Green Appliances: Invest Now and Reap the Benefit in Years to Come

Green construction is growing rapidly because it is an alternative to expensive polluting fossil fuels in view of global climate change. Green aspects include helping the environment and can increase the amount of green (money) in one’s wallet. Today there is an enormous push toward investing in green technology and implementing green appliance usage and devices in older homes, newer homes and even homes under construction. There is also a push in the United States to decrease its dependence on fossil fuels to combat climate change, decrease pollution, the trade imbalance, and dependence of foreign oil. The objective of this paper is to explore a selection of green appliances on the market and how investing in them now will pay off in future years to come.

Air Conditioning Alternatives

Air conditioning is an amenity that many homeowners value. It is one appliance in homes and businesses that uses a large amount of electricity. An AC system represents half of the energy use in a building (Perez-Lombard 2011). Although it is hard to establish a universal system design due to the differences in building design, HVAC (heating ventilating and cooling) units are becoming more efficient then they were in the past. Modern day systems can intelligently pump air into rooms based on occupancy, thus eliminating the need to cool or heat an unoccupied room and dramatically reducing the cost of cooling and the demand on the power grid (Demetriou 2009). A large number of smart sensors and controls can be retro fitted to HVAC units to provide such capabilities (Valenti 2002). HVAC systems pull a large amount of power from the power grid. Although smart grid technology is starting to become popular, HVAC systems need to be used wisely. This mea...

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