Blackle.com - Use it.

http://www.blackle.com

In January of this year, a blog titled “Black Google Would Save 750 Watt-hours A Year” grabbed the attention of Heap Media, a company committed to developing online services with global reach. After calculating that it takes about 74 watts to display an all white screen and only 59 watts to display an all black one, Heap Media created its new black screen search engine powered by Google called Blackle. Based on the extreme popularity of Google, it is estimated that if the 200 million people who used Google every day switched to Blackle, global energy used could be reduced by 750 Megawatt-hours per year.

Aside from being just a great idea, I admire Heap Media for recognizing that small steps can create a huge difference. Heap Media said this about their new initiative, “We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!

By using Blackle.com, we are each taking small steps to conserve our energy. However, we can take this information and go one small step further. By changing your desktop background or altering your display color settings to darker tones, we will be saving energy every time we log on, not just when we search.