Utility Opportunities in IT Energy-Efficiency

By Pat Tiernan, Executive Director
Climate Savers Computing Initiative

This week Climate Savers Computing joined with other industry, government and academic leaders to offer an educational Webinar about utility opportunities in IT energy-efficiency. We’re seeing a lot of progress and successes with public-private partnerships, as recent research shows that 92 percent of today’s IT purchases consider utility incentives and rebates a significant factor in IT purchasing. The Webinar enabled stakeholders to join together to talk about effective utility incentives and rebates to reduce energy consumption involving IT hardware.



If you missed the Webinar, you can access the audio recording, presentations and research paper here.



Highlights include:

• The future of IT is energy-efficient: Notable IT visionary Professor Jon Koomey from Yale University talked about why computers are capable of improving their energy-efficiency more rapidly than other types of electrical equipment. Recent research points toward continuing rapid reductions in the size and power use of computers, particularly mobile computers.


• Cost savings are significant: Andrew Fanara of the EPA’s ENERGY STAR program said new Energy Star 5.0 PCs that use computer power management yield an annual savings of $71 per PC (assuming the national average commercial rate $ 0.11 / kWh) and up to $116 per PC (assuming the NE residential average rate $ 0.18 / kWh) compared to an old PC that does not use computer power management and is left on at night.


• Leveraging IT to eliminate waste: Intel’s John Skinner pointed out that 73 percent of savings potential from energy use in the data center comes from IT equipment improvements. Other impressive stats highlighted include: Replacing a 4-year-old, relatively inefficient servers with new servers reduces energy costs approximately 92 percent, and replacing a typical 4-year-old desktop PC with a new power-managed desktop would reduce energy consumption by 786 kWh per year (from 1015 kWh/year to 229 kWh/year).


In today’s economic climate, savvy businesses are doing what they can to save money, eliminate waste and prepare for the future. IT energy-efficiency is a smart and effective tool to do just that.