Beware. Your tech gear is costing you money while you sleep. Sure, the stuff looks innocent enough: cable box, HDTV, computer monitor, and sundry other electronic gadgets that consume power even when in “sleep” mode. While their energy-sucking ways may seem harmless, they cost you big bucks over time.

How much? U.S. households spend about $100 per year to power devices in low-power mode, around 8 percent of home electricity expenses, according to the government’s Energy Star program. Your water heater, lighting, air conditioner, and heater are the biggest energy hogs. The good news is that you can cut your energy bills without spending a fortune to do it.

First, you need to know which home appliances are the biggest power hogs. The P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt is an inexpensive electricity usage monitor that plugs into a standard wall outlet. Simply connect a suspected energy hog—an old refrigerator, for instance—to the Kill A Watt, which measures the appliance’s power consumption by the kilowatt-hour and shows the results on its LCD display. Priced at just over $17 online, Kill A Watt displays amps, volts, and wattage.

The twilight of the incandescent light bulb is upon us, and most versions of the venerable (and highly inefficient) bulb won’t be available in the U.S. by next year. Fluorescent, LED, and even new “hybrid” incandescent lights save energy and money but are sometimes hard to find for chandeliers, vanity lights, and other unique items. Measurements on bulb packages can be confusing when you’re unsure which size is right for your fixture. Light Bulb Finder is a free mobile app (Apple or Android) that helps you find the right energy-saving bulb. Enter your zip code, and it automatically determines the average electricity rate for your region. Then, scroll through images of lighting fixtures, and choose the type of incandescent bulb you want to replace. The app generates a list of recommended power-efficient bulbs and shows images and tech specs for each product.

Desktop computers and monitors are notorious energy wasters, particularly in home offices where tech gear is often left on 24/7. Many low-cost power-saving devices can stop the power drip and cut your electric bill. The Belkin Conserve Switch Surge Protector with Remote ($40), for instance, is a power strip with six switchable (on/off) outlets, and two additional outlets that are always on. The wall-mountable wireless remote works up to 60 feet from the power strip. To turn off up to six devices—a computer, monitor, printer, speakers, and external hard drive—simply flip the switch. The two always-on outlets are great for gadgets that need power 24/7, such as an Internet router or cordless phone.

And for the technophiles among us, there’s the amazing Nest, a programmable, power-saving thermostat you can install. The $250 Nest Learning Thermostat can cut your heating and cooling bill by up to 20 percent, the company claims. The Nest thermostat studies your heating/cooling habits and adjusts itself accordingly. For instance, if you raise the temperature in your home on a single occasion, Nest will ignore the change. But if you raise it two Mondays mornings in a row at 7 a.m., Nest will learn from your behavior and start making the change automatically. Created by a former Apple executive, Nest is sleek and stylish. And you can control Nest with your smartphone, PC, or tablet via a Wi-Fi connection.

More economical alternatives include the Honeywell Wi-Fi 7 Day Programmable Thermostat, which includes a free app for Apple and Android mobile devices. It’s more affordable at $100 to $120 online.

Of course, you don’t need new energy-saving light bulbs or power-cutting gizmos to reduce your utility bill (although they help). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers some simple suggestions, such as remembering to unplug mobile phones, tablets, and MP3 players once they’re charged. And remember to remove power adapters from wall outlets too. If you don’t, these insidious power drains will continue to cost you money.

Insidious Power Drains The Saturday Evening Post

Energy drinks may seem like a quick fix, but they come with long-term risks. Photo courtesy Shutterstock.

Do products like 5-hour ENERGY work—and are they safe? For adults seeking the occasional boost, the answer is a qualified yes. Caffeine and other compounds in energy drinks help us stay focused and energized by triggering a spike in the stress hormone cortisol. But frequent use overworks the body’s cortisol producers (adrenal glands), interferes with sleep, and can boost heart rate and blood pressure.

A regular diet of energy “shots” of high-dose ingredient blends is a short-lived fix with long-term risks, says Nikol Margiotta, D.N., a specialist at The Raby Institute for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago.

