Last week, we included the white roof recommendation in our list if five summertime energy savings tips. It was advice straight from U.S. Energy Secretary Chu, but because Chu initially spoke of the value of white roofs on The Daily Show last year, some people did not take him seriously.

Last week, Chu made clear how serious he was when he directed all Energy Department offices to install white roofs during new construction. Many news sites reporting on the development could not resist the headline, White is the new green. The New York Times noted that the benefits of white roofs go beyond simply reducing cooling costs. They actually can help keep entire cities cooler, by mitigating the “heat island effect,” in which large concentrations of dark, heat absorbent surfaces like asphalt serve to make urban areas hotter than surrounding regions. (No, you weren’t imagining that!)

And if constructing buildings with light roofs seems too simple a solution, or one that should have been considered more seriously years ago, that’s true. It is a simple solution, but it also works. By promoting this kind of low-tech, common sense approach to saving power, Chu is underscoring the importance of the individual steps that we can all take. Yes, many of our future energy savings will come from advanced scientific breakthroughs. Nuy that will not discount the value of the simpler approaches that have been around for centuries.

At times in the past some of those simple energy conservation approaches – such as wearing heavy sweaters indoors during wintertime or keeping car tires properly inflated – have been received with ridicule, as if they were not sufficient to make a meaningful difference. By promoting the decidedly low-tech approach of white roofing, Chu is making clear that every little bit counts, and collectively can make a big difference.

As summer temperatures increase, you can save money and energy and still beat the heat by following a few simple tips:

• Close window blinds and drapes to prevent heat gain from the sun
• Use a programmable thermostat to regulate home temperature when you’re at home and away
• Reduce cooling costs by setting your thermostat as high as comfortably possible
• Don’t set the thermostat to a colder setting than normal to get it cooler quicker – it doesn’t work!
• Using a ceiling fan and A/C allows you to set your thermostat four degrees higher and still feel as cool
• Turn off ceiling fans when you leave the room – fans cool people with a breeze, not rooms
• Use bathroom ventilating fans to remove heat & humidity from your home

To learn more about staying cool this summer while saving energy and money, visit the “Stay Cool, Save Money” section of EnergySavers.gov, a consumer-geared website of the U.S. Department of Energy.

As the summer of 2010 turns into one big long heat wave that never seems to break, consumers are finding themselves more worried than ever about their home cooling and other energy bills. They are also feeling particularly powerless (no pun intended) to do anything about it: Reasonable people may debate the need for air conditioning when it’s a toasty 86 degrees. Not so much when the temperature remains in the triple digits even after the sun has set.

But even during the hottest summer on record, there are things you can do to lower your power bills. Some will pay off immediately and some will provide a return on investment in years to come. Some are tips that are timeless, but sometimes forgotten. And some are newer approaches to saving costs that you may not have heard about. As we await what is typically the hottest month of the summer, we thought they were all worth passing on.

