If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.

ENERGY STAR qualified bulbs use about 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer. Save about $30 or more in electricity costs over each bulb's lifetime. Produce about 75 percent less heat, so they're safer to operate and can cut energy costs associated with home cooling. Are available in different sizes and shapes to fit in almost any fixture, for indoors and outdoors.

Vampire Power

Also called Standby power, refers to the electric power consumed by electronic appliances while in a standby mode. A very common "electricity vampire" is a power adaptor which has no power-off switch. While this consumption of power may be used to provide useful functions for appliances such as remote controls and digital clocks to the user, most power consumed by non-operational devices is considered wasted as in the idle satellite TV receiver in the picture to the right. Advocates of energy conservation sometimes use the term "wall warts" to describe devices that stay plugged in and using power without performing a useful purpose.