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When you walk into a dark room, what's the first thing you do? If you're like most people, you flip on a switch to make the room light up. Sounds simple enough, right? But very few of us can really explain how electricity gets from power plants to our houses and then to our bulbs. So read on to shed light on this whole electrifying process—how it works and how it affects planet Earth.

Getting to the Source
If you want to make electricity, the first thing you need is an energy source—oil, natural gas,solar power, hydropower from dams, and nuclear energy. But coal is the most widely used of all these energy sources, producing more than half of all the electricity we use in the United States.

Coal is a fossil fuel that forms over millions of years as plant remains, buried beneath layers of rock and soil, were heated and squeezed into hard, rocklike material. To reach this coal, companies dig deep mines or use huge machinery to strip away surface rock and soil. Either way, coal mining is a dirty, dangerous business. Thousands of acres of trees and other vegetation may be scraped away. Whole mountaintops may be removed. In the worst cases, massive piles of waste may be dumped into valleys and streams, destroying still more habitat and killing fish and other animals.

But coal isn't the only energy source that's a mess to obtain. Extraction of oil and natural gas can also disturb areas where animals live and can cause land and water pollution. And even hydropower, which is created by damming rivers, dramatically changes the landscape and creates problems for migrating fish.

Making Power
Once coal reaches a power plant it's burned to boil water. (The process is similar for natural gas and oil, which are also burned, and for nuclear power, in which heat is created by splitting uranium atoms.) The steam rising off the boiling water turns turbines—picture giant fans—which in turn spin huge magnets surrounded by wires. The magnets generate an electrical current in the wires, and electricity is created. (In making hydropower, the force of falling water spins the turbines.)

Most power plants need billions of gallons of water each year from lakes, rivers, and oceans to produce steam. First they draw it in, killing anything living in it. Then they pour it back out, often hot and full of chemicals that can harm fish and other aquatic wildlife.

Burning coal is especially bad for the air, releasing pollutants that produce smog and acid rain. What's more, burning coal (and oil, and to a lesser extent natural gas) releases greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the air. These gases accumulate in the atmosphere and form a kind of blanket around the Earth, trapping the heat of the sun. The result? Rising global temperatures and global climate change. Rising temperatures around the world are already playing a role in everything from massive coral reef die-offs to the loss of seasonal ice pack that polar bears and many types of seals depend on.

High Wire Acts
Once an electrical current has been generated in a power plant, the next step is to send it out to customers like you. The electricity moves through wires across the countryside to your town, down street after street, and into your house. Inside, the electricity runs through a circuit-breaker panel, through more wires, and then to your outlets.

The Old Switcheroo
Now that you know more about what it takes to light a bulb, do you feel any different about switching one on?

Yes, using electricity takes a big toll on our environment, but we have many options for reducing those impacts. For one thing, we can conserve. Do you really need that light on, or will the sunlight coming through the window do? And how about turning off the lights when you leave the room? Those kinds of improvements can make a big difference.

You also might think about replacing your regular bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. These bulbs last up to 13 times longer than regular bulbs, and they use much less electricity.

So why not try taking one or more of these steps. Every bit helps. In fact, if only energy-efficient bulbs were used across the United States, our home electricity demand would decrease by more than 18 percent. Make the switch to a brighter future today!