Reducing our carbon footprint one Watt at a time.

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. The first major drop in energy intensity occured after the oil
crisis in the 1970s. That was a cost-based drop, not generally the
ideal.

Then, after OPEC lost its stranglehold, energy intensity stopped
dropping because energy was once again cheap. But then, starting in
the late 1990s, energy intensity began to drop significantly again.
This drop was unrelated to energy costs and was, in fact, a
technologically spurred change.

Computers were helping us become more efficient. First, by using their
power to design more efficient practices. And second, and much more
significantly, by allowing people and things to travel digitally,
instead of physically.

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.

Energy intensity has continued to drop more than 2% every year since
the Internet first appeared. Without the Internet, the paper's authors
suggest that we would need one billion more barrels per oil per year!
Indeed, ever kilowatt/hour we spend on the Internet looks to have
saved about 10 kilowatt/hours of energy.

Not that I need another reason to spend time online