Some believe that to make a substantial change one has to invest thousands of pounds, yet many underestimate the results brought about by more efficient use of resources. Installing alternative energy generators such as PV panels, at a huge cost, before assessing the current efficiency (or lack of) patterns could easily be considered a waste of money and resources as the clean energy generated will only be used to compensate for the current inefficiencies. Identifying the inefficiencies and cutting them out as much as possible could possibly be a much cheaper solution with rapid results.

According to the European Commission, the energy wasted by standby consumption all over Europe would require 10 large power stations producing 1 GW each. This is all occurring while most citizens are not even aware of it.

According to the same report, it is calculated that up to 10% of household consumption is wasted whilst the equipment is still connected to the grid but is not being used. Electrical equipment such as, TV, cable box, radio/Hi-Fi, VCR, microwave, external power supplies, modem / Wi-Fi are the major culprits and the calculations below give an indication of how much it is costing us, and the world.

One of the major culprits is the cable TV set-top box which silently consumes 138 units of electricity a year. This is very wasteful when one considers that it runs for 24 hours a day despite the fact one only watches TV for a couple of hours a day. That's 138 units of electricity going to waste, and now that the price of electricity has increased, this adds up to an increase of approximately €50 to your yearly electricity bill.  It is also estimated that the small black box is responsible for around five per cent of the electricity consumption of a typical Maltese household.

On a national scale this could add up to almost 17 million units of electricity a year to keep these small black boxes on the go when not required. That's 14,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere from our two power stations - simply to keep these small boxes on standby.

This is just one example of common standby equipment, but surely it is not the only one found in a typical household. If one had to add the items mentioned above and calculate the wastages, these would result in doubling the figures in the calculations above. Basically at the current electricity charges (and 95% surcharge) this adds up to an increase of approximately €100 to your yearly electricity bill.