From Guest Blogger Peter Walters: How Do I Get My Kids Into Clean Energy?

Clean, renewable energy is becoming more popular everyday.

As oil and gas prices are on the rise, the need to refocus our attention on creating sustainable new options is essential.

With that in mind, here are a few ways to get your kids excited about clean, green energy—so that ultimately they will recruit their kids to go green in the future as well.

Start Teaching About Clean Energy at Home

The best way to teach your kids about clean energy is to show them your values.

This means that you should be implementing various clean and green technologies at home. The goal is to teach your children that this is the new way of life, and that this is how they should be raising their family as well.

Here are a few affordable, options to go green at home:

• Solar Water Heaters- Water easily absorbs heat from the sun, and a passive solar water heating system can supply 50% or more of your household’s hot water needs.

• Solar lighting outside along the walkway – These are affordable, and can be purchased at your local hardware store. Make sure you place them in areas that are exposed to good sunlight during the day.

• Air drying clothes on a laundry line – Nothing like natural freeze! Dryers guzzle down energy, so on a nice breezy day bring the clothes outside instead!

Solar Power is Intuitive For Kids

For kids, it’s easy to understand that the sun is very powerful, and when focused, can heat things up so much that they generate power. Tell your kids that the sun is a constant energy producer—both to heat our bodies, but also provide power for our daily lives.

Explaining how sunlight is transformed into electricity is more difficult, but the older they get, the more they will be able to comprehend. Get them solar powered toys so they can start connecting solar with fun early on.

Make Games Out of Getting More Green

Have your children turn into the teachers and monitors. Have them be on the lookout for new ways to keep your home as green as possible.

For example, if you give your children an allowance, why not offer them the difference in savings from using solar energy instead of gas and electric? These types of ‘policing’ jobs are fun for kids, and in this case, can teach valuable lessons.

In the end, you want to instill the idea that green energy is the future, and that your family is on the forefront of the technologies.

If you or your spouse works in clean energy, you’re amplifying your message even more. Surround your children with the things, people and ideas that you believe and the rest will follow.

Clean, green, renewable energy is important—it’s the link to man’s continued prosperity and break from natural gasses.

Use this time of learning and growth to mold your children into clean energy advocates from an early age, and they’ll be hooked for life.

About the Author: Peter Walters is a freelance writer that covers topics such as green energy, social enterprise and how to remove article from Google. Peter is the Director of Biz Dev for Two Degrees Food and lives in San Francisco.