More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car.
A barrel of oil contains 42 gallons and produces an average 556 kilowatt hours of electrical power. Now consider your computer. A good spec PC can use up to 200 watts per hour. If you have a CRT monitor, it adds a further 80 watts (TFT screens use less). So your system is consuming over 1 KWh of power for every four hours of normal use. If you leave your computer on 24/7, that’s the equivalent of a whole barrel of oil every 90 days! If you optimize your computer with LocalCooling and power down when you’re not using it you could extend this to over six months!
Remember, if you leave the PC on with just a screen saver on the CRT when you’re not using it, it’s STILL using up to 280 watts per hour of completely wasted power. Power that pumps out 1.5lbs of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere for every KWh. If left on for 24 hours that’s 9lbs of CO2 every day and 3,285lbs per year. That’s more than 1.6 tons of CO2 thrown up into the atmosphere just to keep your one single PC working.
Now if you’re reading this at work, how many computers does your company operate every day? Do you switch them off every night or do the PCs have to run through the night? Millions of computers are left switched on 24 hours a day doing absolutely nothing for most of the time….except using CO2 emitting power. And there are more than 660,000,000 PCs in the world today, which is still less than 10% of the world’s population.
Today’s waste of 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy every year is responsible for putting 45 billion lbs or 30 billion kgs of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. A figure that will DOUBLE within five years if we don’t improve the power efficiency of the way we use our PCs.
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