I love a good feel good story about young people doing their bit for the environment.

This week I was contacted by Andrew Davey, who is 13. Andrew told me about his Eco-friendly search engine called ecosmartsearch.

Like some of the other energy saving search engines out there, this one has a black background. Andrew tells me that the computer monitor uses 59 watts to produce the image on a black screen, whereas a white or light screen uses 74 watts.

Even with my poor maths I can work out that this saves 15 watts, which, well, it’s good, right?

The inspiration for the design of Andy’s green search engine came from an article by leading expert in green computing, Mark Ontkush. Without going into a whole pile of maths that leaves me needing to come up for air, Onktush calculated that if we all switched to an energy saving search engine we could create global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Put into money, that equates to $75,000, just for changing a few colour codes.

This brings me back to one of my favourite beliefs which is that globally we can effect great change. We might feel insignificant as an individual when faced with the enormity of climate change, but a few small changes to our lifestyle can add up to a lot when we combine our efforts.

The aim of ecosmartsearch is not only to save energy on every search, but to make us more aware of energy saving. So as well as the search engine, Andrew shares some of his own tips for saving energy in your day to day life and also has a small blog where he shares news of any energy saving products and welcomes you to join in with your own thoughts about how we can tackle climate change.

Andrew is pleased with his efforts and feels rightly proud that he is one of few people his age with a successful website. He hopes to make money from the site, it’s given him experience in web design and it’s tackling an important and current issue. His long term aim is to become an entrepreneur and have his own web design company.

Sounds like a win-win and an excellent aim to me, so why not use his search engine and show Andrew your support whilst doing your bit for the environment?

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