How much energy is wasted in the home by leaving on lights, not changing your thermostat when you rush out of the house, or even leaving things plugged in that have no use when no one is not home to use them?
I suggest a house turn-on key mechanism, a circuit box located at the door you usually enter your house. When you come in the door, and put in your key, your house "turns on", the heating/cooling comes on to occupancy temps, and all of the wall outlets come back on.
Vice versa when you leave, you don't have to worry about leaving a light on, or wasting unnecessary energy, because your house powers down and the thermostat resets to vacancy levels when you pull the key out. You need something plugged in while you are gone? Just flip a switch on that specific outlet, and the circuit will not be turned off to that outlet when you leave.
This will save energy, money for the homeowner, and if you have your other keys with your "house energy key" or perhaps it IS your house key, you will never lose your keys again!
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And if you do misplace your key what do you do? And if your wife shuts down the key and you come home to a cold house what do you do? Instead of a key, perhaps a master switch at the door is a better deal.
Ian Ayres and I wrote about this idea in Forbes (September 4th, 2006) in an article called Easy Savings. The idea is to have a recepticle next to the door that turns the llights on when a key is inside and turns non-essential items off when no key is inside. This is how hotel rooms work in Europe. When you leave the room with your key, you automatically turn off all the lights. And for Sand, you won't lose your keys as they are always right there next to the door.
You can read the column at Easy Savings.
The key would be on the same keychain you have for your various keys, and even better, be RFID-ish.
Per Barry's comment, that is precisely the idea, and I arrived at it after using hotels in China. To touch on Sand's point, read the end of the description, the possibility of losing one's key was one of the points of having it setup like this - you always know where it is if you are in the house.
o This is a great idea and my only appreciation about it is that it is distinctly anti the sensibilities of many Americans. However like the idea about the carbon credit purchases, it only takes one good person to stand up and be counted for a revolution to get underway.
How do I keep from turning the lights out on my wife? Perhaps two keys required? You know this technology exists with X10 now. You can input a switch and reciever system that communicates over existing power lines...
Your wife or other household members would have their own keys. It either or both are present, the lights can stay on.