Survey: Close to half of U.S. workers still fail to power down PCs at night

Despite all the light that bloggers like me have shed on the topic in the past 12 months, a new Harris Interactive study sponsored by 1E (one of the power management utility developers) and the Alliance to Save Energy finds that close to half of U.S. workers still fail to shut their PCs down at night. The net effect is approximately $2.8 billion a year in the wasted power that it takes to keep roughly 108 million machines up and running.

In defense of Yankees like me, though, there's a measly 1 percent different between us and our counterparts in the United Kingdom, where 48 percent of workers fail to shut down their PCs at night. (The number is 43 percent in Germany.)

When asked for the reasons why they DON'T shut their computers down, the responses ranged from "it takes too long" to "it's company or IT policy to leave it on."

On an optimistic note: 63 percent of the U.S. respondents said their employers should do more to reduce power consumption, compared with 67 percent of U.K. respondent and 58 percent of Germany respondents.

1E claims that if ALL the businesses in the world remember to shut down ALL their computers for just one night, the saved electricity would be enough to power the Empire State Building in New for 30 years.

The U.S. responses reflect the results of two different surveys taken in the fall of 2008, covering more than 2,700 adults. (About 62 percent of the respondents were employed.)

Here's a link where you can find the reports for the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. There are also some case studies in power management listed on the site, including one referencing Dell.