A new software program claims to reduce the energy your computer uses automatically.  It is aptly named Granola.  The program is free and doesn’t interfere with your computer use.

My understanding is that the software works primarily by taking advantage of the ability of modern computers to vary the speed of the CPU in real-time.  Most of the time there is no benefit in your CPU running at maximum speed (your computer is probably idle or doing low CPU demand tasks like word processing).  Granola tries to give you exactly the amount of computer power you need for the current task, saving energy in the process.

It is a bit surprising that modern OSes do not fully take advantage of this already to cut power use.  Perhaps it hasn’t been a priority for them, or perhaps Granola adds additional secret sauce to provide power savings above those OS provides.

A neat way to verify their claims would be to use a power meter like Kill-A-Watt.

I recently read Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air.  When I saw this book, I knew I found a gold-mine.  The author attempts to determine the viability of renewable energy by calculating and comparing possible production with current consumption.  The book centers on the U.K., but is easy to extend worldwide.

The approach is empirical, well researched, yet accessible enough.  In the process, the book becomes a reference for approaching energy issues.  The numbers and calculations alone are invaluable – too many great discussions reach stalemates because finding and synthesithing the data is so hard.

The book is a great example of how to think about complex issues.  Save for a few paragraphs of personal opinion, everything in the book comes down to numbers.  Actual numbers, not “huge” or “large” or “tiny”.  Instead of saying, “electric cars and biodiesel will save us” the author calculates energy impact and then determines the magnitude of savings (or loses).

Taking a comprehensive and rational look at things is so much harder than simply rallying behind a cause or simply saying ‘no’.  Even getting the numbers is hard, much less making sense of them.  Yet simple approaches are much more appealing and sadly much more influential in driving our decisions.

This book is a reference manual for numbers and processes, a guide to solving environmental issues, and an example of how to properly think about complex issues.  In the end, it makes discussing environmental and energy issues much simpler.  I hope people will actually use it.  The author does too – the electronic version of the book is available for FREE.