Video Games Shoot Up Energy Bills

  • Playing Sonic on a Wii. The Nintendo Wii uses less energy than Sony's Playstation 3 and the XBox 360. (Photo by Manish Prabhune)

People across the country are firing up one of their favorite gifts they got from the holidays – video games. Mark Brush reports on some surprising results about what home video games can do to your energy bill:

Transcript

People across the country are firing up one of their favorite gifts they got from the holidays – video games. Mark Brush reports on some surprising results about what home video games can do to your energy bill:

Video games are a quick escape into an alternate reality… (snd up) fortunately with multiple lives.

(snd of gunfire)

There’s a war going on in this basement.

Taurus and his partner Walt are using their M-16s, grenades, and knives to fight off the enemy.

(snd)

In real life – Taurus is Will Frey.

He’s a sophomore at Michigan State University.

And he’s been working really hard on his overall ranking:

“So I am currently seven hundred and eleven thousandth”

That sounds really bad.

But actually it’s really good.

He’s better than more than 5 million other people playing Call of Duty 4 on their Xbox consoles.

It’s estimated that forty percent of U-S Households have a video game.

And that number is growing.

The games are played for hours and hours – but they’re also left on – even if nobody’s playing them:

“A lot of sports games – you can’t save in the middle of a game – and the games are like usually a half an hour, so if you’re like twenty minutes and you have to leave, you don’t want to lose that twenty minutes kind of thing you know.”

Frey says he has friends that leave their games on all the time.

They never shut them off.

Some don’t want to lose their progress in a game, and some, he says, are just plain lazy.

The Natural Resources Defense Council says some game designers overlook the energy footprint of these things.

They added up the energy used by all the gamers in the country in a year’s time. And found it roughly equals the juice drawn by a big US city in one year.

The report’s authors compared the energy used by the three most popular gaming consoles.

And the big energy winner was the Nintendo Wii.

It uses about 8 times less energy than Sony’s Playstation 3 or Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

That’s because the Wii doesn’t have the same kind of high end graphics and sound as the Xbox and Playstation – those take a lot more power to run.

Nick Zigelbaum is an energy analyst with the NRDC.

He says the games should be designed better:

“What people don’t realize is that video game consoles, although they’re very similar to laptops and computers in terms of hardware, they don’t go to sleep or go into idle mode like a computer would.”

Zigelbaum says the power hungry XBOX and Playstation games do have an autoshutdown option.

That means the games will automatically turn off if nobody’s using them.

But the games are shipped with the option turned off.

You have to manually set it.

And not all games are equal.

For some games it’s easy to save your progress – for others…
you might lose your spot in that twenty four hour car race.

Zigelbaum says that’s where the industry needs to step in:

“That’s the issue is that it’s not really standardized, it’s not really uniform throughout the whole software industry. So it would be difficult to really implement a strong auto-shutdown feature.”

Zigelbaum says a strong auto-shutdown feature would be the biggest improvement game makers could make.

That would mean no matter what – your game would be saved when the device shuts down.

If the industry did that – homeowners could save more than 100 bucks a year on their energy bills.

A Microsoft spokesperson said they encourage their users to turn the games off when they’re done.

Zigelbaum and the folks at the NRDC are hoping Microsoft and Sony will go farther – and do a better job when designing their next gaming consoles.

(snd)

Will Frey says his friends don’t really think about the energy they use.

How could you when you’ve got other things to worry about?

“Oh my gosh! That’s why the M-4 is the cheapest gun in the game. Next to LMGs.”

(snd)

That stands for “Light Machine Guns.”

