Households in the United States consume massive amounts of energy—so much so, in fact, that local utility companies have turned to all sorts of novelty to get them to stop sucking up the juice.  While recent widespread adoption of less consumptive technologies like compact fluorescent bulbs, LEDs, and LCD TVs has reduced this load somewhat, power demand is still high.

While computers are not the worst offenders in this category (think air conditioners, refrigerators, space heaters, etc), they are some of the easiest places to cut power consumption. Users can turn off or sleep their machines, and alter power settings to reduce drain. And on the other end, manufacturers are producing chips that cut power use.

Developed at the University of Michigan, the chip uses a whopping 30,000 times less power in sleep mode than a conventional processor—for those keeping score at home, that’s 30 picowatts, or 30 trillionths of one-forteenth the power required to run a 60-watt equivalent CFL bulb. Now that’s energy savings.