Phantom Energy: Why we need to unplug our chargers.
This post first appeared in our weekly Make Waves Mondays email series on October 25, 2021, and was updated and re-shared again on October 26, 2026.
Hello hello friend!
Okay so before we get into today’s blog post, it has been brought to my attention that there’s apparently a whole lot of people on the internet right now working very hard to convince you that voting doesn’t matter. That your voice and your actions and your vote don’t matter.
Apparently my curated ‘lil corner of the internet is much more action-focused than most, because I haven’t seen any of this…
Now friend, I need you to hear me when I say: do not listen to these people.
Will your singular vote change the world? Of course not. But every vote cast is quite literally a vote for the future you want to see. A vote for the candidate that you believe to be the most amenable to hearing your concerns and taking action on your behalf. A vote for policies in your community that directly affect you and your neighbors.
Want to breathe clean air? Vote.
Want to drink clean water? Vote.
Want to see AI regulated? Vote.
Want to be able to go to the doctor when you need to? Vote.
Want your neighbors to be able to feed their children? Vote.
🗳️ Vote like your life, your family’s life, your neighbor’s life depends on it. Because it absolutely does.
And also — vote EARLY. As much as you’re able, cast your vote as early as you can. And if you’re mailing in your ballot, remember that ballots must be POSTMARKED by election day, and USPS is no longer postmarking items the same day they’re received. So put your ballot in an election dropbox or get it in the mail several days before election day.
(I dropped off my husband's and my's ballots at a ballot box while out on local deliveries this past Tuesday!)
If you get nothing else out of today’s blog post, I hope that you at least get this and will make a plan to vote by next Tuesday. Because it really, truly, matters.
Alright. Now that you’ve got your voting plan, in honor of Halloween later this week, let’s talk about some other spooky stuff besides our current government: phantoms and vampires 👻🧛
Yes, really!
Let’s dive in! 👇
What do phantoms and vampires have to do with sustainability?
It’s all got to do with energy use!
💡 Phantom energy, or vampire power, is the energy your electronic devices are always consuming — even when they’re turned off or not in use.
Think: laptops shut but not powered down, coffee pots telling time but not brewing up a cup o’ joe, or a phone charger plugged into a wall but not into a phone.
All of these things are constantly pulling energy, ready for you to need them at a fraction-of-a-moment’s notice.
Why do our devices use phantom energy?
Well. The short answer is convenience.
As a society, we want convenience. We see it with Amazon, we see it with artificial intelligence, we see it with our devices.
As new devices are created, manufacturers are constantly finding new ways to make our lives ~marginally~ more convenient. And one of the ways they do that is by creating products that are always and forever pulling a liiiiiiitle bit of energy so they’re always ready to go without any wait time.
But that convenience doesn’t come without a cost.
As much as we may want energy efficiency, we want that convenience, too. And as we become more and more of a technology-driven society, we’re adding more and more phantom energy into our lives.
Why does it matter if we have phantom energy?
Look around your home. How many devices are plugged in right now?
The average home has about 20 to 40 devices pulling vampire power at any given time.
Now, some of these things we can’t really change. Home security systems, for example, are useless without their power. So we can’t unplug those.
But do you have any phone chargers plugged in even though your phone is in your pocket? Maybe a printer or an electric kettle? A box fan you’ve turned off as the weather’s cooled down but haven’t yet unplugged?
Excuse me while I go unplug my phone charger…
According to a 2011 review of a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study, a fully-charged cell phone that’s still plugged into the charger is drawing about 2.24 watts of energy, or about 60% of the power it consumed while it was actively charging.
A laptop in the same scenario is pulling about 29 watts of energy — a whopping 66% of the energy it consumed while it was charging.
Excuse me while I go unplug my laptop…
And let’s not forget the chargers themselves.
Leaving that phone charger plugged in — even if it’s not actively charging your phone — is still going to consume about 0.26 watts of energy, and the laptop charger is pulling another 4.42 watts.
