Did you know?
Computers and monitors can account for half of the electricity used in a typical office. A single monitor left switched on overnight can use the same energy as a laser printer producing 800 A4 printed copies, and don't be fooled by a screensaver - the computer is still working at full power to run this!
There are some 10m office PCs in Britain and 1.8m are regularly left on overnight or all weekend, according to a recent study on energy wastage. This means that around 1.5 billion kWh of energy is wasted by computers and monitors being left on - that's approximately £115million wasted in the UK every year! Convert this into carbon and we waste around 7000,000 tonnes of carbon because of workers not switching off computers and monitors in the UK (that's 10% of the UK climate change levy target)!
The Savings
The amount of energy that a computer and monitor use varies depending on its age, model and the programmes and applications in use. A PC switched on 8 hours a day engaging 'ecomode' for 3 hours could save around £50 in electricity cost per year. If the PC is left on overnight the saving could be £100 or more - or the equivalent of 600kgs of CO².