“Many of us are running on an empty tank and then want to know why we—or our kids—are tired and can’t concentrate. Relying on energy drinks to get through the day is a big red flag to change your ways with better sleep, nutrition, and stress management,” Dr. Margiotta says.

For the occasional afternoon pick-me-up, try chocolate. “I like organic chocolate because it contains small amounts of phenylethylamine and caffeine for sharpness and focus. But I don’t do it everyday,” concludes the expert.

Small Drinks, Big Energy? The Saturday Evening Post

1. Insulate electrical outlets.

Insulate the electrical outlets in your house that are located on exterior walls. Your local hardware store probably sells foam socket sealers that will help block cold or hot outside air from entering your home. You’ll need a screwdriver to remove the outlet plates or switch plates, but the whole process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes per outlet.

2. Get an energy audit.

Pay attention to your utility bill. Some utility companies occasionally offer a free energy audit, which typically entails a home inspection from a utility employee. If your electric bill seems high and you can’t figure out the reason, getting an audit is a great starting point for investigation; the results will help you understand the factors that may be affecting your energy use, such as drafty windows or a poorly insulated roof. If you’re lucky, the utility company may even throw in a few energy-saving freebies such as low-flow faucet heads or compact fluorescent light bulbs.

3. Switch to fluorescent light bulbs.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are brighter and more efficient than incandescent bulbs.

Replace your incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs or LEDs. Compact fluorescent bulbs are brighter and more efficient than incandescent bulbs; they may be more expensive up front, but they’ll last much longer. LED lights are another option that’s even more energy efficient; the downside is that they’re pretty pricey (expect to spend $20 or so per bulb). If the light generated by fluorescent bulbs is too harsh or industrial for your taste, try replacing existing incandescent bulbs with incandescent bulbs with lower wattage.

4. Give your fridge a hand.

Vacuum the coils on your refrigerator. Pet hair and dust bunnies accumulate on the coils over time, causing the fridge to have to work harder to get rid of the heat. If you clean off the coils now and then, the fridge will have less work to do and will use less energy.

5. Block off unused heat registers.

Be smart about heating and cooling. Is there a room in your home you rarely use? Is there a register in your laundry room two feet away from the furnace, resulting in a double dose of hot air? In rooms you don’t really need to heat and cool, insert something in the register to block it off and redirect the air flow toward other areas of the house.

6. Close the chimney flue.

If you have a fireplace, make sure the chimney vent is closed, unless you are about to make a fire. This helps insulate your home from warm or cold air, so your heating and air conditioning won’t require as much energy. Closing the chimney flue also prevents wildlife from taking up residence there. Trust us on this one: Having a live raccoon fall down your chimney in the middle of the night is an experience you’d rather omit from your bucket list.

7. Winterize windows and doors.

Try a window insulator kit.

If you live in a place with long, cold winters and your home is drafty, it’s definitely worth investing in winterizing supplies. Double-sided foam tape can help plug gaps along the edges and bottom of exterior doors and window frames so the wind doesn’t whistle through your kitchen.

If you notice lots of cold air coming through the windows, consider getting a window insulator kit. Most kits contain what looks like a large roll of ordinary double-sided tape and several giant sheets of plastic wrap. Installation is simple. Outline the window frame with double-sided tape, stretch an appropriate-sized piece of plastic wrap over the window, and blow dry the plastic until it tightens up like a drum. Yes, your windows will look a little odd for a day or two until you get used to it, but the difference in warmth is noticeable.

8. Turn down appliances.

Besides your HVAC system itself, the fridge, freezer, and hot water heater are probably the biggest energy users in your home. Check the thermostat in your refrigerator and freezer; your fridge should be set between 37 and 40 degrees and your freezer at about 5 degrees. Hot water heaters are typically set at 140 degrees, but you can probably get away with setting yours at 120 degrees unless you have health concerns that require extra-hot water. For more tips on optimizing home energy use, check out the U.S. Department of Energy website.

