McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University

Eric Masanet, associate professor of mechanical engineering and chemical and biological engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, was interviewed December 3 on WBEZ’s Worldview program.

The topic was “vampire power” or “phantom load” — the phenomenon that many appliances, from your cell phone to your toaster oven, remain “on” and utilize power even when you’ve turned off the power switch.

“It’s just a little bit of power per device, but since we have so many devices in our homes and businesses it stacks up to be a lot of energy over the course of a year,” Masanet said.

Roughly 10 percent of a home’s energy bill comes from phantom power, or the power devices are using in standby mode.

Masanet, a McCormick alumnus who joined the faculty earlier this year, is an expert in sustainability topics — particularly life-cycle analysis, the measure of environmental impacts for the entire life cycle of products, from manufacturing to consumption to disposal.

Listen to the Worldview interview.