I see the same type of behavior on my MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013)

Specs: Proc : 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5, Memory : 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Graphics : Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB

Even when just left open with one window and nothing entered into it I see between 1.3-1.6% energy impact on each of the WolframKernel processes constantly. These processes also show a CPU usage of ~0.7% each that never goes away.

On desktops this is fine, but on something like a macbook air this has a significant impact on battery life.

I even took screenshots :)

Thank you for time and consideration of this matter, Jon

So you have disabled the discrete graphics card in your machine, and battery life is still bad?

Mathematica does not use the CPU if you are not running any calculations, and does not waste energy.

However, if your MacBook Pro has switchable graphics (if you have an NVIDIA graphics card), then it does trigger switching to the NVIDIA card, which drains a significant amount of power.

To have better control over this, install the gfxCardStatus utility which always shows which graphics card is in use. You can use it to force using the more energy-efficient integrated graphics. Doing this will prevent CUDALink from working, will reduce the functionality of OpenCLLink, and will somewhat reduce the performance of rendering 3D graphics. Unless you use CUDALink/OpenCLLink, this won't impact your use of Mathematica much. I always force using the integrated graphics when using Mathematica on battery.