We’ve talked about energy efficiency in several past articles, but it’s become even more of an issue over the last year or so. In fact, there are instruments on the market nowadays (basically they’re just watt meters with some extra tricks, like time-based tracking and averaging) that will tell you how much power a given device uses. These can be pretty handy for finding “watt hogs” in your house. Some items, like an electric dryer or range, use huge amounts of energy. That’s a given, because they contain resistance heating elements.

In terms of PCs and other electronics, more and more devices are sporting “Green” logos these days. However, consumers need to beware. Many companies are simply “greenwashing” their advertising, without actually providing products that save appreciable energy. “Green” is a big issue these days and companies want to jump on the bandwagon. I knew things had gotten out of hand when I saw an advertisement last year touting coal as “clean, green energy.” That’s just an outright lie.

In any case, you can also read some pretty handy reviews of various devices in order to find out how Green they might be. What’s interesting is that at least one HDTV today is using LEDs to provide backlighting, which actually results in significant energy savings. I also suspect it translates to improved product life as well, since LED units last 100,000 or more hours without requiring replacement. They also generate less heat, which can be a factor as well.

If you’re wondering about your PC’s overall “Greenness,” take a look at the power supply’s rating. If it’s a newer device, it’ll probably sport an EnergyStar rating and a “Green” logo of some type.

My laptop (a Lenovo T61p) has a supply that’s rated at 90W. One of my desktop systems is rated at 300W. However, that doesn’t mean they’re actually using that much power–hence those handy consumption-measurement devices I mentioned. Those ratings represent maximum usage you’d see if you had the machine loaded down with lots of peripherals and disks. In reality, my laptop uses about 60W (roughly the same as a standard incandescent lamp) while the desktop uses 120-130.

Some newer machines and peripherals come with better designed supplies. In fact, I changed the supply on my desktop system last year and consumption dropped from 140 to 125W. That may not seem like much, but it adds up over time.

So, it certainly can’t hurt to investigate Green options while buying new hardware. Just be aware of “greenwashing” practices in the marketplace; you may not save as much money as you might expect. And, of course, the easiest way to save cash is by shutting off devices you’re not using.

Everyone knows spam is a huge waste of time, and that managing it is an even bigger annoyance. If not for spam, we probably wouldn’t need email filters, porn blockers, and a half dozen other pieces of software. The question, though, is whether spam actually wastes energy.

According to McAfee and others, the 82 trillion (yes, trillion) pieces of spam generated in 2008 actually “gobbled up enough electricity to power more than 2.4 million homes for a year.” They calculated this by figuring out how much time was wasted on each one, then determining about how much energy an average PC consumed during the time period involved. That may or may not be a valid method of calculating the cost. It is, however, indicative of the amount of time wasted on this garbage.

Keep in mind, however, that McAfee and other companies sell anti-spam software. As the article notes, they have a vested interest in the topic and would just love to sell more product — especially in these lean economic times.

I also suspect the above number isn’t the whole story. Each piece of spam that’s sent has to be processed through multiple machines along the way. A single message might bounce from one intermediate server to another a half dozen times until it reaches your inbox — and it uses power every step of the way. If all the spam vanished suddenly, many ISPs and server farms might find they had so much excess capacity that they could shut down a percentage of their production environment. I’m not sure there’s a way to measure this empirically, but again it shows how many resources go into managing this problem.

On the other hand, think how much gasoline and diesel fuel could be saved by eliminating the original source of unsolicited mail — i.e. all those paper advertisements and catalogs that clog your physical mailbox. A postal employee once told me that, if all paper ads were stopped, he and most other postal workers would be out of the job.

At least purveyors of paper ads actually pay for the resources they use, though. Spammers are just leeches who steal resources from others.