Green Wombat

It’s time for the annual back-to-school computer buying binge, as college students get the ‘rents to cough up for that new aluminum-clad iMac (AAPL) or the latest from Dell (DELL). But according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only about 10 percent of students turn on their desktop’s power-management software that minimizes energy consumption and puts the computer to sleep when not in use. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative – the consortium of tech companies led by Google (GOOG) and Intel (INTC) – has done some calculations to show how students can lower electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions by clicking on the power-management feature: If the 61 percent of the U.S.’s 18 million university students who use desktop computers activate their computers’ power-management program, they could eliminate 1.8 million tons of greenhouse gases – the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road – and save $206 million on their schools’ annual electricity bill. Those calculations were just for desktop computers; add in the laptops many students carry and the environmental and economic benefit would be even greater. Of course, turning on power-management software at the factory, as it were, would be best.