Energy cost of PCs on standby
BBC reports here: Electrical power has changed our lives and given us phenomenal freedoms, from talking to people around the world, to going to the moon. But do we know just how much power we are using when we switch things off or put them into standby mode?
Figures from the Energy Saving Trust on standby power use in the UK home are astonishing:
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Stereos on standby cost £290m and produce 1.6 million tonnes of CO2
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VCRs and DVD cost £263m and produce 1.06 million tonnes of CO2
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TVs on standby cost £88m and produce 480,000 tonnes of CO2
It means that in one year, in the UK alone, our equipment on standby produces a total of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2.
But there is a bigger culprit out there: the personal computer, as power supply manufacturer Scott Richards explains. "If a million PC users switched to a more efficient power supply, it would save almost the equivalent of 250 million litres of gasoline a day." By the end of 2004 there were 820 million PCs in use around the world, and by 2007 that will top a billion, according to the Computer Industry Almanac. No matter how easy these devices make our lives there is little doubt that they are costing us and the planet dearly. As Mr Richards says: "If you really want to be green with your PC, when you’re done using it turn it off."