Microsoft Touts IE10 as Most Energy-Efficient Browser

Microsoft has a solution to help manage your power bills: Use Internet Explorer.

To commemorate World Environment Day this week, the tech giant published a study it commissioned, which tips IE as the most energy-efficient browser on Windows 8.

Internet Explorer uses up to 18 percent less energy than Google Chrome (version 26) and Mozilla Firefox (version 21), according to the study, conducted by the Center for Sustainable Energy Systems at Fraunhofer USA. Simply put: If every Chrome and Firefox user in the U.S. switched to Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 for one year, the country could save enough energy to power more than 10,000 households.

Still, the differences between all three browsers are small: Average power draw measurements for notebooks and desktops vary by no more than five points. Really, it's the use of Flash for video that provides the most pronounced results — that 18.6 percent less energy Microsoft boasted about.

Rendering a site coded in HTML5, meanwhile, also fires off more power than that of a normal website, according to Fraunhofer.

"Testing of two HTML5 websites (one benchmark, one video) and one Flash video found that both appear to increase power draw significantly more than the top ten websites tested," the study said. "Most notably, the HTML5 benchmark test condition more than doubled the notebook power draw for all computers and browsers tested, while desktop power draw increased by approximately 50 percent."

:story: PC Magazine