How I lowered my cooling bills — and my carbon footprint

Bumishu
5 min readApr 17, 2021

With the current trend of working from home, the afternoon tropical heat adds to the stress of our jobs. Therefore, we are required to brave ourselves through the heat — or fork out a sum of money to install an air-conditioner, along with the expectations of higher electricity bills. Not only that, air-conditioning is estimated to contribute around 25% of greenhouse gases globally by 2050.

Do not worry. You are not alone. I can relate to your struggle because I was also faced with the same dilemma. How do I beat the heat while minimising my carbon footprint towards the earth? Well, turns out there are actually various eco-friendly measures we can take to cool down our house which is also good for our pockets.

I am only going to touch on things that we can change on existing houses, for solutions incorporated into housing designs, it will be further discussed in the future.

1.Fan maintenance

This is the easiest step to achieve. Set regular intervals to clean and oil your fan. A dirty or unoiled fan will have lower efficiency, consuming more energy for the same electrical output. Part of reducing carbon emissions is reducing our energy consumption, so every kWh counts!

2. Air-conditioner maintenance

Same concept as above. A dusty filter reduces air-conditioner performance. A higher energy consumption usually means a higher carbon footprint. Do check with your air-conditioner seller the…

--

--

Bumishu
Bumishu

Written by Bumishu

0 Followers

A nerdy engineer, trying my best to care for the earth. Gathering experts smarter than myself through my writings to spark discussions and develop solutions.