Home Office: Extreme Energy Makeover
Do you know how much your home office costs? I’m not talking about the price you paid for the equipment (you probably do know that amount). Rather, I mean how much of a financial and environmental burden it is to you and your community on an ongoing basis.I recently found out, for example, that the computing equipment in my home office last year consumed 803 kilowatt-hours of power and directly resulted in the emission of 889 lbs. of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. My personal contribution to global warming also included 1.4 lbs. of sulfur dioxide and about half a pound of nitrogen oxide, all byproducts of the power-generation process serving my office, according to the Independent System Operator of New England.
All that energy came with a financial cost as well, of course. Could I save money and help save the planet by reducing my energy use without compromising my business? To answer that question, I set out to eliminate every wasted watt of energy — and wasted dollar — I could find in my office setup.
The result was shocking. Based on an audit of my own office’s energy use, I estimated that when I started, my equipment added $112 to my annual electricity bill, or 8.5% of the total for my household. Had I been more careful in the selection, configuration and use of the equipment, I could have saved as much as 80% of that — and put $90 back into my pocket.
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