Maybe next year’s gaming consoles will shoot holes in the amount of energy they use up.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Part I: Stuck With Old Nuke Plants

  • Ray and Irene Zukley of Zion, Illinois were forced to sell this Lake Michigan beach cottage to make way for Zion Nuclear Station back in the late 60s. The Zukley's and other Zion residents hoped the plant would last for at least forty years, but after fits and starts, it closed fifteen years early. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

America has a new flirtation with
nuclear power. Utility companies are fanning
out across the nation to set up shop. And
they’ve given the government more applications
for new nuclear plants than they have for
decades. Many towns fell under the spell of
nuclear power in the past, but some power plants
stopped running decades earlier than planned,
and towns are stuck with what’s left behind.
Shawn Allee profiles one town’s tarnished
relationship with nuclear power:

Transcript

America has a new flirtation with
nuclear power. Utility companies are fanning
out across the nation to set up shop. And
they’ve given the government more applications
for new nuclear plants than they have for
decades. Many towns fell under the spell of
nuclear power in the past, but some power plants
stopped running decades earlier than planned,
and towns are stuck with what’s left behind.
Shawn Allee profiles one town’s tarnished
relationship with nuclear power:

Irene and Ray Zukley have been together so long, they finish each others sentences.

Especially when I ask how things were in Zion, Illinois back in the 60s.

Zuckley: “The factories were getting downgraded.”

Allee: “What were those?”

Zuckley: “It was the curtain factory, the cookie factory, chocolates and Zion fig
bars.”

But just then, the power company said it would spend hundreds of millions on a nuclear
power plant.

Irene Zukley says most people welcomed it.

“Ray and I never worried about it, you know we just wanted progress is what we
wanted. When you think of having taxes lowered for everybody in Zion, that made
you feel, what else would come in and do that?”

Irene and Ray Zukley were forced to sell their family’s beach cottage to make room for
Zion reactor number one.

Beachfront neighbors did the same.

But, like the Zukleys predicted, taxes and jobs rolled into Zion.

It was supposed to be a forty year windfall.

But it didn’t last.

When you visit the power plant, it’s nearly empty.

“What we’ve got here is what used to be a full-fledged control room.”

Ron Schuster runs what’s left of the Zion nuclear power plant.

Once, it had more than eight hundred employees.

Now, Schuster and about fifty workers help manage the regional power grid.

They also monitor radioactive spent fuel waste.

The generators have been offline since 1997.

“There were large pieces of equipment essential to making electricity that would
have needed total replacement going forward. We’re talking significant dollars so
the economic decision by the board of directors that Zion station would go into safe-
store mode.”

That means the power plant and Zion have been in limbo for ten years.

The radioactive fuel is still on site, but the plant provides no power, few jobs and a
fraction of the property taxes.

Delaine Rogers is Zion’s economic development director. She says the town didn’t plan
on this.

“You’re in a community that has welcomed you. We haven’t had an antagonistic
relationship. They’re not going to close. But they did. And it took 17 million dollars
of our local revenues. We were facing losing all our arts and music and sports in our
schools. How do you fund police the police department. How do you fix potholes? It
was a very scary time.”

Lately, the power company’s gone back and forth about when it will decommission, or
dismantle, the power plant.

It could be done ten years from now or it could take decades more.

But even when most of the buildings are gone, there’s still the radioactive spent fuel.

“They’re just going to leave it. They’re going to put a football-sized concrete pad
filled with 80-90 casks of stored fuel on site, above ground. Tell me how you get a
private developer to think residential or retail. I’m not buying the first condo.”

Dozens of towns are stuck in relationships with dormant nuclear power plants.

Delaine Rogers says the town of Zion is in the same position.

She won’t call it a bad relationship, but says it sure would be nice to know exactly where
it’s going, or when it will be over.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Part Ii: Stuck With Old Nuke Plants

  • Rick Delisle co-owns two commercial buildings, one of which is depicted in this photo that dates from the time of Zion, Illinois' founding. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The nuclear industry is eager to
build new nuclear power plants, but for
now they’re just far-off plans. The real
growth industry is in containers to hold
radioactive spent fuel. Dozens of closed
nuclear plants need somewhere to put spent
fuel waste, and these containers fit the
bill. Shawn Allee looks at why one town’s
bracing for their arrival:

Transcript

The nuclear industry is eager to
build new nuclear power plants, but for
now they’re just far-off plans. The real
growth industry is in containers to hold
radioactive spent fuel. Dozens of closed
nuclear plants need somewhere to put spent
fuel waste, and these containers fit the
bill. Shawn Allee looks at why one town’s
bracing for their arrival:

Illinois’ Zion nuclear power plant hasn’t produced electricity for eleven years.

