It may seem like a simple one - but you'd be surprised! It's not because you're on holiday that you should stop being careful about how much energy you are using. In some countries, the amount of electricity produced cannot match the demand of the resident population, without adding the tourist population as well. We experienced regular, planned power cuts in some parts of India and random, often long ones elsewhere, simply due to there not being enough power (or even not enough water to make the hydro-electric plants work). If we all take responsibilty for managing and reducing our energy needs, at least we're not adding to the increase in demand that will encourage the building of more power stations, which will contribute a lot to climate change.
There are good tips on saving energy on the Energy Saving Trust'swebsite.
Tip number 2: Cooling
When holidaying in hot countries, it will not be heating you will have to save on, but more likely cooling. Air-conditioning (AC) unitsconsume a lot of energy. We tried to choose our hotel rooms carefully, so that they weren't too hot by design (see our post on Accommodation). Where possible, we choose fan cooling instead of AC as they use about 10 times less electricity.
Also, another solution is to try to travel in the cool seasons, where possible and avoid the very hot times. It's not always possible, but it does get unpleasant to travel around when the temperature reaches over 40 deg C!
Some times of the year though, it is just too hot, and AC might be needed. If you do have to go for AC, obviously switch it off when you don't need it. We were stunned at the number of hotel rooms providing enormous duvets and blankets in AC rooms, as if you have to turn the heat down to minimum and snuggle up!
Tip number 3: Take a recharger
We realised as we travelled that there are very few places to dispose of batteries around the world, not just in London! Try to use rechargeable batteries. A recharger means you can keep using the batteries you've got (reducing pollution). You can even get wind up devices that don't need batteries at all, like for torches.
We took the charger for the camera battery and the mobile phone battery with us - it would have been better though to bring a solar charger that we could have used to charge both and avoid having to buy plug adaptors in different countries. Next time we'll certainly look to buy a solar charger.
One example of a solar charger is the freeloader.
