house has been developed to demonstrate to people as part of this year’s Switch it Off campaign that saving money can be easy and stress free.
Cllr Alan Cockburn, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment
Visitors to the Warwickshire County Council website can have fun discovering how to save hundreds of pounds by simply switching off or going for the low energy option in their homes.
By going to www.warwickshire.gov.uk/switchitoff and clicking through to the Energy Saving House, people can see how they can drive down their annual electricity bill from £600 to under £200 with some very simple steps.
Visitors to the house go room by room trying to find as much as they can to switch off or replace, for instance replacing each lightbulb for low energy saves £6 a year, or switching from a G-rated inefficient fridge to an A-rated efficient fridge saves £39 a year.
Cllr Alan Cockburn, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment, said: “This house has been developed to demonstrate to people as part of this year’s Switch it Off campaign that saving money can be easy and stress free.”
Switch it Off gets underway on Monday, November 9, and continues through until Friday, November 13, when from 4.30pm until 6.30pm all householders and businesses are being called on to use as little electricity as possible.
This is the fourth year of the Switch it Off campaign, which in the previous three years has recorded huge successes in reducing the amount of energy used in the county.
The aim of Switch it Off is to get people to think about doing the little things in their home to save energy, little things which can then have a huge impact on bills.
Videos, set-top boxes, televisions and even the clocks on microwaves are using surprisingly high amounts of power everyday in our homes. The average family spend on electricity can be slashed by 25 per cent by switching off.
According to the Energy Saving Trust nationally 71 per cent of people regularly leave items on stand by in their homes, and 65 per cent of people leave lights on in rooms they are not using.
If everyone in Warwickshire, Coventry and Worcestershire stopped leaving appliances on stand by it would prevent 86,322 tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere through wasted electricity and save more than £20m (enough to pay the annual electricity bill for 71,953 homes).
For more information on taking steps to `Switch it off’ visit
http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/switchitoff or call the energy advice hotline on 0800 512012.