Turn ‘em off! Idle computers burn $2.8 billion overnight
April 21, 2009 by Tom GuayPosted in: Cost Cutting, Green Office, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, News
If you need more ammunition to get workers, managers, owners — everybody — to turn off their computers at the end of the day, here it is: Leaving them on overnight wastes billions and creates unnecessary greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
A new report reveals that American facilities are wasting $2.8 billion a year on electricity to keep computers running when they’re not needed. Click here for a summary of the report, which analyzes energy consumption in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany.
Computer-wasted energy creates about 20 million tons of pointless carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that contribute to global warming. This equates to CO2 emissions created by four million cars, according to the report produced by 1E, an energy-management company, and the nonprofit group, Alliance To Save Energy.
Getting workers to adopt computer-shutdown policies should be relatively easy because the study also found that 63% of employees surveyed said they wanted their companies to do more to reduce computer power-demand.
Some proof: Computer maker Dell uses 1E’s energy reduction software and reports that it saves $1.8 million a year by turning off its 50,000 PCs worldwide when they’re not in use.
To follow the energy-saving campaign, click here.
Another energy-management company that offers similar services is Affiliated Computer Services, Inc.
Tags: computers, energy efficiency, energy reduction, GHG emissions, global warming
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April 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 am
What would be a more effective article is to state how much greenhouse gas emissions are being emitted by an idle computer every hour that it sits there not being used. This would make it easier for a company to look at how many computers stay on overnight and multiply that by the hours they stay idle by the amount wasted per hour.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
[...] Turn ‘em off! Idle computers burn $2.8 billion overnight [...]
August 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am
If you read the report and do that math: $2.8 billion / 108 million computers = $26.00 to keep a PC on overnight? Also Dells statistics are $1.8 million / 50,000 computers = $36 per night. Sorry to say but there is some fuzzy math going on here. I leave my laptop on at home all day and night and my electricity bill is not $1,500 a month ($26 x 2 x 30).
August 13th, 2009 at 10:40 am
Sorry Russel,
Your math is wrong. The dollar amounts are for an entire YEAR, not just one day. $26.00 a year calculates to about $0.07 per night. That sounds reasonable to me.
And, its not just computers. Every room in my house has “vampire” devices that are plugged in and draw small amounts of electricity 24/7. I have four separate digital clocks in my kitchen that glow all night. When you walk into my home office at night, its like a Christmas tree. Every router, modem, printer, phone, charger, fax, computer, etc. has it’s own little LED light. And then there is the LCD TV, cable box, DVD, audio equipment (and various video game consoles) that are doing their own laser light show in my living room all night long. We all need a change of attitude/lifestyle.
November 14th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Larry – you should invest in some power strips. We plugged everything in the TV cabinet into one (except the DVR) and turn off the whole strip when we’re not watching anything. We noticed somewhere about a $5-10 savings per month drop in the electricity bill when we did that. I’ve also applied it to my home office (printers, etc) and flip everything off when I travel. For both, it offers the added bonus of surge protection when we ARE using those devices.