Computing Power Tips | Power Down for the Planet

March 14, 2009 |

TODAY I HAD the chance to go to the Go Green Expo here in Philly and had an informative time. Besides learning about ‘greening’ my lifestyle, chatting with Rowen Spivey from the SBN and meeting the Brighter Planet cool kids from Vermont I also had the chance to see the Phillies World Series trophy in person and up close.

Before all that though I was catching up on some blog post reading and came across a recent entry on the Google blog from last week - Power Down for the Planet. The post is in reference to a new project that Google has co-founded called Climate Savers Computing Initiative. The initiative was started by Google and Intel in 2007 and now hosts support by most of the major global computing and environmental giants like CSC, Dell, World Wildlife Fund, Microsoft, Hitachi, HP and ENERGY STAR. Supporters and participants of the program commit to producing energy efficient products and/or purchasing energy efficient computing equipment. As stated on their website, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative mission is:

By 2010, we seek to reduce global CO2 emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons per year¹, equivalent to the annual output of 11 million cars or 10–20 coal-fired power plants. With your help, this effort will lead to a 50% reduction in power consumption by computers by 2010, and committed participants could collectively save $5.5 billion in energy costs.

In addition to the membership requirements of the board level, sponsor and associate companies the Climate Savers Computing website lays out several actions affiliate companies and individuals can do now, for free, in order to participate. For example one quick and easy action I took in order to reduce the power consumption of my home computer was to download a power management utility from the Environmental Protection Agency’s website. This utility simply allows you to run your monitor and computer at a more energy efficient level. I have also installed Verdiem’s Edison application that monitors the energy consumption of my home pc. For these tools and others check out the entire list on the Climate Savers Computing applications page.

Climate Savers Computing Initiative is also hosting the Power Down for the Planet Video Challenge now until April 17, 2009. In collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program, is introducing Power Down for the Planet – a challenge program designed to encourage universities and their campus communities to reduce their own IT power consumption and get their students, faculty, and staff involved in the fight against climate change. The team with the most compelling video can win up to $5,000 and energy efficient laptops; students at participating universities are also eligible to win $5,000 and Specialized Globe bicycles.

I would encourage anyone reading this to take a look at the list of companies and individuals participating in this program. The list is long, powerful and contains both David’s and Goliath’s across various industries leading the to raise awareness to this already weighty problem. It’s hard to tell from the list if there are any Online Marketing or Search Marketing agencies or software developers on the list other than Google, Yahoo! & MSN, but I guarantee that sooner or later these issues will need to be addressed by all entities that contribute to the creation, marketing and management of web content. Although the goal of reducing of CO2 emissions from IT operations is set for 2010 I say - why wait?

Resources and Related Articles

Going Green at Google

Climate Savers Computing

Power Down for the Planet

Carbon Offsets for Paid Search Impressions

Google Introduces Its “GreenWords” Paid Search Program