This may be a bit of a stretch, but would the power savings (value of which, Earth aside, could be measured in local electricity costs) of an M1 Mac be significant enough in a year to justify upgrading an otherwise functioning Intel Mac?
Nope. Say the differential under heavy CPU load is 10W, say you run it under full load for 2,000 hours per year (which nobody does on a laptop), then you saved about 20 kWh, or roughly $3.
