I read an article a couple of weeks ago and was shocked to learn that US businesses lose more than $2.8 billion a year just from leaving their computers on overnight. What’s worse is this wasted electricity pumps more than 200 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. That’s the rough equivalent of adding 4 million cars to US roadways.

Lucky for the environment, and our pocketbooks, this problem is easily solved—just turn off your computer before you leave work. If everyone in the world did this just one night, we would save enough energy worldwide to power the Empire State Building (both inside and out) for more than 30 years! Talk about easy ways to save energy and the environment.

PCs, even in sleep mode, are big consumers of electricity (even newer computers will consume 40 watts of power during the night in “sleep” mode, not to mention more power hungry, older computers). So what can you do to help? Follow these power conscious guidelines at work and home.

1. Turn OFF your computer when you will not be using it for more than an hour, and don’t ever leave your computer on overnight.
2. Remember screen savers DO NOT save electricity. While sleep mode does save energy, it still uses energy, so make sure you turn your computer off if you are not using it.
3. Don’t believe the hype. While it may have been true for computers made 10 years ago (and even that is debatable), it is no longer true that turning your computer on and off will shorten its life. In fact, the opposite is often true. Starting your computer fresh every day cleans out it’s memory, restarts programs that may have gone awry, and can often improve performance.
4. To save more energy, don’t just turn off your computer and monitor, unplug them, or plug everything (including all your peripherals) into a powerstrip and turn off the powerstrip when you are done with your computer. This will stop what is known as phantom power: the small trickle of power electronics still use when turned off.
5. Need a new computer? Get a laptop. They use far less energy and can be charged up at night when electricity demand is less (and in some places cheaper). If you leave your laptop plugged in, remember to unplug it when you are not using it.
6. Need a new monitor? Get an LCD. They use far less energy (only 25 watts compared to 75 watts for a typical CRT). Make sure you unplug it, though, when you are not using it to save even more electricity.
7. Use FREE power management software such as Verdiem’s Edison (http://www.verdiem.com/edison.aspx) to take even greater control of your computer’s power consumption.
   

It’s amazing how much electricity is wasted and CO2 produced from idle computers. Just think--if a large business with 10,000 computers shut down all their PCs at night, they’d save more than $260,000 a year in electric costs and keep 1,871 tons of CO2 from being produced. So talk to your boss today—maybe you’ll even get a raise for saving the company thousands of dollars with the simple flip of a switch.