Black Is The New Green…Or Is It?

As going green gains more focus and attention, saving electricity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes more important. As people spend more and more time in front of computers and on the web, they start to come up with clever ways for everyone to save electricity. The website, Blackle, aims at just that. Blackle is a search site powered by the Google search engine, it functions exactly like the Google home page, but with one key difference, it’s all black! Monitors uses less electricity when operating in a black background, so when people use Blackle, they save electricity, or kilowatt-hours, which Blackle proudly displays on it’s home page how much it has helped saved so far.

With people making claims there will definitely be people who will test those claims. While it is true that monitors uses less electricity displaying black color, it only applies to CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors. Remember those huge and heavy monitors with a long back, ya, that is a CRT monitor. The recent LCD (liquid crystal display) monitors, which are on the market for a few years now, replaced most of the CRT monitors. LCD monitors uses a different technology which actually requires more electricity to display black screens. (read more here and here)

While Blackle can indeed save electricity for people using CRT monitors, it has little to no help with the electricity savings of people using LCD monitors. To save electricity, people can invest in the more expensive, environmental agency-qualified monitors. The intention of Blackle is certainly good, although using it might not help with electricity savings, it will help remind people to think about the environment and come up with more ways to save it.