How energy efficient is your game console ? Not very.

The short story is this.

If you’ve got a video game console in your house, and you leave it on, you’re wasting energy.

The exception – the Nintendo Wii.

A new report by the National Resources Defense Council surfaces some pretty interesting data – and a clear message (note that figures are for US only):

Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation’s electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year. In this November 2008 issue paper, NRDC provides recommendations for users, video game console manufacturers, component suppliers and the software companies that design games for improving the efficiency of video game consoles already in homes as well as future generations of machines yet to hit the shelves.

The full report is available as a PDF from the NRDC web site.

Here’s an example of some of the data they present, and there’s one thing very clear from this chart. You can do something right now, without having to wait for anyone – just turn the darned thing off.

(originally posted to VanGoGreen)