Total freshwater withdrawals reported for 163 countries by the Pacific Institute showed that in the median country residential water use accounted for 16% of total freshwater withdrawals (Gleick et al., 2006). Therefore, residential conservation efforts can make a strong positive contribution to reducing pressure on water resources. Reducing water use in municipal systems also contributes to climate change mitigation by decreasing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Since about 1.5 billion people in the world use traditional stoves for cooking (and heating), efforts to improve the efficiency of cookstoves have been increasingly popular in the developing world. Improved stoves come in different forms and sizes. 

Alcohol burning stoves based on ethanol can be used for cooking, water heating and heating of buildings. The technology can be applied in households, institutions (e.g. schools) and industries where it is used for boiler heating. Ethanol is produced from sugar plants or other sources of biomass. An advantage of the technologies is that ethanol burning does not have the air pollution problems of simple biomass burning for cooking purposes. As ethanol provides a higher heat flux with no soot or smoke, cooking and hot water production can take place faster and pollution free.

Alcohol burning stoves based on methanol can be used to supply a cooking service, water heating and heating of buildings. The technology can be applied in households, institutions (e.g. schools) and industries where it is used for boiler heating.

Community based energy services, as the term suggests, provide heating, cooling and renewable energy to more than one building. It is an alternative to the use of individual energy related systems in each building. The services often consist of: (1) Centralised generation and supply of heating/cooling as well as energy from renewable sources; (2) A distribution network to bring heating/cooling to buildings within the community; (3) Other installations (air handling units, and controls) within individual buildings.

People have been using the solar cooker or oven for centuries. The first solar oven was made by a Swiss scientist in 1797. Solar cookers may be used to cook food and to heat the drinking water. The solar cooker concentrates and bends solar radiation with the help of a reflecting surface on the back, top, and bottom sides of a pot. Handling it is easy, but the solar cooker does need its space: the larger the reflector surface, the stronger its power to heat. 

Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) technology provides a low energy lighting service through the use of a compact fluorescent light bulb that replaces the normal Tungsten filament light bulb.

LNG consists mainly of methane, which has a boiling point of –164 ⁰C and for liquefaction requires cryogenic insulated tanks at about atmospheric pressure. Recent practice has been to liquefy the gas that is normally flared in oil fields in remote areas, but it can also be made from landfill gas when purified. LNG is about 1/614th the volume of natural gas at standard temperature and pressure, making it much more cost-efficient to transport over long distances, especially where pipelines do not exist. Similar to LPG, this portability is a major asset.