Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.
Maybe you feel you waste too much time on video games, but it’s your wallet you should be worried about. Two years ago, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) commissioned a study on video game consoles that found they are now among the biggest household power users. If left on all the time, some systems can consume as much energy each year as two new refrigerators. If gaming consoles had better power-management features built in, the study’s authors estimated we could cut our consumption of electricity by about 11 billion kilowatt-hours per year, for a savings greater than $1 billion annually. (Those numbers are based on the assumption that 50 percent of video game consoles are not turned off after use.) Since the study was published, the NRDC has worked with Microsoft, which makes the Xbox 360, and Sony, maker of the PlayStation 3, to cut energy waste. Noah Horowitz, an NRDC senior scientist who was involved in the study, gave us an update.
