By the end of 2004, China has had 52.99 million personal computers, which consume nearly 20 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year, or half of the power generation of Three Gorges power station.

The amount is half that of Beijing's annual consumption.

Under normal energy-saving condition, computers use more than 100, 000 kilowatt hours of electricity per day, which is the power generation of a small thermal power plant.

A Pentium-4 computer uses 0.15 kilowatt hour of electricity per hour, or, averagely, a computer needs one kilowatt hour on every business day.

Sources say, the products of Founder, Great Wall and Tsinghua Tongfang, etc. have been granted the energy-saving certificate by China Standard Certification Center but most products on the market are not within the standard.

By People's Daily Online