It’s so close to Lake Michigan you can smell the beach. But other than that, the empty
parking lots and office space make the place seem dead.

The plant manager says that’s not the case.

“I think a lot of people have a vision of us playing cards or swinging our golf clubs
on the beach. I would say we’ve been extremely busy the entire time.”

Ron Schuster says he and other workers remove hazards from the station, like diesel fuel
and electrical equipment.

But one hazard is still here: the spent nuclear fuel.

And when the power plant is dismantled, that radioactive waste will be put in new
containers.

They’re concrete casks.

Schuster: “A cask is approximately fifteen feet tall. It looks like a small silo and
there is no radiation exposure on the outside of these things.”

Allee: “So from this office window, can we see where the casks might go?”

Schuster: “We’ve got four spots on this site that have been at least looked at. When
it comes time to actually put the fuel in dry-cask storage it will be a huge structure,
about as big as a football field.”

Schuster’s confident this will be a simple and safe solution.

Not everyone in Zion so convinced.

“This cask issue, just sitting on the site was never appealing to me.”

Rick Delisle co-owns two commercial buildings close to the power plant.

In other towns with spent-fuel casks, nuclear power plants sometimes get turned into non-
nuclear power plants or into parks.

But Delisle and the city of Zion are hoping to do more – maybe build new commercial
buildings or even homes.

Delisle says having concrete containers full of radioactive waste left on-site could make
their work harder.

“So, I hope the casks are relocated somewhere else. Having them next to a
population of about 23,000 people is probably not a great place for it to be.”

Other communities are in the same position – they’ll be left with spent fuel casks even if
their dead nuclear plants get torn down.

There’s a simple reason.

“We don’t really have a final resting spot for these casks at the moment.”

Dave Lochbaum is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.

“The federal government is way behind schedule providing a repository for high-
level waste.”

Lochbaum says the government has one storage place in mind.

It’s inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but that’s still just being studied.

Power companies can sometimes move spent fuel to other plants or facilities.

But Lochbaum says politically, that just won’t fly.

“There’s no revenue from electricity being generated, so it’s a hard sell to go to a
community and say we’d like to have you store spent fuel for decades into the
future. The easiest way out is to leave it where it is, because those communities have
already accepted that fate.”

Well, cities like Zion say they didn’t accept this exact fate.

They bought into nuclear power for jobs and property taxes – they didn’t count on
babysitting spent fuel waste.

But that’s likely to happen, because the government won’t take it. The power companies
won’t dare move it, and the towns can’t move themselves away.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Getting More Out of Thanksgiving Dinner

  • A study by the University of Arizona estimates that the average household wastes about 14% of the food that’s bought (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Thanksgiving is just around the
corner. A consumer expert says you can
avoid wasting a lot of food with just a
little planning. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Thanksgiving is just around the
corner. A consumer expert says you can
avoid wasting a lot of food with just a
little planning. Lester Graham reports:

A study by the University of Arizona estimates that the average household wastes about
14% of the food that’s bought. Some of it spoils. Some of it becomes leftovers that
never get eaten.

Bob Lilienfeld is the author of the Use Less Stuff Report. He says you can keep a
couple of things in mind. If food is left on the serving platter, it can be re-used. If it
makes it to your plate and it’s not eaten, it’s wasted.

He also says, on Thanksgiving, plan for leftovers.

“Think, when you buy turkey, ‘What else does my family like turkey. Oh, they like soup.
They like chili.’ Buy the ingredients for the next round when you buy the turkey so that
everything is sitting in your home the day after Thanksgiving, and you’re wondering,
‘Alright, what am I going to do with this bird?’”

And, Lilienfeld says, label and date your leftovers. You’re more likely to use them
before they go bad.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Whooping Cranes’ Poor Parenting

  • Whooping cranes have been abandoning their nests, and eggs, in search of food (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

About 70 whooping cranes now migrate between the Southeast US and the Midwest.
Wildlife experts have been hoping that more pairs of the birds would start hatching eggs
and raising chicks in the wild.

