It’s Microsoft’s job to promote its own software. Usually, it promotes its own software by promising better usability and unique features that other software programs don’t have.
But now, it looks like Microsoft is taking a different approach when it comes to marketing its Internet Explorer browser. Specifically, Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer uses less power than other browsers.
That’s right – I mean electrical power. And interestingly enough, Microsoft is actually right. According to an independent study performed by Fraunhofer, Internet Explorer uses 18.6% less power than Chrome.
Microsoft suggests that these energy savings would be enough to power 10,000 American households in the United States for one year, or provide the carbon reduction equivalent of growing 2.2 million trees for 10 years.

Why does IE use less power?

Apparently, Internet Explorer’s lower power consumption has everything to do with the number of processor CPU cycles consumed over time. IE uses those CPU cycles more efficiently, which means it needs to use fewer cycles when rendering the same Flash games and webpages.

The real culprit? HTML5 websites

The study also revealed that HTML5 is a power hog. After testing browser performance on the world’s top 10 most popular websites, the Fraunhofer study looked at two HTML 5 websites and found that “the processing power needed to render a site coded in HTML5 could far outpace that of a normal website.”
Specifically, HTML5 websites increased power draw by approximately 50% when compared to a ‘normal’ website.

Why, Microsoft?

I can just picture a day in the Microsoft meeting room.
“All right, Jimmy. Do you have anything good for us? Have you found any real advantages that Internet Explorer has over the competition?”
“Well I saw a study that shows IE uses less electricity than other browsers. But I don’t see why any consumers would care about that.”
“Wait, how many trees is that? Let’s send out that press release.”
Anyways, unless you’re committed to making every part of your life as green as possible, the electricity consumption of Internet Explorer probably doesn’t matter a whole lot to you.  Instead, you care about speed, in which case Chrome is the fastest browser available today.