1. Think about peak demand. We all know that the more power we use, the more we spend. But many of us fail to realize that electric companies charge more during times of peak demand. How much more? A lot.  According to some informed estimates, 10% to 20% of overall electricity costs in the U.S. come from the top 100 hours of demand. Turn the lights on at those times of day and you’ll pay first-class rates for what feels like coach service. It’s not really that hard to determine peak usage times. They are when you and everyone else need the most power. Think of the hot summer day around dinner time when the air conditioner is running, the family is returning home from school and work and errands need to be done. You may not want to sacrifice a cool home entirely at such times, but with a little planning, you could easily delay the laundry, the cooking and other energy sucking errands. Better yet, plan to be out of the house at times when everyone else is parked in front of the A.C.
2. Reconsider solar. If you are like most people, you like the idea of having a solar panel on your roof to defray the costs of traditional power, but you think you can’t afford the upfront investment, or worry that the equipment will not pay for itself in your lifetime. In parts of California, a new Solar Affordable Housing Program is bringing solar power to low- and middle-income households that don’t have money to spare. The program relies on solar incentives, grants, donations and corporate sponsors to cover equipment costs and it provides volunteers to help with the installation. If you don’t live in a region covered by this program (there are other similar ones throughout the country) you should still consider solar panels, which in recent years have seen significant price reductions.
3. And speaking of roof tops, the simple step of painting your roof white can produce significant power savings. This tip comes straight from Energy Secretary Steven Chu and it’s a basic fact that people who dwell in warm climates have understood for centuries. When you paint a roof or an entire house white, it absorbs a lot less heat. When Energy Secretary Chu delivered this tip to viewers of Comedy Central last year, he said that if the world could somehow manage to turn all its roofs white within 20 years, it would save about 24 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, or the same amount the entire world emitted last year. One disclaimer: If you live in a region that gets quite cold in the winter, you may want to stick with your dark roof, which can keep homes warmer during cold sunny days.
4. Don’t be penny wise/pound foolish. Keeping the car windows down in lieu of turning on the air conditioner can make sense sometimes, but not when you’re driving down the highway at 65 miles per hour. That just creates drag on the car, eating more gasoline. Likewise, while driving a longer distance to get cheaper gasoline may make sense if you know of a place that offers a large discount, it’s less likely to get you ahead at all if you’re talking pennies. In all of your energy purchasing decisions, try to getting caught up on small incremental savings that may cost you a lot of time and discomfort, and keep your eye on the changes that will save you consistently over the long term.
5. Unplug. Yes, we did just say that some days are so hot that air conditioning is non-negotiable. But that doesn’t mean you have to sit in an air conditioned home with separate televisions and multiple computers running throughout the house, and the lights on in other unoccupied rooms. Sometimes it takes an outright power outage to remind you of some of the little ways you can painlessly reduce your power use. Turn off the television and read a book. Turn off the lights and go to bed an hour early. Sit on the porch and catch the evening breeze. Kick back with a drink and observe the stars. Or camp out with the whole family in the backyard, and remember the simple pleasures of getting away from it all, where the only sound is the crickets.

We all suspected this would happen sooner or later, but it was nonetheless received as a milestone of historic significance this week when China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s largest consumer of energy. This reverses 100 years of the United States as the world’s energy consumer and in many ways it is good news. Considering that China has about four times as many people as the United States, it should be consuming more power.

The not-so-good news is that this shift is not a result of conservation on the part of consumers so much as it reflects the impact of the economic downturn in the United States. The International Energy Agency, which reported the new data on world energy consumption, said that the average American consumer still uses significantly more energy than his Chinese counterparts, but that the surge in overall power consumption in China reflects mass industrialization there and the comparable slowdown in manufacturing activity here.

But a bigger concern has to do with supply. As the world’s top energy consumer, the U.S. had to make sure it had enough energy to satisfy that demand. Along with cobbling together a host of traditional and alternative energy sources produced here at home, we’ve long had to tap overseas sources of oil. Now, that another country has become the world’s biggest consumer of oil, we are reminded that we are competing for a limited supply of world oil. By now we all should be well aware of the economic and the national security dangers risks of being too dependent on foreign oil. But a potentially bigger risk would be losing access to some of that worldwide supply that we’ve always depended on. Of course, the way to mitigate that risk is to bolster our domestic supplies.

The fact that the typical Chinese consumers are not yet a major factor in the country’s increase should offer some sense for how much demand outside of the U.S. still stands to grow. In fact, this week’s rise in oil prices is being attributed to the news of China’s increased consumption. “The market is growing concerned about the future supply of oil,” said one analyst.

Imagine a system of travel where you had no idea of the cost until the trip was over and you were back at home, waiting for a bill in the mail. You’d drive cross-country and stop periodically to fill up the tank, without any signs posting the cost per gallon. Or, you’d show up at the airport and get on the next available flight, not knowing if you were paying a first class fare or a Priceline discount.

