Friday, 15 June 2007
Big Push for Energy Efficient IT
The BBC is reporting that a consortium of big IT industry names: Google, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Sun, Dell and Yahoo, is working to radically reduce the amount of energy consumed in PCs and servers - "enough to cut [carbon dioxide] emissions by 54 million tonnes a year - equal to 11 million cars or 20 coal-fired power plants". The initiative is an extension of the WWF's Climate Saver's programme.
One worry about this is the "rebound effect" - the tendency for efficiency gains to get lost in favour of other benefits. For example, microprocessors' speed is limited by the amount of heat they generate. If the energy efficiency measures reduce the amount of heat given off by the chips, then the commercial pressure will be to increase processor speed rather than reduce overall energy consumption.
On the other hand, the involvement of so many software companies in the consortium, suggests that the focus may be on energy consumption during 'sleep' or standby modes. This approach would be less likely to be affected by the rebound effect.
Whichever way it goes, it will interesting to see what the actual energy benefits are.
Labels: energy efficiency, IT, rebound effect
Saturday, 9 June 2007
A Greener Apple
I'm writing this on a three and a half year old Mac PowerBook. Us Mac users are notoriously sanctimonious and, often, downright snooty when it comes to our IT, so it came as a bit of a shock when Greenpeace launched a campaign against Apple for coming bottom in their scorecard of electronics companies for the second year running (see graphic).
Apple's brilliant, but notoriously brittle, CEO Steve Jobs reacted dismissively to the campaign at first, but something must have sunk in as he has now launched an impassioned defence of Apple's record, trailed on the front page of their website last month. The most significant part is a pledge to phase out some of the more controversial chemicals in its product range, such as Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), by 2008 - other computer manufactures have pledged to phase them out by 2009.
So I can go back to being smug about my Mac...
Apple's brilliant, but notoriously brittle, CEO Steve Jobs reacted dismissively to the campaign at first, but something must have sunk in as he has now launched an impassioned defence of Apple's record, trailed on the front page of their website last month. The most significant part is a pledge to phase out some of the more controversial chemicals in its product range, such as Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), by 2008 - other computer manufactures have pledged to phase them out by 2009.
So I can go back to being smug about my Mac...
Labels: apple, chemicals, IT, toxic
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