Published
31 March 2008, 01:54 PM
As part of the European Commission campaign “Sustainable Energy Europe” the European Commission published a video on how to save the climate with your computer. Let me summarize the content of the video, particularly the parts in which HP played a role.
Almost half of all households in Europe have a computer or another information and technology communication (ICT) machine providing economic value but also impacting our environment. This massive use of ICT is a challenge that can be clearly turned into an opportunity - the video shows us how.
Dennis Pamlin from WWF, who is interviewed via videoconferencing, presents two projects on how CO2 emissions can be saved through ICT. He states that with activities like video conferencing, working from home or online billing, 50 million tons of CO2 emissions could be saved. The main message is that ICT creates CO2 emissions but that the sector constitutes at the same time an enormous source to reduce CO2 emissions from other industries (less business travel due to videoconferencing technology for example). The other project he introduces is HP’s work with WWF: We are working together to investigate how ICT can help to reduce 1 billion tons of CO2 emissions.
Roger Benson of Intel mentions the company’s goal of reducing its Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 50 percent. The company supports initiatives like the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which consists of leading corporations which are working with WWF to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.. We just recently announced plans to join this initiative as well. I like the ambitious nature of this initiative and the related goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst other goals, we pledged to reduce emissions from our operations and the use of our products by six million tons below 2005 levels by 2010..
Chandrakant Patel, HP Senior Research Fellow Enterprise Systems and Software Laboratory, indicates that we have to make sure we decrease energy consumption and material consumption. So we have to minimize the burden of ICT and at the same time maximize fundamental need it fulfills. Again a challenge, but not impossible.
The final example of how computer equipment can save the climate comes from the Scottish Telford College which uses energy efficient HP equipment which is certified with the Energy Star. The college belongs to one of the most energy efficient schools and fosters energy efficient behaviour of its students. They are impressed by the different tactics to save energy like the maximisation of sunlight, the automatic switch off/on of the lights in the room or the automatic shut down of all computers in the college in the evening. Students see how they can save energy and hopefully apply it outside their university life.
Besides improvements in reducing the energy consumption of ICT equipment it is important that each of us acts consciously to reduce the energy consumption of our equipment. On our website we collected various energy saving tips some of which are really easy to implement and can have a big impact on the energy consumption of your IT equipment. If we work from all sides – from the technology and ICT sector, and from the individual and consumer side – we can clearly turn the challenge into a great opportunity.
Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs EMEA, HP
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