Yesterday the congress (although just) voted to pass the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill.

To say that the result has had a mixed reception would be somewhat of an understatement.

The issue I saw, and why it relates to this article is the attitude I expressed to saving energy. Not that we will not save, yes we will, but only if we are economically motivated.

The facts are that energy is cheap. Faced with spending $1000.00 for a new server, or running the older one I have, energy will simply not play much into the decision.

As I wrote in my blog, a typical small server uses less than $350.00 per year, total. 10% saving is not going to go far ...

Now I do not want to put anyone down, and I was recently encourage to see Mozilla publish their energy usage. They use Cacti, and you can see how this is done at http://open4energy.com/energymanager

Mrz asked the question "how much energy does it cost to download an update to each user" You can see the Mozilla blog here http://blog.mozilla.com/mrz/2009/02/25/the-power-of-mozilla-2mwuser/

But I do believe they are the exception, and for many small businesses (who account for a large portion of the inefficiencies) energy costs is a long way from paying next months payroll.

But there are many saving to be made that are free. Like turn it off when you are not there - users are you there? I know it will take 3 minutes to reboot when you get back, use this for relaxation practise.

The list of small cultural changes to be made are endless, but if we all make them them the 7% demand reduction would be a home run already.

So lets not complain about taxes and costs, how about asking what your attitude to ITC energy saving really is?