Household Energy Usage and Conservation :: Environmental Essays

theater Energy Usage and ConservationHousehold button conservation is a very practical and realistic advent to conserving skill within our society. US households consume a tremendous come of congenital gas as well as voltaic energy. It has been mensur able-bodied that the amount of energy consumed within the US increased exponentially from most 1850 to 1975. If energy continued to increase at this rate, we would be experiencing severe energy shortages in our current society. Luckily, steps towards conservation, including various energy regulations, have curbed that proceeds somewhat, brining the predicted 160 Qbtu/yr for the year 2000 down to around 93.8 Qbtu/yr by the year 1996. However, household energy usage is still a major(ip) issue as households consume round 38% of the total consumed energy and contribute greatly to natural gas consumption and issues such as global warming. Therefore, it is important that people understand how we use energy in the household and what steps preserve be taken to conserve that energy. wizard process within households that contributes greatly to energy consumption is put heating. pose heating simply refers to the heating of the air throughout the house. It has been calculated that space heating consumes more or less 5.3 Qbtu per year. About 3.7 Qbtu come from natural gas and about .9 Qbtu come from Fuel oil. Only about .4 Qbtus of electricity are consumed by space heating. There are various ways which one can space heat their house. The most common way is to use a furnace, however, stoves, fireplaces, electric justification heaters and electrically powered heat pumps can besides be used to heat the house. Furnaces run mostly off natural gas and tend to be around 60-90% efficient. Older units can be as low as 50% efficient. Electric resistance heaters are usually around 100% efficient at producing heat. However, this statistic is slightly direct when thinking about total efficiency because you essential account for the electric energy being consumed by the heater. Power plants are only able to produce electric energy from natural gas at about 35% efficiency. Consequently, electricity is more expensive than natural gas to produce, fashioning electric resistance heaters more expensive to operate. This energy cost must also be accounted for when adding up the total cost of electric resistance heating.Another way to heat ones house is to use a fireplace.