For Every Watt We Use On the Internet, We Save 10 Watts!

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

For Every Watt We Use On the Internet, We Save 10 Watts!

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy rocks. They have put numbers to what I have long expected to be true. Folks who complain about how much energy computers waste are crazy. Computers save tons of energy, while, themselves, using less energy than the lightbulb used to light the workstation. And now we know how much.

The study focused on a metric called “energy intensity.” Basically, that’s the amount of energy necessary to produce a dollar of economic output…. Telecommuting a couple days per week, reading news online, emails, document downloads, and instant messages all allow people and things to travel while consuming much smaller amounts of energy. What’s more, online shopping has reduced trips to retail stores, resulting in significant energy savings.

I was not expecting to hear that.