In reality it's not that simple... (Score 1)

The trouble with all these 'turn off at night' proposals is that while they will save energy/electricity they won't reduce CO2 production except in a tiny minority of cases. Electricity is primarily generated by very large steam turbine-driven generators. These have run down/up times measured in many hours and so are kept running and burning fuel (so producing CO2) 24/7. This is why many power companies offer cheaper tariffs for overnight use - e.g. Economy 7 in the UK - to try to get some consumption shifted into this wasted standby period. These generators provide the 'base load' of supply, that level which the companies don't expect the demand to fall below. Peaks are then serviced using more expensive faster response systems. If there isn't enough fast response generation to service a peak we get brownouts and blackouts. In the same way turning off a light or unplugging a charger will save electricity, but won't save CO2 in itself. Only when demand is reduced sufficiently to affect the base load for long enough, will the people who set it risk a whole generator being run down and kept off-grid. Only then will CO2 savings be made from reduced electricity consumption. This is why some governments are so keen on increasing nuclear power generation. Every one allows at east some CO2-producing base load generators to be shut-down and actual CO2 output to be reduced. Unfortunately, it's often these same governments that have promoted the misinformation that electricity use and CO2 production are intimately connected.