Yesterday was Earth Day, which once a year brings well-deserved media attention to environmental issues and helps in raising our environmental awareness. It was interesting to see the coverage given to something other than alternative energy technologies. Don’t get me wrong, anything that can reduce our fossil fuel dependence is worth reporting.

This Sunday however, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the mainstream media was focusing primarily on energy preservation. Having grown up in Europe, recycling and saving energy was omnipresent. Paying $5-6 for a gallon of gasoline and incurring similar costs for electricity, water, etc. is a great motivator to control personal energy use. The market dynamics of supply and demand will eventually adjust the energy cost basis in the US as well, as we are already observing at the pump. What people need to realize is that old habits don’t constitute necessity and that small personal changes can have a big impact on overall energy use patterns. One example cited this weekend was the big net impact of replacing old incandescent light bulbs with new energy efficient fluorescent ones.

My personal pet peeve is the energy wasted by unused electronics. In a high-tech world of information junkies, we surround ourselves with more and more energy consuming technology.

What I don’t understand is, why we can’t turn off the stuff we don’t use? There is really no need keep desktop computers and monitors running on screen savers during nights and weekends when wake-on-lan and suspend/resume technology exists to allow remote maintenance and faster boot-up. Keep in mind, even on standby many of these devices are burning some juice.

So next time you leave your home or office think about what can be switched off! It may seem tedious, but the overall impact is big.

Technorati Tags: earth day, computer energy waste, energy preservation, environmental awareness

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