Thinking about the environment is a high-priority nowadays and I stumbled across an interesting article on how we could save money and possible preserve the environment - Black Google Would Save 3,000 Megawatts a Year.
The point in this article is that a CRT monitor uses up to 15 watts less power with a black screen instead of white, and as you know power costs money and affects the environment, mostly, in a negative way.
Just to find out I used the information in the article and tried to convert it to an Intranet scenario, in which the company I work for focuses, and calculated out how much a company could save on applying these facts on the Intranet design. Intranets is often used so that it occupies the screen of the user most of the day.
The chart below shows how much companies of different sizes (the series, 100 up to 10.000 ,in the chart) that have an intranet that the users use about 4 hours a day, 260 days a year.
The x-axis represents the power usage of the monitors when using the Intranet (74 watts is pure white and 59 is all black) and the y-axis is the actual savings ($0.10 per kWh).
As you can see it’s not that much for a single company in savings, as in the Google case, but if we all try to think about it we might save a tree or two in the rain forests :-).
Anyway it might be of interest or fun someday to use the numbers when discussing design with a company that have an environmental friendly mindset.