9. Insulate hot water pipes.

If you have easy access to your hot water heater, hot water pipes, and heating ducts, insulate them with foam or insulator foil. It’s a little bit of trouble, but the energy-saving results are impressive, especially considering that the materials are relatively inexpensive.

9 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Home Energy Use The Saturday Evening Post

While Tulsans were naturally downhearted at the unveiling, there was a sadder spectacle that was generally overlooked. Placed on the car seat were jugs of gasoline.

Back in 1957, the far-sighted planners reasoned that, within the next 50 years, automobiles might no longer be powered by gasoline. The jugs of gasoline ensured the car could be operated in the distant future when gas stations might have all disappeared.

There was no need to worry. The gas stations are still around. We’re just as dependent on oil as ever. The only change is that America had moved away from leaded gasoline.

America occupied a highly enviable position in the post-war world. Its cities and businesses had emerged whole and hearty from the war. Its infrastructure hadn’t been wrecked by bombings and sabotage. We had the only intact economy in the Western world, and plenty of oil. There was little interest in conserving fuel now, especially with articles like “Now We Have Plenty of Oil,” which appeared in the Post in 1950.

“Turn up the oil burner. Fill the gas tank, the cigarette lighter, the kerosene range. Order a new diesel locomotive, a jar of cold cream, a jet plane, and make free with petroleum products any way you fancy. Forget that rumor you heard just a few years back—the one that predicted that we would shortly run out of oil and into calamity. It was not true. There is oil in quantity under American soil. Having had less than a hundred years to regularize its cycles, the calendar of perpetual petroleum alarm and reassurance is not yet as accurate as a barometer, but at this points it reads calm, comfort and all the gasoline you want. The next cycle of worry over oil shortage may be a decade or more away, to be followed no doubt by surplus, to be followed no doubt by shortage, to be —

“Anyway, right now oil is easy, and this should be a powerful load off the national mind. The importance of whether or not we have enough oil in America grows greater every year.

“… perhaps it is permissible to point out that the record of oil ups and downs is at least odd, if not downright hilarious. No decade has passed in the present century without some authority writing off our oil future as failing and soon doomed. Crankcases today are full of oil that was once seriously described as nonexistent.

“Take the notable warning of 1919, when the chief geologist of the United States Geological Survey flatly predicted complete oil exhaustion in this country by 1936. Or the comparatively recent fright of former Secretary of the Interior Ickes in 1943, who solemnly divided known oil reserves by consumption and pointed out that we had a supply good for only fourteen years.”

The writer spoke of unlimited oil, and new fields of crude that had recently been located in Texas. What he failed to tell readers was that, since four years earlier, the United States was starting to consume more oil than it could produce domestically. As early as 1946, we were losing our energy independence.

Even so, the confident tone could still be heard in 1962. In that year, another Post article, “The Oil of the Arab,” addressed the rising nationalism of Arab nations, which were providing us with most of our gasoline. He quoted Sheik Abdullah H. Taliki, Saudi Arabia director of oil:

“’Allah made nothing without cause,’ he says. ‘He made the great desserts that are useless to man. But he buried oil beneath them. It is Arab oil. It must be used for the Arab’s benefit. Today others can use our oil to further their interests, which may not coincide with ours.’

“The oil, buried in a great basin that stretches from the southern slopes of Turkey’s Taurus Mountains to the shores of the Arabian Sea, and from Iran’s eastern borders to Saudi Arabia’s western shore, constitutes what is probably the world’s greatest reservoir of mineral wealth. Reserves estimated at 181,000,000,000 barrels, two thirds of the free world’s known oil supply, have already been discovered; millions of square miles, on land in the waters of the Persian Gulf, remain to be explored. Tiny Kuwait, a sun-parched desert little bigger than Connecticut, has proven reserves of 62,000,000,000 barrels, exceeding the total reserves of North and South America combined.  Beneath the dunes and bare gravel plains of Saudi Arabia lie 50,000,000,000 barrels more. Iraq has 25,000,000,000 barrels in reserve, Iran 35,000,000,000.

“The total reserves in the United States are estimated at 33,500,000,000.

