A characteristic U.S. Family spends more than $1,600 a year on home utility charges, yet making some straightforward changes round the home can save cash and make cooling and heating systems more efficient, according to World Energy Solutions, a public traded energy services company based in St. Petersburg, Fla.

By evaluating facilities and equipment, World Energy Solutions (symbol: WEGY) helps businesses lower their utility consumption and maintenance costs and extend the life of their equipment.

“Many of the energy-saving secrets we use for our commercial purchasers may also be applied to the home,” claims Benjamin Croxton, CEO of World Energy Solutions. “There are a lot of commonsense, low cost and no-cost paths to lower your home energy use as well as many new technologies that may be applied to your house’s energy-consuming systems.”

Here are a couple of tips from the North American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy on things householders can do to make their houses more energy efficient :

Turn down the temperature of your water heater to the warm setting.

Use energy-saving settings on chillers, dishwashers, washing machines and garments dryers.

Use compact fluorescent bulbs, which can save three-quarters of the electricity used by incandescents. First to be replaced should be any 60-watt to 100-watt bulbs that are used several hours a day.

Have your cooling and heating systems serviced in the autumn and spring. Channel sealing can also improve the energy potency and complete performance of your furnace or central air conditioner.

Clean or replace furnace, air conditioner and heat-pump filters.

Assess your heating and cooling systems to determine if you should replace or retrofit them to make them work more efficiently to provide the same comfort, or better, with less energy.

“If your house’s central air-conditioning system is over 10 years of age, a new up-to-the-minute system can save you thirty % or more of your house’s air-conditioning expense,” asserts George Hiker , air-conditioning expert with World Energy Solutions.

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The Brussels Summit in June saw the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded in persuading the EU to drop its commitment to agree and undistorted competition from its reform treaty. Although Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes argues this will have little impact upon Brussels tough stance against cartels, illegal subsidies and protectionism; many legal experts support the stance that the new arrangement will weaken the Commissioner’s ability to crack down on such ongoing practices.

As if to rub salt in the injuries, current comments following the authorized merger between GDF and Suez by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France, Europe Minister are probably going to further inflame relations. Referring to the alliance, Jouyet remarked to hacks : its a vision of what may be the energy policy for Europe? This has to be especially disturbing to Kroes who has been careful to make sure that the coalition was scrutinized from top to bottom to find out any adverse effect on competition, also making certain the disposal of assets and concessions formed the founding conditions for any potential deal.

To retaliate, Jouyet further expanded on the growing division between Paris and Brussels by stating that Kroes?unbundling plan was an ideological view, we have a strategic view. It is a better balance between European interests and competition rules?

Since this delicate and public series of events, Kroes has made no attempt to hide her determination to fight nail and tooth against the protectionist policies of the French, German and Spanish member states. Although she remained silent during the summit negotiations, one observer believes that Ms. Kroes and her advisors were alarmed at the apparent lack of concern from liberal countries such as Britain and Sweden and also from Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission President? Mr Barrosso seemed convinced beforehand that erasing competition as an objective had no legal bearing, since the policy was mentioned 13 times elsewhere in the treaty. However, the French government and other legal experts clearly think differently.

Whatever the legal contentions, the Commission will this month present detailed offers for an overhaul of ECU energy market laws. ECU Energy Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs is predicted to proffer the integrated groups inside member states be made to sell their electricity grids and pipeline networks a definite most important step towards unbundling. But just how far this can be permitted to progress depends seriously on the power of the influential French and German lobbies.

So, why should a business inside a single ECU member state concern itself with what is happening with competition policy across all of the EU? Any effort to suppress competition in Europe will have a significant effect on our UK market. As we are highly conditional on Europe for a lot of our energy supply and as current Western european practices falsely peg the wholesale gas price to the cost of oil, it is in our best interest to see a break up of the unhealthy dominant forces which control and twist the market mechanism.

Examples of this distortion are currently being investigated by the Commission. These concerns surround the withholding of production capacity on electricity markets with the view to raise prices.

Lastly, commentators have claimed there is abuse of electricity balancing markets and since this is likely to have greatest effect on newer entrants and thus, for smaller players who regularly depend on these sources, it is a limiting factor on the expansion activity of these businesses.

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