This spring, at their northern home in Wisconsin, several female cranes did lay eggs and
sat on the nests during cold weather. But when it warmed up, the adult birds abandoned
their nests to look for food.

George Archibald is co-founder of the International Crane Foundation.

“If there is a food stress, when it becomes warmer their drive to feed may increase much
more than when it’s cold.”

Some of the crane eggs were saved and hatched out by wildlife centers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Vice Presidential Profile: Dick Cheney

  • Opinions vary on Cheney's environmental policy. Some say he's done well, some say he hasn't done enough. (Photo courtesy of georgewbush.com)

The political campaigns have been preoccupied with war, jobs, and health care. There’s been little mention of another issue that some Americans also find very important: the environment. As part of a series of profiles on the presidential and vice presidential candidates’ records on the environment, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at Vice President Dick Cheney:

Transcript

The political campaigns have been preoccupied with war, jobs, and health care. There’s been
little mention of another issue that some Americans also find very important: the environment.
As part of a series of profiles on the presidential and vice presidential candidates’ records
on the environment, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at Vice President
Dick Cheney:


This fall, during a campaign stop, Vice President Cheney was asked about his concerns and
philosophy on the preservation, conservation, and sustainability of water and natural resources.
The Vice President told his audience that he shared their concerns about the environment.


“Anybody who spends any time on waters, fishing, as I do – steelhead in northern British Columbia
when I get a chance and for trout in Wyoming and various places – it’s a fantastic resource. And
we really have an obligation to try to improve it and pass it on to the next generation in better
shape than we found it. I think we’re doing, as a general proposition, we’re doing pretty well.
Better than we used to.”


But most environmental groups are concerned Vice President Cheney is leading the effort to roll
back many environmental protections. Group after group is critical of the Vice President’s
actions.


“Cheney’s role has really been to be the front guy to fight for the industry’s agenda.”


Greg Wetstone directs the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund. Wetstone says Cheney
has become an easy target for criticism by the environmental movement. Wetstone says it’s clear
that Dick Cheney has wielded more power than most vice presidents have in the past.


“Well, the Vice President has clearly played a huge role in shaping this administration’s
policies on the environment and especially energy policy. It was Vice President Cheney who
led the Energy Task Force that met secretly with top industry lobbyists and shaped the policies
that were proposed by this administration while shutting out the advocates for a cleaner
environment. The polluters basically all but held the pen in crafting this administration’s
energy policy.”


The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Bush White House, calling for the release of
documents related to the secret meetings. The courts ordered some documents to be released.
And the environmentalists say those papers confirmed the role of gas and oil industry lobbyists
in drafting the Bush energy policy.


Chris Horner says he took part in some of those meetings. Horner is a Senior Fellow at the
free-market think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He says the Vice President
worked hard to include environmentally friendly approaches when drafting the policy for energy.


“He pushed heavily in his energy plan for windmills, solar panel, transition to gas even more.
He didn’t just consult with free-market groups like ours. The reportage notwithstanding, I went
in several times to meet with these people and I passed very hard left-leaning groups on the way,
in the waiting room on the way out. The administration met with greens. They met with
free-marketers. They met with everyone.”


But the environmental groups argue the gas and oil industry had too much influence on the plan
that is supposed to regulate them.


The League of Conservation Voters has given the Bush administration failing marks for its
handling of environmental issues. Betsey Loyless is the group’s vice president of policy. She
says the energy task force is a good example of how Vice President Cheney contributed to what
her group sees as failure.


“We have an energy bill that wants to open sensitive public lands to drilling. That’s part of
the Cheney philosophy. We have a secret energy task force that wants to subsidize, at the
taxpayers’ expense, the coal, oil, and gas industry. That’s at Cheney’s behest. I mean,
Cheney has been the real leader.”


Vice President Cheney’s defenders say he’s only being realistic and practical. They say the
nation’s energy security should not be put at risk because of a few environmental extremists.
While Cheney is villified by the environmentalists, it doesn’t appear that all voters view him
in quite the same terms.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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