Still stalling on going green? Procrastinate no longer.

We give you 13 ideas for saving energy around your home that involve little or no installation and barely a bump in your routine. Individually, they cost less than $75. Collectively, they can save hundreds of dollars a year in household energy bills and thousands of pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions.

You have every reason to follow these tips and not a single reason to ignore them. Get cracking, folks.

1. Take a flier on fluorescents. They no longer buzz, flicker or turn faces blue, and they represent one of the brightest ideas yet for cooling down the atmosphere and your electric bill.

Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) approximate the glow of incandescent bulbs and use 75% less energy. If every U.S. household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent, the emissions savings would be comparable to taking 3 million cars off the road for a year.

Don't let the price of CFLs -- as much as $7 each -- turn you off. The lights not only last 10 times longer than incandescents but also save up to $60 in electricity per light over their lifetime. Some utility companies subsidize the energy-sparing lights, reducing the tab to $2 or so.

Not every CFL produces a warm, candlelight glow. To achieve that effect, look for one with a Kelvin temperature of 2,600 to 3,000, says Donn Davy, a home-energy consultant in Novato, Calif. Fluorescents that operate at higher temperatures provide hard, white light better suited for task lighting. Most compact fluorescents are spirals or U-shaped tubes, but you can also find them in bulb form. Some of the newer lights adjust to three levels or work with a dimming switch.

Fluorescent lights contain small amounts of mercury. In some communities, you'll need to dispose of them as hazardous waste.

2. Vanquish the vampires. Remember James Thurber's story about the aunt who worried that electricity was leaking out of the wall sockets? She had a point, of sorts. Appliances that include a clock or operate by a remote, as well as chargers, "are all sucking electricity even when you're not using them," says Dale Bryk of the National Resources Defense Council. Of the total energy used to run home electronics, 40% is consumed when the appliances are turned off.

The obvious way to pull the plug on so-called energy vampires is to do just that -- pull the plug. If you don't want to keep rebooting your PC, you can reduce the juice to it by putting both the monitor and the computer itself in sleep mode when they're not in use. Computers operating on snooze control use about 95% less electricity than those running on full power.

To get yours to nod off, go to the control panel, where you will likely see "sleep" or "hibernate." The sleep mode powers down the computer, whereas instructing it to "hibernate" effectively turns the PC off while preserving your applications. Both modes let you resume work where you left off.

If your computer powers down by default, you can adjust how long it waits before going to sleep -- say, from 30 minutes to 15 -- or set the monitor to power down first. Don't bother using a screen saver, which neither preserves your screen nor saves energy.

To get all your devices on the same nap schedule, plug them into the Smart Strip Power Strip ($31 to $44). The strip senses when your computer or TV is asleep and electronically unplugs devices that depend on them, such as a printer or DVD player, until the controlling device wakes up.

3. Harness the wind. Once you've cleaned up your own act, help clean up the power grid by buying so-called green energy -- electricity generated by wind or solar power or a blend of renewable resources. You'll pay about a half-cent to a few cents more per kilowatt-hour for green-powered electricity compared with electricity generated from nonrenewable resources.

If companies in your area haven't yet gone with the wind, you may still be able to pay a small premium on your utility bill to support green power elsewhere. Or you can subsidize it separately, with so-called green tags or renewable-energy certificates.

To find certified renewable-power sources in your state, as well as programs that sell green tags or renewable energy certificates, go to the Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Locator or to Green-e.

4. Insulate your water heater. The newest electric water heaters have plenty of insulation. But if you have one built before 2004, wrap it in an insulating blanket (under $20) and save 10% -- about $30 -- annually on your water-heating bill.

 Article by msn