Guess what? Every bit of energy usage in your home goes through you. You decide to turn the lights on and turn the light off. You choose to use less electricity or more electricity. Your energy consumption is directly related to your habits and behaviors.
“Houses don’t consume energy…people do.”
This interactive map puts into perspective how excessive our energy consumption is in the United States. Hover your cursor over the nation of your choice to see its CO2 emissions, population, birth and death rates. David Bleja collected this data from United States Government statistics, from the CIA World Factbook and the United Nations Statistical Division.
Financially speaking the typical definition of retirement or financial independence is having enough income being produced by your investments to support your cost of living. Whether your investments consist of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, etc… You could be considered financially independent if the income from your assets covers your cost of living.
It is a fair assumption to believe energy costs make up a sizable portion of your cost of living. The average American family spends a sizable portion of their household income on energy consumption and the cost will only go up from here. It is extremely important to realize you have options when it comes to your energy costs and consumption.
Preparing for your financial future is about goal setting, taking control of your spending, saving more money and investing. When you choose to not do anything about changing your fossil fuel based energy sources you are committing to a path of uncertainty, constantly rising prices and guaranteed negative environmental side effects.
Predicting the cost of your energy in 10, 15 or 20+ years is like trying to predict the future value of a stock over the same time span. As many experienced investors know even the best projections are wrong a large percentage of the time. There is a word for this type of investing behavior. It’s called speculating.
Speculating on such a large portion of your future living costs is not necessary. Renewable energy sources like solar water heaters, solar PV, wind and geothermal help to hedge against this highly uncertain area of your financial future. Simply put, you are fixing the price of your energy for the lifespan of the nuts and bolts of your investment. With the typical lifespan of technologies like solar water heaters being 25 years or more you are stabilizing your energy expenses today and well into the future.
These energy consumption statistics from the EIA (Energy Information Administration) are pretty amazing.
According to government statistics around 24% of your household energy consumption is spent on water heating. If live in Maryland and are heating water with oil it is probably more.
In Solar Hot Water Simplified I use an example that helps to reveal your true water heating costs over a 25-30 year period. In this chart we are looking at an estimated amount that you could be spending to heat your household water. We are also assuming a 5% increase in energy prices per year.
This is a lot of money! What’s even worse is this chart is only showing your monthly energy expenses. There are numerous other costs involve in figuring our total water heating costs. Over a period of 25-30 years you are certainly going to have repairs, maintenance and complete water heater replacement costs. Not to mention the tons of CO2 emissions being pumped into the environment from the burning of fossil fuel.
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