6 Ways to Make Your Home Office Energy Efficient

Work­ing from home does­n’t have to impact your ener­gy bill. Fol­low these tips to make your home office more effi­cient.

Work­ing from home, even on a tem­po­rary basis, may increase your ener­gy use. It means that you’re spend­ing more time using a com­put­er, lights and oth­er appli­ances at home instead of in your work­place. But by improv­ing the ener­gy effi­cien­cy of your home office equip­ment, you can save on ener­gy costs with­out ham­per­ing your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

• Make sure com­put­ers and oth­er office equip­ment are turned off when they’re not in use for an extend­ed peri­od.
• Many elec­tron­ic devices con­tin­ue to use stand­by pow­er even after they’re turned off. Con­nect your office equip­ment to an advanced pow­er strip, which will auto­mat­i­cal­ly shut off pow­er to unused devices.
• Set office equip­ment, such as print­ers and scan­ners, to auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch to sleep mode when not in use. In addi­tion to sav­ing ener­gy, the equip­ment will stay cool­er, which will help to extend its use­ful life.
• Use a lap­top com­put­er instead of a desk­top. Lap­tops use less than one-third the ener­gy of a typ­i­cal desk­top com­put­er.
• Adjust the ther­mo­stat to the unoc­cu­pied set­ting. This avoids wast­ing ener­gy by con­di­tion­ing the entire house while you’re occu­py­ing only a small por­tion of it. Con­sid­er using a ceil­ing fan to main­tain com­fort. You can reverse its direc­tion to clock­wise in win­ter, which push­es warm air down.
• Use task light­ing with ener­gy-effi­cient lamps. A desk lamp uses less ener­gy than whole-room light­ing.

When pur­chas­ing new office equip­ment, make sure it’s ENERGY STAR® qual­i­fied. ENERGY STAR-cer­ti­fied prod­ucts use less ener­gy than stan­dard mod­els. Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy, if every home office prod­uct pur­chased in the U.S. were ENERGY STAR qual­i­fied, Amer­i­cans would save an esti­mat­ed $75 mil­lion a year in ener­gy costs.