With a New Year and a new decade now underway, most of us have resolutions on our minds. Whether you run a business or a household, cost savings are likely somewhere on the list of important things to focus on this year. Cutting costs and helping to save the environment at the same time are both great reasons to work on Energy Efficiency in 2020.

Aside from checking your home for drafts, leaks and switching to energy-efficient appliances, there are things you can still do to ensure you’re doing better for the environment and your wallet this year.

Here are some ideas for getting started on this resolution in your home.

Upgrade Your Lighting

A significant amount of energy loss can be found in your home’s lighting. Especially if your fixtures are old, very large or simply turned on for lengthy amounts of time each day. To help you reduce the amount of energy used to produce light, you should swap out all of the lightbulbs for LED technology which uses around 80 percent less energy.

Check the Thermostat

Keeping your home warm involves more than running through oil or propane supplies. There is also electricity and energy being used to run those HVAC systems and push the warm air around the home. To help stop them from working so hard and exerting extra energy, it’s important to keep your home’s temperature controlled. You can do this easily with new smart, connected thermostats. Program them to warm and cool the house at just the right temp and the right time each day.

Smarter Water Use

It’s pretty obvious that a dripping faucet is going to waste a lot of water over time. So those should absolutely be fixed immediately but there is, even more, you can today. Thanks to advanced technologies such as smart water solutions and connected showerheads and even sprinkler systems, it’s possible to further increase your water conservation efforts.

Unplug Everything Not in Use

Finally, our homes are jam-packed today with gadgets and devices that are always on and running. Many of them don’t need to be. The best way to combat the energy usage issues with constantly running devices is to upgrade to more sophisticated power strips. After all, you’re more likely to flick one switch on the panel to shut all devices than go around clicking the off button on everything one at a time.  

Take small steps each day and show others in the household why they are important. Over time, these can add up to large savings in your monthly utility bills.