By Melissa Reynolds

When it comes to achieving better energy efficiency, it may be that the answer is closer than you think - right in your own home, in fact.

A recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the US has found that residential homes offer greater potential for reducing carbon dioxide emissions than stores or office buildings, by replacing fossil fuel-using machines with electric alternatives wherever it can be done.

Clark Gellings, EPRI Vice President-Technology, sums it up neatly: "We often talk of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by cutting back (electricity use) but it could be in how we use things such as more efficient appliances or buying new appliances that work better. No one thinks about a lot of the uses of fossil fuels that produce much of the carbon dioxide."

"We wanted to understand our opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint and see what is the best job we can do with energy efficiency," Gellings adds.

Gellings says that his team began by looking at items that use gas, and seeing where electricity could be used instead. They then looked at the change in carbon dioxide emissions. With the electric sector de-carbonized, electricity as a fuel will lead to overall carbon dioxide reductions.

"The decrease in emissions would be substantial," Gellings concludes.

The EPRI study found that replacing some fossil-fuel end-use technologies with efficient electric ones has a potential energy savings of 71.7 quadrillion BTU's, and could result in cumulative reductions of 4,400 million tons of carbon emissions between 2009 and 2030.

EPRI looked at household machines that use energy, and looked at what could do the job without using fossil fuels to power them. Gellings cites the use of geothermal heat pumps, which extract heat from the ground rather than using gas, or heat water pumps that suck the heat out of the air to create hot water, as some of the winners.

With these findings, Gellings says their next step is trying to convince the utility industry to sponsor demonstrations of these technologies, in the hopes of educating the public and having these technologies adopted. In addition, Gellings notes that next they will be looking at the industrial industry to see how carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced there.

In addition to taking a look at these technologies, there is a lot that average homeowners can do to reduce their carbon footprint, Gellings says. He cites replacing light bulbs with CFL bulbs, managing the thermostat wisely, replacing appliances that are old enough to be replaced with more efficient ones, and weatherproofing your home as a few ways to help the planet and create a more energy-efficient home in the process.