So let’s say that your phone charger is always plugged into the same outlet, all day every day. You charge your phone for an hour, then take it off the charger. The charger itself is still plugged in without a phone to charge for 23 hours of the day.
Over the course of a year, that phone charger is going to pull about 52 kilowatt-hours of energy — or the equivalent of driving a whole 52 miles in an average car.
And that’s just one cell phone charger for one person. If we extrapolate that out a bit…
About 290 million Americans own a smartphone. If every one of us left our chargers plugged in all year, that’s like adding an extra 2.85 MILLION cars on the road, driving more than 31 BILLION miles — in just one year 😳
Now whaddaya say we do the same math for a laptop charger?
We’ll go ahead and say your laptop is charging for two hours a day instead of one, and you unplug it once it’s charged. For 22 hours every day, your charger is still pulling energy even though it’s not connected to your laptop.
Over one year, your laptop charger is pulling an extra 905 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The equivalent of driving about 907 miles.
Just from ONE laptop charger.
Now if all of those 290 million Americans leave their laptop chargers plugged in all year, that’s like adding more than 24 MILLION cars on the road, driving a combined 263.5 BILLION miles.
And let us not forget that we’re also PAYING for all of that phantom energy, even though we’re not even using it.
So we’re wasting energy, we’re spending money we don’t need to spend, and we’re giving more money to our energy providers, who are most likely using fossil fuels.
About 5 to 10% of all home energy use is actually phantom energy, accounting for nearly 80 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions every single year.
Those phantoms really are a menace, aren’t they? 😜
How can we banish the phantoms?
First things first — go on an unplugging spree!
What can you unplug right now? Do you have any devices still on their chargers even though they’re at full battery? What about things like fans, coffee makers, lamps, toasters?
Start to get into the habit of unplugging your chargers when they’re not in use, and do your best to avoid charging your devices overnight so they’re not pulling extra energy while you sleep.
💡 And because I couldn’t resist more math… If you sleep 7 hours a night, and your phone is charging for the first hour but plugged in for the other 6, then the charger stays plugged in the other 17 hours of the day, that’s like driving an extra 0.16 miles every day — or 58 extra miles every year.
And to make things easier on yourself, group chargers onto a power strip and turn off the power strip when they’re not in use. There are even power strips that have a “master” outlet that controls the others.
So let’s say you have a computer, a monitor, and a printer all plugged into one power strip. You can plug the computer into the “master” outlet, and when you turn off your computer, it’ll automatically turn off power to the monitor and printer, too.
And, of course, when you’re ready for new appliances, choose the most energy-efficient option available.
For example, my morning coffee routine uses very little energy and zero phantom energy. I plug in my coffee grinder only when I’m actively using it, I heat the water in a kettle on the stove, and put it all together in a thrifted French press. Not only do I avoid the waste from coffee filters, I also avoid a ton of phantom energy that I used to have with my automatic coffee maker.
So in summary…
Leaving our chargers and various devices and appliances plugged in throughout the day may seem like such a small potatoes impact on the environment, but boy oh boy does that phantom energy add up — to the tune of about 80 million extra tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
And when 5–10% of our household energy consumption is typically coming from phantom energy…if I can save 5–10% on my energy bill every month, why wouldn’t I want to do that??
At the time this post was written, we had 3,511 email subscribers. If just HALF of those EcoWarriors unplugged ONE phone charger that’s typically plugged in yet unused 23 hours a day, we as a collective would save 372 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every single day! That’s nearly 136,000 pounds every year — or the equivalent of not driving 157,000 miles.
That’s like not driving from Seattle, WA to Miami, FL and back 24 times!
So go on a vampire hunt and start your unplugging spree! Then lemme know how many devices you unplug 🥰
I hope you have a wonderful Halloween friend, and I’ll “see” you again next week 💙
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