have to skimp on comfort for his guests. Instead, he replaced hundreds of the hotel’s wasteful incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescent ones, getting the same light for 80 percent less power. He bought a state-of-the-art water boiler with a digitally controlled pump, and wrapped insulation around the pipes.

And now the guy is saving 60,000 euros a year on his energy bill, 60-percent less than the 90,000 euros he was paying.  All from, you know, reducing energy use.

It’s not just good for the environment: it’s good for business too!

Treehugger (hat tip to them for the linkage) has a more succint breakdown of the seven steps:

1. Insulation (36% of the world’s energy is said to be used for heating and cooling)
2. Compact Fluoro Lighting (moving to all CFL’s by 2030 would negate the need for 650 power plants – Philips last month announced they were phasing our incandescents)
3. Heat Pumps (Japan in offering subsidies has seen 1 million installed in past couple of years for heating water)
4. Industrial Manufacturing (Inefficient factories consume about a third of all the world’s energy, but producers like BASF have cut €200 million a year and nearly half their CO2 emissions through factory redesign and energy synergies)
5. Green Driving (save 6 % in fuel use by keeping car tyres properly inflated. Drive a diesel – 40% better mileage than petrol. If one third of US cars were diesel the US would no longer need to import the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels of oil a day)
6. Buy a Better Fridge (looking at actual energy use costs rather than purchase price could save 43% in total. Govt supported appliance energy labelling helps purchasers make such informed decisions) and finally
7. Energy Service Contracts (infrastructure providers don’t charge customers for installation but take a cut of the energy savings their clients make)

That’s not to say you shouldn’t read the Newsweek piece, but there’s the list for you to print out. Next step: grab a red pen for checking items off. Anyhoo, the article has a nice lede:

Forget the old cliche that conserving energy is a form of abstinence—riding bicycles, dimming the lights, lowering the thermostat and taking fewer showers. These days conservation is all about efficiency: getting the same—or better—results from just a fraction of the energy.