Of course, it sounds ludicrous. But that’s exactly the system consumers deal with every month when paying their home power bills. We all have some sort of vague sense that our bills will be higher during certain peak summer and winter months. But we rarely track our actual usage in any reliable way, like kilowatt-hours. Even if we do, there’s still that wildcard of so-called peak demand periods, when unit costs spike along with usage.

CEA recently highlighted the rise in smart meters, a long-overdue technology that would take a lot of the guesswork out of measuring home power costs. Now, with record high temperatures sweeping the country and power costs on everyone’s mind, we wondered if most people have any idea how much of a premium they pay for power during peak demand periods, like heat waves.

According to some studies, power consumed in peak periods costs close to three times as it does in off-peak times. But because we almost never know the precise price we are paying at any given time, we are unable to make informed choices about turning the thermostat up or down.

A recent NPR story illustrated just how variable our power costs can be when a guest explained that 10% to 20% of the overall electricity costs in the U.S. come from the top 100 hours of demand. In the same way that a small portion of first-class business travelers booking travel at the last minute pay substantially more than their coach counterparts, power customers pay a lot, lot more if they wish to dry their hair, or cook dinner, or simply cool the house down during peak demand periods. The only difference being that the power customers don’t even know how much they are paying until the bill arrives in the mail at the end of the month. (And they don’t get a complimentary cocktail.)

A number of high-tech startups have been working on systems that would deliver consumers the information they need to make informed decisions about plugging in so-to speak. One of them, eMeter, recently chose what felt like the hottest day of the year to announce it had secured venture capital funding to expand its business. The company makes smart meters to deliver more information about consumption and costs directly to consumers and has even briefed President Obama on its home energy management technology.

While individual consumers who use this kind of up-and-coming technology stand to achieve major savings, it’s important to note that even when just a small portion of consumers become more vigilant about when they use power, everybody wins. Studies show that even small reductions of 10% or less in peak power consumption would eliminate tens of billions of dollars of power generation costs.

Earlier this year, President Obama announced an $8 billion loan guarantee for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Georgia, stating that “investing in nuclear energy remains a necessary step.” The President also included an additional $36 billion for new loan guarantees in his FY 2011 budget request.

It is hard to overstate the value of this sort of guarantee, which essentially makes the high-cost construction of nuclear power plants possible. The planned Southern Co. power plant that was the recipient of the guarantee announced back in February is the country’s first new nuclear power project in almost 30 years.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives included $9 billion in additional loan guarantees in a supplemental spending bill for 2010 that could enable construction on additional new nuclear plants to go forward sooner. The $9 billion increase in guarantees for 2010 would be derived by accelerating access to a portion of the $36 billion President Obama requested as part of his budget for 2011.

While CEA applauds the recognition of nuclear power as a key component of a secure energy policy by both the Obama Administration and Congress – and the recognition that continued financial support of the industry through these sort of loan guarantees is key to getting new nuclear projects off the ground and seeing them through to a timely completion – the passage of the loan guarantee package in the House supplemental bill is only a first step.

By far, the largest component of nuclear power costs is the steep upfront expense of constructing the plant. The Nuclear Energy Institute says that loan guarantees are critical to project financing because the financing capability of the typical electric company is relatively small. It also stresses that these loan guarantees are not grants or subsidies; recipients are required to repay the loan in full.

But when a project has this kind of backing, it provides assurance to contractors, workers and other investors that it is not going to run out of money halfway through. That sense of confidence helps construction proceed smoothly and without delays.

And ultimately, consumers win. Because it is so costly to construct a nuclear power plant, anything that helps speed the construction process along will help to contain costs. In a highly competitive industry where so many alternative power sources are too expensive to be widely adopted, cost containment can make the difference between a niche power source and a mainstream one.

In order to unleash all of the positive economic and environmental benefits of new nuclear construction, Consumer Energy Alliance urges Congress to fully support the $36 billion for nuclear loan guarantees in President Obama’s FY 2011 budget request and to support the accelerated access of $9 billion in loan guarantees for this year. We can no longer afford to delay expansion of nuclear energy.