By Balachander Suriyanarayanan: Subscribe to Balachander's RSS feed
July 27, 2010 1:58 PM EDT
The IT sector has reduced CO2 emissions by more than 32 million metric tons globally since 2007, which is equivalent to taking nine coal-fired power plants offline and more than $2 billion in annual energy savings, according to a study by Natural Logic.
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) - formed in 2007 - is an international coalition led by CSC, Dell, Google Inc., HP, Intel, Microsoft, and the World Wildlife Fund to reduce the energy consumption of the IT sector.
This new research to assess the progress of the CSCI initiative shows that annual CO2 emissions from IT equipment have decreased by 32 million to 36 million metric tons worldwide since 2007. This amount is equivalent to taking nine coal-fired power plants offline and is equal to more than $2 billion in annual energy savings.
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“When CSCI was established in 2007, desktop computers wasted 50 percent of the power coming from the wall…. Through collective efforts, the IT sector has cut that waste by at least 25 percent for new systems,” said Lorie Wigle, general manager of the Eco-Technology Program Office for Intel and president of the CSCI.
The IT sector is on course to reach CSCI’s objective of reducing annual CO2 emissions by 54 million metric tons by June 2011.
Looking ahead, the CSCI will expand its focus to include commercial and home networking systems and devices.
“As the number of networked devices continues to rise, the energy demands on networks and networking equipment will increase in step. With this growth, there is significant energy and cost savings potential,” said Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar at Google and Climate Savers Computing board member.
According to research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the energy used by commercial and residential building's networking systems and devices will increase by roughly 6 percent annually. Adopting conservation and efficiency measures on networking equipment, a commercial or residential building’s energy use can be reduced by more than 10 percent.
The CSCI will set new energy efficiency criteria for networking technologies. As part of this expansion, commercial and residential routers and switches, and security and access devices will be incorporated into its environmental mission, with the goal of reducing annual CO2 emissions by an additional 38 million metric tons by 2015. This is the equivalent of $5 billion in annual energy cost savings.
According to industry analysts, the demand for energy efficient computing is rising among corporations in the U.S. and globally.
“Corporations worldwide are working to reduce their environmental impact, and at the same time trying to cut operating costs. Energy efficient computing can do both,” Andy Lawrence, an analyst with the 451 Group said.
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