By North American Precis Syndicate

A growing number of companies are allowing sleeping on the job and are saving money in the process.

But it’s not employees who are getting sleepy; it’s computer monitors.

Energy Star, a program jointly managed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), is urging corporations to set monitors to go into a low-power “sleep” mode when inactive.

Computers are only used an average of four hours each business day, but continue to consume energy even when idle.

Most energy used by computers and monitors is wasted because 65 percent of them are left on at night and 45 percent of monitors are not set up for power management.

Enabling power management can save offices thousands of kilowatt-hours-and dollars each year.

Companies such as Computer Associates, a software company, are taking part in the Million Monitor Drive, an Energy Star initiative that helps eliminate waste through power management.

The company recently enabled the automatic power-saving feature on 17,000 employee monitors.

To learn more about power management, logon to: www.energy star.gov/powermanagement.