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Mar 30, 2009 09:29 AM | 15
The computer you're reading this on may not seem like a huge energy waster, but the power consumption adds up when joined by the other PCs worldwide (Stamford, Conn., research firm Gartner estimates there are more than one billion). A study released last week puts a finer point on this assertion, reporting that U.S. workers waste $2.8 billion annually in energy costs by failing to shut off their PCs at the end of the work day. What's more, machines left on during off hours may emit up to 20 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) this year alone, roughly the equivalent impact of four million cars.
The 2009 PC Energy Report, (conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by London-based energy-management software maker 1E Ltd and the Alliance to Save Energy, a Washington, D.C., coalition of business, government and environmental organizations) says that nearly half of U.S. workers leave their PCs running overnight. Among reasons cited, according to the report: it takes too long to shut them down, people forget to turn them off or they deliberately leave them on so they can receive software updates overnight.
Harris collected online responses from 4,743 U.S. computer users over the age of 18, about half of whom were employed. The company also polled computer users in the U.K. and Germany about PC energy usage there and found that turning off PCs could save $1.2 billion in Germany and about $400 million in the U.K. this year.
Computers, data centers and communications networks are big offenders when it comes to climate-change-causing CO2 emissions, producing 2 percent of the world's overall emissions, the same as the world's air traffic produces, according to Gartner.
The debate over the potential benefits of shutting down PCs is ongoing. Alliance to Save Energy president Kateri Callahan said in a statement that powering down PCs not in use "can provide a simple yet effective way for businesses to reduce overhead costs and environmental impact." Others point out that today's PCs are highly energy efficient already and that placing them in sleep/standby or hibernate modes (rather than turning them off completely) cuts energy usage sufficiently while allowing the computers to come to life more quickly when workers return in the morning. (ScientificAmerican.com has covered this debate in the past.)
Desktop PCs (those with separate monitors) meeting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Energy Star qualifications use two watts or less of electricity in hibernate mode and four watts or less in sleep mode. Laptops qualify for Energy Star ratings if they use one watt or less in hibernate and 1.7 watts or less in sleep mode.
Image ©iStockphoto.com/ Devaev Dmitry
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15 Comments
Add CommentThis is pennies per machine. If we shut them down then they could do a study on the value of the time wasted waiting for the PC to start-up. Probably would be many more billions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe need to get updates at night is real. If you turn on a PC after a weekend down, and several automatic updates are competing for resources, the PC may be doggy for a couple hours. Remember, the most expensive component of a computer system is the person behind the keyboard.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisso no one cares about the planet enough to shut off their precious game of world of warcraft long enough to save some cash AND give the source of all life a break?! just gotta have that level 15 upgrade on your golden mace,do ya, frodo? time to come out of nana's basement and think about something a little more precious than your precious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompanies are well aware of the cost of data centers and PC workstations, saving $$$ is a strong motive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBetween blade servers, virtual machines and green disk drives more is being done with the same or less energy.
Data centers and PC Equipment manufacturers are becoming greener and greener at far faster rate that just about any other area. Attempted savings in this area is far less bang-for-the-buck than many other areas.
Let's concentrate on the biggest wasters first - lighting, heating-cooling and generation efficiencies.
We talk about saving pennies when we can shave hundreds of kilowatt hours from our monthly electric consumption if we could have residential 3 phase power to run all of our motor driven appliances and ac units. When this is made available to residential customers then will I believe that there is a crisis. Using single phase power for refrigerators heat pumps and ac units is the most wasteful use of electricity in the household.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about shutting water heaters when you are at work...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstalled a tankless water heater in 2001. best investment to date. lowered electric bill $40.00/mo. gas cost is $14.00/ mo
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about all the computers with that protein folding application installed on them? How much money is all their computing time worth to better understand the nature of our own construction? Just throwing that out there. There are plenty of reasons to leave a computer on at night, I think updates being the best of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we should simplify the argument and just say, shut down when you can. Don't leave it on to make a point, don't turn it off if you need updates at night or for whatever other reason you have... but when you can... shut down. It's a money saver and an earth saver. I try to remind myself every morning "this earth is the only one we have." That helps me remember to do things such as power down at night, and shut off lights in other rooms of my house.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne point often missed: in the colder areas of the world, the electricity used to run a PC overnight is not exactly "wasted". It heats the room and building where it sits. In my house, that saves heating oil for about 7 months of the year. The same is true of many other appliances that draw power even when they are not in use. The studies I have seen never take that into account.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you know what happens when you shut things off to lower your utility bills? The next thing you know, the utility companies are complaining about the lost income - and raise the rates. You end up paying the same (if not more) and getting less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut you can run distributed computing projects when you using office applications of checking emails and off course when you are away from your pc your pc would contribute to worlds most advanced scientific researches in biology, math, chemistry and physics and many more feilds. You can find one through google as using search term "distributed computing project".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrank Hayes wrote a great article about this study in Computerworld magazine. A few good points from what he wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- given the cost of paying employees while they wait for their machine to boot, shutting them down at night really really really does cost more than leaving them on
- the problem isn't leaving them on, but rather manufacturers who build hardware that doesn't sleep correctly and effectively, and operating systems (Windows being not only the worst culprit but the most widely used) that take forever long to boot
Virtualization and better green hardware may be pushed by vendors because they see the green movement as a business opportunity (and if you haven't noticed that it is, you're asleep), but it still will help the environment... I think.
These claims of waste are overblown for those who live in cold climates. The heat is valued. In hot climates they are right on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI switched to compact fluorescents years ago, and drastically cut my electric bill. The utility company even held up my bill to recheck the reading.
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