“’Some day,’ he says, ‘we will unite. Once we are strong enough to shut down all the wells, and close the Suez Canal and shut off the pipelines—even if only for a few days—the companies will suddenly see a great light. The world cannot live without the Mideast’s oil.’”

Well, it was easy for the author to see why the Arabs would never succeed in exerting its power.

“The weakness in Mr. Tariki’s position lies in the fact that at the moment there is more oil available than the world can use…”

Oil Boom and Bust The Saturday Evening Post

And Step On It! The Saturday Evening Post

“Many consumers are looking for ways to be healthy and gain more energy throughout their day, yet few eat breakfast,” says Jennifer Schleman, IFIC Foundation Director of Public Outreach. “A growing body of research shows the benefits of eating breakfast include weight management, increased cognitive skills, and better overall health.”

Some things are easier said than done. For tips on how and why to eat a healthful breakfast from the International Food Information Foundation, visit www.ific.org.

What’s for breakfast? The Saturday Evening Post

“Come on,” Boone snaps, tossing a pen on the table. “Has that guy not been listening? Does he still really think some more drilling is the answer?”

What? An oilman decrying oil? You would think that a man who made several fortunes in the oil business (and whose net worth today he estimates at close to $4 billion) would always be found singing the praises of black gold. Yet since last May, Pickens has been mounting a fierce national campaign to convince us that it’s time to rely on other sources of energy. You’ve no doubt seen his network television commercials in which he claims that the country can no longer afford, at a cost of $700 billion a year, to import 70 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil it uses every day. You’ve also probably heard him say that there is not enough oil left in the United States to solve our energy needs. (“We cannot drill our way out of this problem no matter where we decide to drill,” he loves to say.)

What is perhaps most surprising, however, is Pickens’ audacious plan to create more new domestic energy sources. The Pickens Plan, as it is now known, calls for Congress and the next presidential administration to spur businesses to build giant wind farms in what he calls “the wind belt”: the enormous corridor that extends the length of the Great Plains from Texas to the Canadian border. He wants the wind power that will come from those farms to replace the natural gas that we now use to make electricity. (About 22 percent of America’s electricity each year comes from natural gas; the other 70 percent comes from coal and nuclear power, and the rest comes from other smaller sources.) He then wants to use the freed-up natural gas to be used to power our automobiles.

Such a move, Pickens asserts, would replace more than one third of our foreign oil imports, saving us close to $300 billion a year. “And we can do it in ten years,” he says. “All we have to do is get our government’s leaders behind the plan. We need to get them to provide tax incentives to all the companies that want to do wind energy, or build automobiles that can run on natural gas, or re-do their gas stations so that they actually provide natural gas instead of just gasoline.”

To that end, Pickens says he and his followers (so far, more than one million citizens have gone to his website, pickensplan.com, to sign up for what he calls the New Energy Army) are going to descend on Washington within the first one hundred days of the new Barack Obama administration and hold a major demonstration demanding the adoption of the Pickens Plan. “Every president since Richard Nixon has said, ‘Vote for me, and we’ll be energy independent,’ but not one of them has done a damn thing about it,” growls Pickens. “Well, that’s about to change.”

Pickens is so convinced his plan will work that he’s putting his money where his mouth is. Earlier this year, he started work on what he calls “the biggest deal” of his career: the construction of the world’s largest wind energy farm, containing as many as 2,000 wind turbines spread over four Texas Panhandle counties that, when completed, will cost $10 billion and will generate enough electricity to power more than 1.3 million homes. He’s also the majority stockholder and board member of California-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., North America’s largest provider of vehicular natural gas.

But for all of Pickens’ enthusiasm, is it realistic to believe the country will make such a wholesale change in its energy policy? Can the federal government really do enough to promote more wind energy and more natural gas automobiles? And even if the Pickens Plan is enacted, will it work? Will it come close to solving our energy problems? Or should we be turning to other energy sources such as nuclear and solar power, or perhaps electric cars?

