story & photo
by Jessica Warzeniak
On October 9, State Repressentative Elissa Wright, Noank, spoke at the Mystic Woman’s Club meeting. She addressed the topics of sustainable energy, energy efficiency, and energy conservation. “Energy use is the major contributor to global warming,” said Elissa. Her tips to reduce your carbon footprint are:
• Switch your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). CFLs use 30-percent less energy than regular bulbs and 70-percent less heat. If everyone in CT switched to CFLs, it would save the energy equal to lighting 250,000 homes.
• Replace appliances with Energy Star effiecent ones. (This can also save you money with tax credits.)
• In an indirect way we can impact energy cost and benefit the environment by reducing demand of peak energy use. Between 8 am to 8 pm, there is a higher demand on the energy grid known as peak demand time. During peak demand energy is more expensive.
• Buy local. Not only does it stimulate our local economy, but it reduces the need to transport goods. Big agriculture has much higher energy consumption than our local growers.
• Encourage your town to get involved in Clean Energy Community Initiative.
Elisa went on to explain, “We are experiencing the effects of global warm. The implications of climate changes are real especially in a coastal community… We can’t stop global warming, but we can mitigate the impacts. We can plan for sea level rises and warmer temperatures.”
“We at this level cannot affect the global solutions to reduce global warming but we can use sustainable and energy efficient resources. We can reduce our energy costs. This makes economic sense and environmental sense.”
