Here’s one to make you think: Webpages that are mostly black take less energy to view on your monitor (59 watts) than mostly white pages (74 watts). So the folks over at EcoIron did some math and determined that if Google’s homepage – mostly white – were to transition to mostly black, and taking into account about 200 million hits a day and about 10 seconds per viewing, Google could save nearly 750 MWh per year in energy (that’s about enough to power roughly 75 homes for a year).

This idea got a lot of discussion going in the blogosphere, as you can imagine. Readers debated everything from the size of the average monitor to whether reading white on black is really easier than black on white. Mark Ontkush, the author of the piece, did a follow up post on EcoIron here.

Although the math can be debated, this idea is a good example of how efficiency is the cheapest, easiest, and fastest way for us to cut our global warming emissions. It's not about shivering in dark; it's about doing what we're already doing faster, easier, better.

EcoIron
cmh blog