Here is what Pickens, and other experts, have to say:

WIND ENERGY

Pickens is indeed born and bred in oil. Raised in the Oklahoma oil patch (his father was a landman), he immediately went to work as an oilfield geologist after his graduation from Oklahoma State University in 1951 and started his own exploration and production company a few years later. But he has no illusions abut the oil business. “There’s always a declining production curve with oil,” he says. “No matter how big of an oil field you find, it gradually depletes. That’s why I like wind. It’s not only clean and renewable, it never declines. The wind never stops blowing.”

So far, wind produces still only a little over 1 percent of the country’s total amount of energy. The Department of Energy claims the U.S. has the capacity to produce wind power in 45 states, easily enough to generate at least 20 percent of our nation’s power. One 3-megawatt wind turbine, which stands 410 feet tall, with blades that stretch 148 feet in length, can produce the same amount of annual energy as 12,000 barrels of imported oil. What’s more, those turbines produce no air or water pollution and do not interfere with land use.

And as a side benefit, construction of wind farms would yield billions of dollars’ worth of economic development to the country’s stressed rural economy, creating thousands of jobs and bringing more income to farmers who lease their land to their new wind-energy partners. But the wind doesn’t blow 24 hours a day. Nor can power generated by wind be stored. That means electric companies that buy wind energy will always need backup sources of power to fill in the gaps when the wind does not blow.

The most daunting challenge, however, centers on the fundamental question of how customers will actually get the electricity generated by the wind turbines. For the Pickens Plan to succeed, the U.S. transmission grid will need to be overhauled. Thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars (and maybe more), will have to be built to carry the electricity from turbines clustered on the prairies in America’s heartland to distant cities, where the electricity is most needed.

Pickens is undeterred. “What we need is a commitment among our leaders that’s equal to the Eisenhower administration’s commitment to constructing the Interstate Highway system,” he says. “We came together to get our interstates built. And we can come together to get a wind energy system in place.”

Prior to Pickens’ advertising campaign, many Americans had no idea that vehicles could be retrofitted to run on compressed natural gas, or CNG. Now, just about everyone has heard the statistics: the price of natural gas as an automotive fuel is not only half that of gasoline, it burns much cleaner, releasing one-third fewer carbon gas emissions than gasoline. “The best thing of all is that all the natural gas we need can be found right here, not over in the Mideast,” Pickens says. “How can you beat that?”

There are more than 8.7 million natural gas vehicles operating worldwide, yet only 120,000 of them are in the United States. And almost all of those are heavy-duty buses and trucks. Automakers certainly know how to build natural gas cars: the Honda Civic GX (which Pickens often drives these days) is rated as the cleanest internal-combustion vehicle in the world. But the reason you don’t see many of these cars, of course, is because there are very few places to fill them up. Only 1,600 natural gas stations are scattered throughout the country.

Clearly, an entirely new infrastructure has to be built to get natural gas cars on the road. Pickens wants the federal government to offer tax credits and other incentives to gas stations that would offer natural gas as a fuel, and he also wants tax breaks to automakers to build the cars that would run on it. Without waiting for government action, his Clean Energy Fuels is building 35 to 40 filling stations across the country. Recently, the company purchased a Toronto firm that sells a home fueling device which lets people gas up at home via a natural gas line (sort of the way an outdoor barbeque is connected to the home’s natural gas line). But it’s expensive: the machine costs about $5,500, including installation ($1,500) and shipping ($200).

There is also the question of just what would happen to the price of natural gas if the Pickens Plan were enacted. Some experts believe that a larger demand for gas would cause the price to climb—and the price increase would inevitably be passed on to those who use natural gas to heat their homes.

Pickens acknowledges gas prices would rise to some degree, but he says with the recent discoveries of huge natural gas shale fields around the country, the rise would not be significant—certainly not compared to the way the price of oil is going to rise. “It’s not just us but countries like China and India that are demanding more and more oil, which means the price of oil is destined to rise. If we maintain the status quo and come up with no other plan, we’ll inevitably see the price hit $200 a barrel, which means America will be spending $1 trillion a year for our foreign oil exports. I sure as hell would rather have that money circulating in our economy than in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.”
OTHER ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES

Although the Pickens Plan focuses on wind and natural gas, Pickens is hardly averse to the country using other renewable energy sources. “I’ll take just about anything as long as it gets us off foreign oil,” he says.

