By Helen Bronston

After watching Carbon Nation at lunchtime during HMC Earth Week, I went back to my happily waiting computer. How much energy had I wasted by leaving my computer running through lunchtime rather than putting it to sleep?

Using our handy plug-load meter from the Pacific Energy Center, I calculated that my idle workstation (CPU and two monitors) was drawing 300 watts. Over a year of lunchtimes that’s about 75 kWH (kilowatt hours) of electricity.

PG&E’s website lists a carbon content for their power of 0.0524 pounds of CO2/kWH.

Shoot—that means I’m generating over 39 pounds of atmospheric carbon per year for absolutely no reason at all. Let’s not even mention the evenings I’ve forgotten to turn the darn thing off while stumbling out the door. I switched to compact fluorescent bulbs at home years ago, but my extra pointless computer usage is throwing those efficiency gains away.

If I’m typical, HMC is creating maybe 12,000 pounds of carbon while our computers churn pointlessly away at lunch. And that’s just the direct power input to the workstation. Once that power turns to heat in our offices, most of the time it has to be pulled out again by air conditioning. This more than doubles the impact of waste. It’s inefficient and stupid.

12,000 pounds of carbon—that’s the carbon content of of over 600 gallons of gas. It takes 30 barrels of oil to make that much gasoline. It isn’t a huge amount, but putting our computers to sleep at lunch is a small, painless thing that we can all do together. And we’ll save money in the bargain.

I’m going to try to do better. And maybe I’ll finally order those solar panels for the roof…