A Dim Idea

Last night, I unplugged my TV after watching a show.

I also drove to the grocery store across the street from me because it was a bit too hot out to walk.

I am such an environmentalist.

As another sign of good intentions, but poor execution, a new survey found that Americans don't really know how to save energy.

As if daily traffic jams were not enough of an indication.

It turns out that just turning off your lights before leaving a room and buying that new ENERGY STAR laptop don't really add up to much in a big-picture sense.

And what's more, the green movement may be partially to blame, with erroneous information leading people into thinking that buying green products is the key to environmental utopia.

The lead researcher from the study, Shahzeen Attari, says that, rather than doing the small, easy things to curb your carbon output, you're probably better off "switching to efficient technologies [which] generally allow you to maintain your behavior and save a great deal more energy."

The idea is to change how you do things, and not necessarily what you do. I mean, sure, you could buy soy ink cartridges for your fax machine and use 100% post-recycled paper to print off your 50 or so pages of documents and drive your new hybrid car over to your client's home for their signature (using a soy-based, recycled pen of course), but wouldn't it be easier, more efficient, and more environmentally-friendly to simply use DotLoop and have everything done online, without wasted paper, ink, or gas?

After all, sometimes being green simply means doing things better.

Watt's So Smart About That?

A few years ago, I installed a programmable thermostat in my home, making it that much easier to keep my pets from hogging the A/C while I was away at work. Well that, and it saved me some money, too.

Now, Microsoft is trying to tap into the smart grid and cloud technology to offer users a chance to see their energy output and potential waste on their individual home. Although the site, Hohm, officially launched last June, as Ars Technica reports today, only recently has it actually become useful, with users now being able to type in their zip code and address to find out their home's cost.

While there are still plenty of flaws with the system (I typed in my address, and my energy costs were shown to be about double what my actual costs are), it has potential.

And competition as well. Google's PowerMeter is the same basic idea - harnessing smart grid technology (still in its infancy) to give users a better understanding that, when they keep their TVs and cell phone chargers plugged in all day, they are still drawing power.

All of this technology is fine, of course, but it makes you wonder - if it takes 18 servers to help me save a few watts of power, isn't that still a waste of energy?