Based on my current unit prices the difference in idle performance alone would come out to about £30 a year, so you would get the difference in price back within the life of the device. Europe has much higher KW/h prices for power especially in the past few years and is more advanced in transition to green power technologies and as such we tend to care more about the cost of power than those in the USA.

$50/yr means you make up the entire cost of the RPi in a little more than 2 years if you’re running it as a home server of some sort, for example.