Here’s his take on some of the other alternatives:

Solar: Boone believes more solar energy plants should be built in the southwest, which he calls the “solar corridor.” Solar energy, he says, has all the benefits of wind energy: it’s constantly renewable. But it has the same problems. For one, a whole new system of transmission lines would have to be built to get the electricity from the southwest to the cities. Pickens believes the government’s focus should first be on a wind program—(studies do conclude that wind turbines can produce more electricity than solar panes)—and then later build a strong solar program.

Nuclear: The 104 nuclear power plants now operating in this country supply nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. During the presidential campaign, the centerpiece of John McCain’s energy plan was the construction of 45 more nuclear plants by the year 2030 at a cost of between $6 to $7 billion per plant. He called nuclear power “safe and clean, and it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

There is no question that nuclear energy is one of the best ways to minimize serious harm from global warming that comes with the large amount of carbon emissions due to burning fossil fuels. Pickens says he supports nuclear power, but he does say the government needs to be certain it knows what to do with the radioactive waste it produces. (Scientists are split about the safety of the present nuclear-waste disposal plan: burying it deep in a mountain in Nevada.) He adds, “A nuclear plant can’t run a car or an 18-wheeler.” His point: nuclear power only provides electricity. If there is no additional plan to get rid of our oil addiction, he says, “then we are just spinning our wheels.”

Ethanol: Pickens is not wild about ethanol, a gasoline substitute made from corn. He says if we distilled our nation’s entire corn crop into ethanol, the fuel produced would displace less than a sixth of the gasoline we currently guzzle. As for other biofuels on the market, he points out that they produce only 85 percent of the energy of gasoline, require retrofitting car engines, and are incompatible with existing oil pipelines, meaning they would be almost impossible to move around the country. “A natural gas car is so much more efficient,” he says.

Electric Cars: Pickens does not deny that automobiles powered by electric batteries could radically transform the use of oil in the United States. In fact, automakers are working hard to improve battery and electric drive technologies. Chevrolet promises that its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid will be in showrooms in the fall of 2010 (at a cost of $40,000 each). Another company—A123 Systems—will soon be supplying plug-in retrofit kits for the Toyota Prius hybrid that will enable the cars to run solely on electricity for 40 miles and increase gas mileage to 100 miles per gallon.

But Pickens argues the country “still has a long way to go” before the highways are full of electric cars. He notes that Barack Obama’s goal during the presidential campaign was to get one million plug-in hybrids on the road in ten years. “That’s a drop in the bucket, considering that we’ve got 250 million vehicles in America,” Pickens notes. “With the right government incentives, we can start putting more natural gas cars on the road today.”

Pickens is very aware that critics claim he is pushing wind energy and natural gas vehicles only because he has a monetary interest in seeing them succeed. And yes, he admits, he does want his projects to make a profit. “But I want to make money so that other entrepreneurs will realize they can make money doing the same thing,” he says. “Come on, I’m eighty years old. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever need. I’m pushing the Pickens Plan because it’s the right thing to do for this country. No, my plan is not perfect, but at least it’s a plan. And right now, this country has no plan.”

In the past few months, as the world financial system has unraveled and a steep drop in oil prices has eased the public’s alarm about energy costs, Pickens has found it more difficult to keep the Pickens Plan in the spotlight. But he insists he is not letting up. He is spending an average of five days a week on his jet, crisscrossing the country, meeting with everyone from top political leaders to college students, warning them of the crisis that is on its way.

“The bottom line is that total global production of oil is at 85 million barrels a day; total global demand is now hitting 87 million barrels a day, and we can’t make up the difference,” he says. “It’s frightening—I mean, flat-out scary. Is that what we really want for our future? Is that what we really want?”

T. Boone Pickens: Man with a Plan The Saturday Evening Post