As energy and fuel costs remain at the highest levels they’ve seen in years, some Bow residents have come up with ways to reduce the town’s consumption of these valuable resources.

Members of the Bow Energy Conservation Committee presented the Board of Selectmen with numerous options for reducing their energy costs at their weekly meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 25.

“A lot of them are just behaviors that can be changed, or policies, and will cost the town no money,” said committee member Deborah DeMoulpied, who was accompanied at the meeting by fellow committee member and Bow Fire Capt. Dana Mosher.

Some other long-term solutions may be costly for one-time purchases, but the town will enjoy greater returns on their investment, DeMoulpied said. One suggestion was to make sure the tires on all town vehicles are properly inflated to get better gas mileage. Mosher said vehicles can get at least half a mile per gallon more from just this practice.

Town vehicles should also be regularly tuned up and driven at moderate speeds to save gas, and should be shut off instead of being left to idle, the list of recommendations said.

Better care should be taken in choosing the right vehicle to send out to an emergency or job site, and air-conditioning use should be limited as much as possible, the list said.

“If you drive at moderate speeds and have the windows down, air conditioning uses a lot more fuel because you’re using horsepower,” said Mosher.

Mosher and DeMoulpied also suggested to the board and Town Manager Jim Pitts that as many lights as possible be changed over to LED bulbs, which conserved a lot of energy and only need replacement every five to 10 years.

Unnecessary drains on the power, such as the light in the Coke machine at town hall, DeMoulpied said, can be turned off to realize even more energy and dollar savings.

Additional lights can be removed from some of the fluorescent light fixtures in town buildings, DeMoulpied said, further cutting costs.

The committee’s recommendations also include using programmable thermostats for heating town buildings, which would prevent the heat from pumping into buildings while they are not being used.