We spend a lot of time talking about energy conservation, energy star appliances and lowering our carbon footprint. ConEdison has a series of advertisements on the subway that I’ve always liked, which give tips for how to save energy in simple ways throughout daily life.

The problem with this is the audience, we’re a society of people who like tangible results. We like grades, scores and voting results. The question is how to relay the benefits of energy saving practices in a way we can relate to.

Conserve Insight Energy Use Monitor. Designed by Belkin.

Belkin has come up with a solid solution to this problem with the Conserve Insight Energy Use Monitor. It allows you to find out how much energy your devices actually use, including the cost of operation, the amount of carbon dioxide produced from the generation of the electricity consumed, and watts. The company recommends some experiments that can be done easily at home to demonstrate the environmental and economic effects of energy usage.

“Using a lamp plugged into the Conserve Insight Energy Use Monitor, measure the cost to operate a regular bulb, as well as the COâ‚‚ produced and watts. Then change to a Compact Fluorescent (CFL) bulb, and compare to find out the difference in energy used, COâ‚‚ and cost. Plug your cell phone into the charger and plug the charger into the Conserve Insight Energy Use Monitor. See how much energy it takes and how much it costs to charge your phone. Then, leaving the charger plugged in to the monitor, unplug the phone from the charger. See how much energy the charger alone still uses-and how much it costs!”

One surprisingly wasteful group of appliances are remote controlled appliances. A TV can use more energy waiting to be turned on than when its actually on. Power strips are a great way to reduce energy consumption, but how many of us turn them off? Dorky as it may seem, I can’t wait to start testing out my energy usage at home.