Do plugged in chargers always use up energy?
This is one of those questions without any clear answer.
One person will say they measured the draw, and came up with .05 watts per device, which adds up to  something like 5-6 cents over a year.  Someone else will come around and say &quot;But my device charger gets WARM, I measured it at 5 watts, so that means it'll cost $5 per device, times 10 chargers, that's $50!!!!
Both of these made up people aren't wrong, but neither are really right either.  In this case the phrase &quot;Your Mileage May Vary&quot; is really quite applicable.
So I'd say the short answer is &quot;it depends&quot;.  Phantom draw has gotten considerably better over the years as the charger industry has gotten better at this.  There's actually an initiative to reduce standby power called the One Watt Initiative that aims to reduce standby power of appliances (and apparently chargers) to less than 1 watt by 2005, and .5 watts by 2013.
In other words, if you have some old chargers, you may want to look into replacing them with something newer.  If you have newer ones, they might not be as much of an issue.  But unless you either measure the usage yourself or lookup the specifications of standby power usage, it's not possible to generalize since the power usage varies by factors of 10 or maybe even 100.