Is black the new green?
Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy
Czar
Reducing climate change by saving energy is an important effort we
should all join, and that's why we're very glad to see the
innovative thinking going into a variety of solutions. One idea,
suggested by the site called "Blackle" (which is not
related to Google, by the way, though the site does use our
is to reduce energy used by monitors by providing search with a
black background. We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own
analysis as well as that of
others shows that making the Google homepage black will not
reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors
(already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may
actually increase energy usage.
results from a new study confirm this.
As computers become a bigger part of more people's lives, they href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/climate-savers-computing-initiative.html" >
will consume an increasing amount of energy, which is why we've
invested so much in
making our data centers efficient and we've
joined with others
has a goal of reducing total power consumption by more than 50% for
all computers by 2010.
There are some things you can do now to reduce
the energy used by your computer, such as:
turn on the power management features. Virtually all computers
today have the ability to switch into low-power modes automatically
when they're idle; very few computers have this capability
enabled!
Here's how to do it on computers running Windows XP.
turn off your monitor and computer when you're not using
them
turn down the brightness on your monitor
make sure your next computer meets the efficiency standards of
Computing (an efficient computer uses up to 50% less energy
than a conventional one)
to find the most efficient PCs available today, look for the
words "EnergyStar 4.0 compliant."
Tags: , Bill, climate, CzarReducing, Energy, Green, Posted, Weihl