Faced with the stark realities of global warming and rising energy costs, government agencies and private firms worldwide are examining ways to protect the environment. To address what is increasingly being perceived as a crisis, there is a growing global movement to implement more environmentally friendly computing. “Green computing” is the name attached to this movement, which represents an environmentally responsible way to reduce power and environmental waste.

Toward this goal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program has developed compliance requirements for computer equipment. The U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 5646, passed in July 2006, calls for the EPA’s Energy Star program to research: 

• The amount of power consumed by corporate and federal data centers.
• Industry measures to develop energy-efficient servers.
• Possible incentives to  convince businesses to use energy-saving technologies. 

In Europe, government agencies have set up a number of environmental regulations addressing waste management, recycling, disposal of certain types of waste, industrial emissions and pollution control. The European Union is also setting up a system that encourages business to voluntarily develop their own environmental standards and practices.

Energy Star estimates that activating power management can result in cost savings of as much as $100 per computer, a significant figure when multiplied by the number of computers in a typical organization. These power management practices can help you achieve estimated annual savings of:      

• $10 to $30 per monitor by placing inactive monitors into a low-power sleep mode.
• $15 to $45 per desktop computer by placing inactive computers (CPU, hard drive, etc.) into a low-power sleep mode.

“The energy used by data centers, federal and private, is a function of two main components: processing power and cooling. Each contributes roughly 50 percent to the overall energy use by the data center,” says John Frey, manager, Corporate Environmental Strategies, HP. “As this fact becomes better understood in the federal government, I predict that there will be an increased focus in both areas for better cost containment while maintaining or increasing the processing abilities of the data center.”
 

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