Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory (LBNL) has a site for standby power issues, which states that standby (sometimes called "vampire" or "phantom" power) is "typically 5-10% of residential electricity use in most developed countries."

LBNL does not make public its underlying analysis for that statement and a number of people have questioned it, so I've applied the consistency modeling techniques I use for clients to this problem. Here is the result.

Printing web pages can be a frustrating experience, yielding both poor layouts and wasted paper. @greenit recently called attention to three utilities purporting to reduce print waste, one desktop-based and two online. The Vertatique home page can be challenging to to print since it is a dynamic assembly from an underlying content management system (CMS), rather than a hard-coded HTML page, so I used it for a quick test of the two online utilities.

I was asked during my HPA sustainable media session to compare the carbon footprint of a movie delivered by DVD versus one delivered by streaming. It was a good question, but one that required much research.  Here's the first half of the answer.

Remote power management of computers is becoming an increasingly powerful tool to control energy consumption and carbon emissions. Behavioral techniques, like encouraging users to turn off their machines at the end of the day, are not always effective and may interfere with off-hours IT activities like upgrades. The Energy Star program now publishes a list of commercial and open-source power management products, along with success stories. Visit Energy Star's Power Management home page for an overview of resources for both organizations and individuals.

E-devices are so pervasive in our lives that we might not consider the full potential of personal e-waste reduction. The British weighed in with a law that, according to Discover magazine, expands the e-waste definition to include electrical 'adult toys'. Individual manufacturers are also offering green devices.

Earth Hour is an initiative sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund and others to raise awareness about global warming by asking individuals, municipalities, and businesses to turn off their lights for one hour (8:30PM local time, 28 Mar). Turning off our personal computers and e-devices appears to be a more complicated issue.

Vertatique raised the issue back in 2007 of increased home energy consumption and carbon emissions due to widespread deployment of digital-to-analog (DTA) converter boxes in 2009. Energy Star reports that "In the U.S. alone, depending on viewer behavior and product design, EPA estimates that conventional DTAs could consume more than 3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) per year and cost Americans $270 million annually in additional electricity bills."  New DTA models hold hope for improving the situation.

Apple's new Mac Mini has achieved EPEAT Gold certification through attention to four different aspects of its design and life cycle.

See more about EPEAT and other green ratings for Apple gear at Greenest e-Gear.

"Consumer electronics is the fastest-growing source of electricity use in people's homes," says the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "It's now up to 15 or 20 percent." Video game consoles are the latest devices to come under energy use scrutiny. "Today, more than 40 percent of all homes in the United States contain at least one video game console . . .they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year -- roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation's electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year." Until the industry steps improves its devices' power management, "gamers can significantly reduce the energy consumed by their consoles through simple steps like turning off the console when not actively playing a game or watching a movie and enabling power management features when available." Visit the NRDC's consoles page to read the comprehensive report, Lowering the Cost of Play by Noah Horowitz, and to learn how to enable power management features on existing consoles.

[Thank you to NRDC's Anthony Clark for providing graph.]