Green Urban Myth: Can We Please Kill the Idea that Black Screens Save Energy?

ReadWriteWeb published a nice little write-up on Earth Day about the best green search engines, with a list that included Green Maven, Greensie, Blackle, Searchgreener and EcoSeek, among others. How can a search engine be eco-friendly? Well, some of them, like Green Maven, search the ‘green web’, bringing you the latest eco-news and media. Others, like Ecocho, plant trees each time you reach a set amount of searches, providing a nice way to offset carbon while doing what you need to do on the web.

Some, however, are a little slow, shall we say: they’re still running on the concept that a black screen saves energy. Blackle, Eco-find and Earthle’s black backgrounds are the only supposed eco friendly benefit to their use. Here’s the thing: unless you’re still using an old CRT monitor, it’s not even true. Call it a green technology urban myth. It’s time to give this misinformation a boot in the ass. Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal crunched the numbers nearly a year ago, and Bill Schindler of Panasonic Plasma Display Laboratory of America confirmed his findings.

Scientific American summed it up:

CRT monitors, which until a few years ago were the predominant models among PC users, consume more power when a computer screen is white. To confirm this, Schindler measured the energy output of an 18-inch (45.7-centimeter) CRT monitor and found it used 102 watts when the screen was white but only 79 watts when the display was black.

This is not the case, however, with LCD monitors, which have no phosphors and represent the lion’s share of every new monitored purchased in the developed world, including those used by laptops. Instead, LCD displays rely on an array of thin-tube fluorescent bulbs that provide a constant source of light to create a white screen. To make it black, LCDs rely on a diffuser to block this light. As a result, LCDs use more energy than CRTs to display a black screen. Measuring a 17-inch (43-centimeter) LCD monitor, Schindler found that white required 22.6 watts, while black came in a tad higher at 23.2 watts. With a 20-inch (50.8-centimeter) LCD, black required 6 percent more energy than white.

It’s time for Blackle and the others to make a change: they meant well, but the fact is their black search engines are actually accomplishing the opposite of their goal. They’re using more energy, and misleading people who want to help out the environment in any small way they can.

What’s even more annoying about this is the fact that this information has been available for so long. We’ve known about it since last May, and the black-screen search engines haven’t made a change. Um, hello? News flash, literally: y’all are now officially a year behind the times, and during that year, you’ve done more harm than good. It’s time to pat the black screen myth on the head, thank it for trying and quietly send it off to the place outdated eco practices go to die.

Link [ReadWriteWeb] + [Scientific American]

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