Western Mass Saves Energy Program

CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - Imagine - being able to earn rewards for saving energy AND money! Well, there's no need to imagine! Tom Scaramellino, CEO of Efficiency 2.0 and adminstrator of the Western Mass Saves Program tells you how.

For one, making smarter decisions can lower the amount you pay for electricity and natural gas and fuel oil over the course of the year. It eliminates the creation of coal fired power plants not only bad for the environment, but they also cost billions of dollars to build. It brings people together among solving a common problem. The more you are aware about your energy usage and your neighbor's usage, you can combat the problem collectively.

In our daily lives, when we think about the consequences of our decisions, we make dozens of decisions every day that waste energy. Each of those decisions probably doesn't waste that much for it to be worth it for us. That's tipically how we think about it. When you sort of combine all of those decisions over the course of a year or lifetime and then add on to the fact there are over 300 million people in this country, that adds up to an extraordinarily huge amount of wasted energy. It's one of the biggest contributing factors to climate change, weather instability, to the possibility of not being able to meet demand on the grid so we could potentially have more blackouts in the future. There are a lot of problems related to this. The difficulty is getting people to think big.

You do affect the world. It's also important to realize that there's not necessarily a lot of sacrifice involved. There are many things we can do that don't cost a lot of time and that don't cost a lot of money and that can really make a difference both in terms of reducing energy bills and overall sort of the population level to contribute to much larger problems we are facing as a country.

There are literally hundreds of ways from no-cost actions like shutting the lights off when you leave the room or leave the house, to low-cost purchases like buying cfl light bulbs, the low flow showerheads, solar water heaters, solar panels. One of the cool things about westernmasssaves.com is that you get the first personalized experience around what are the best ways to reduce your energy bill and help reduce your carbon footprint as opposed to your neighbor down the street or friends from work. That's an important component because energy use isn't a one-size fits all equation. The ways we use energy and the ways we can save energy can differ dramatically for different people, even if you are in the same neighborhood or have the same housing stock.

Any resident in the WMECO service area, you need your account number to sign up and it lets us track your bill over time and see how much you can lower your bill taking energy-saving actions personalized for you and you commit to on the website. What's really great and literally one of the first programs in the country that does this, you earn rewards based on how much you lower your bill. Think about it like a sky miles program.

What's great about it is the points you earn, you build a points balance. They can be redeemed locally. Just by signing up for the program at

, you get 100 points. It will get you $10 off at Big Y, a child's admission to the Springfield museums. You get real world everyday value. It's a win-win.

One additional component of the program I really want to stress and I think is incredibly cool, there are few utilities in the country really doing this. There's actually a competition among the towns to compete to reduce home energy use. If you live in Amherst, Ludlow, Sunderland or Easthampton, if the homes in those towns achieve a 3% reduction in their energy usage, then those towns will get a free solar panel on a public building. That creates this notion that we're all in this to solve this problem together.

The more we can better understand what each of us can do in our daily lives, the more we can work together and in aggregate all of those energy savings. You can go on the website and see how much Amherst is saving and Ludlow and the other towns and get some pride in your neighborhood.

The consequences are enormous. It's very hard for us to see them in our everyday lives. That's the difficulty. There are a lot of thgs we can do in the winter season as we're gearing up. Let me give you a couple of examples. If you are like me, you have the kids home during the holiday season. You probably are doing a little bit more laundry than you're used to. If you set your clothes washer temperature to cold instead of hot for the winter season, in this area, you have saved about $50 over the winter season. It's a no-brainer and your clothes are just as clean. Same type of thing with your water heater. Most water heaters are set by default to 135 degrees. If you turn it down to 125 degrees, you'll probably not notice a difference. If you use l.e.d. lights for your Christmas display, you'll probably