Written by Bernat Garrigos
In the product analysis that we usually do for Actigreen we try to measure the return on investment of the electricity or water savings that comes from using a particular green gadget in order to find commercial arguments.
When using a standby killer you can justify its use just for the economic saving arising from all the electricity not being used by our devices in standby mode.
The standby consumption in our electronic devices may be less than 5W for a television or between 5 and 10 W for DVD players and video consoles. If we add them together and multiply by the total amount of hours that these devices could be completely disconnected during a full year we could end up saving many kWh per year.
We can assume that standby killers can save electricity 300 out of 365 days a year, ie about 7,200 hours per year. If all our gadgets add up to 20 W consumption on standby we would end with total savings of 144 kWh per year. At a cost of 12 cents of € per kWh, that would add to 17.28 € savings per year,
This is the direct cost savings on our invoice that anyone could get with just a purely econometric reasoning.
But the global economy should also take other environmental, health and economic costs into account, and add them to the value calculated before. These costs are not paid by the utility company, but they are charged to the global population and specially upon certain minorities. These costs are called externalities. They are real costs that do not enter the companies accounting books. The value of these externalities tend to vary, depending specially on the way they electricity is produced. Oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power or wind turbines differ a lot. These costs are extremely difficult to calculate, but data from the Newext project funded by the European community as well as other studies indicate that these costs could double and triple the cost of the electricity bill. Therefore, our device remover standby could lead to 17 € savings from our utility invoice and then some extra 30 € savings in costs to the global community.
The same goes for water use and pollution which cause environmental and health care costs that are not accounted for in your water bill. Water cost calculations are different because the water is a renewable resource usually present in the ecosystem and therefore there are opportunity costs relatoed to its use. Any water consumed somewhere becomes unavailable for other uses and for the natural environment, and this extra cost is also an externality.
Happily, there is an increasing number of consumers making their buying choices based on the assumption that there is a bigger reward to a sustainable life style that goes beyond your utility savings. We never do all the externalities accountability but we all know this is the right way to lead a more sustainable life style.