It might not be very efficient, but I doubt the energy use is large. 486s only used 3-5watts or so, nothing compared to later pentium chips that might have cons

It might not be very efficient, but I doubt the energy use is large. 486s only used 3-5watts or so, nothing compared to later pentium chips that might have consumed 20-30 watts or more. Perhaps better even than a modern efficient cpu running a bloated OS and virtualization stack.