Saying their efforts complement computer data center equipment vendors' recent Green Grid initiative, Google, Intel and dozens of other partners today announced a new computing efficiency effort.
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative aims to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting new targets for energy-efficient computers and components, and promoting the adoption of energy-efficient computer components and power management software worldwide.
While admittedly based on already-published U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Energy Star goals that many manufacturers are already working towards, the initiative was formed to solicit wider participation from vendors, large organizations that buy desktop PCs and end consumers.
In particular, it aims to further the use of the energy efficiency software that many computers have by default, but which few use.
"Ninety percent of desktop don't use power management [software], even though they could," said said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.
"Getting people focused on computing efficiency is a very important thing to do," said Larry Page, Google co-founder, in a press event at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California announcing the program. "The amount of power that computers are using is increasing. The amount of importance in our lives is also increasing."
"I think this can really help the world."
Noting that the average desktop PC wastes nearly half of its power today, the initiative is setting 90 percent efficiency targets by 2010 for computer power supplies, which if achieved, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year worldwide and save more than $5.5 billion a year in energy costs.
"This is not a technology problem. We can build 90% efficient power supplies today. It's really an industry choice, and getting that critical mass over the speed bump, making this a volume proposition," said Intel's Gelsinger.
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative based its name on the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Savers program, which involves several leading companies working to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Green Grid is a consortium of information technology companies and professionals seeking to lower the consumption of power in data centers around the globe. The organization is developing standards, measurement methods, processes and new technologies to improve energy efficient performance of global data centers.
At today's event, Urs Hölzle, Google senior vice president of operations & Google Fellow, acknowledged that Google had substantial data center operations and had been adopting at least 2007-level Energy Star goals since 2003.
Given its servers' optimizations, he said Google expected its efforts at helping end-users of PCs lower their electricity consumption would have a far more meaningful impact.