Gadgets Go Green

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Now Horowitz is looking to devise universal test methods and energy specifications for TVs, working with government agencies in the United States and abroad, as well as manufacturers in China, Japan, and Korea. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's current Energy Star standards consider only the relatively small amount of energy consumed during the off, or "standby," mode, based on the logic that a TV spends most of its life turned off. Surprisingly, no "active mode" testing method exists -- except one developed some 30 years ago for black-and-white models -- even though a full 85 percent of all the energy used by a television is consumed while it's on.

Realizing that this dinosaur system needed to be revamped, Horowitz, with a grant from the EPA, commissioned new research on the active-mode energy consumption of today's LCD and plasma TVs. He took these findings to the agency and major television manufacturers, and after a series of negotiations held in the United States, England, and Korea, government officials and manufacturers agreed to develop a universal test method for active-mode energy use. The end result: Manufacturers will save time and money by conducting a single product test that will be accepted by all coun-tries that sell their products.

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SHORT TAKE
The New PC Diet
Most of us don't shut down our computers when we aren't using them, and that means some 50 million computers are left running around the clock. NRDC teamed up with Microsoft to help the software giant slash PC energy consumption. The result: Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista, cuts energy use by 95 percent during "sleep" mode.

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Once the new specifications are implemented, consumers will be able to make informed, energy-conscious decisions when purchasing new televi-sions. According to Horowitz's research, a 25 percent reduction in active-mode power consumption would save Americans $1 billion on home elec-tricity bills each year while preventing 10 million tons of global warming pollution over the same time period.

That's Horowitz's genius -- finding brilliant solutions to problems nobody else even knew existed. Next up: video games.