GREEN COMPUTING

In 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program that is designed to promote and recognize energy-efficiency in monitors, climate control equipment, and other technologies. This resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep mode among consumer electronics. Concurrently, the Swedish organization TCO Development launched the TCO Certification program to promote low magnetic and electrical emissions from CRT-based computer displays; this program was later expanded to include criteria on energy consumption, ergonomics, and the use of hazardous materials in construction.

Green computing or green IT, refers to environmentally sustainable computing or IT. In the article Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices, San Murugesan defines the field of green computing as "the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems—such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems—efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment." The goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry; reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency during the product's lifetime, and promote the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste. Research continues into key areas such as making the use of computers as energy-efficient as possible, and designing algorithms and systems for efficiency-related computer technologies.

Everyone talks about doing something about the mother earth but no one finds the answer to the most basic questions 1. How? and 2 where? Well, I am here to help you with this.

Currently there are close to 2 billion computer in this world and if even a small part of them can join hands and start using smarter ways top save energy through computers it would create a gigantic impact.

According to a report from the United Nations University, it takes about 1.8 tons of chemicals, fossil fuels and water to produce a typical desktop computer -- and world-wide over one billion PCs have been sold. A December 2006 Computer Weekly article on green computing also reported a Carbon Trust estimate that office equipment currently accounts for around 15 per cent of total UK energy use. This figure is expected to rise to about 30 per cent by 2020, with computer equipment to account for about two-thirds of this energy consumption. In April 2007, a Gartner Press Release also estimated that the global information and communications technology (ICT) industry accounts for about 2 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions, or roughly the same as aviation.

Personal computer power use is ripe for making environmental savings. The Climate Savers Computing Initiative estimates that the average desktop PC wastes over half of the power delivered to it. Estimates from other sources concur. Intel, for example, estimate that a typical business desktop could reap a 60 per cent energy saving by implementing what they term "aggressive power management".

Key to all of these energy saving opportunities are reducing the power used by a computer when doing nothing or very little. Computers should, for example, not be left on overnight or over the weekend. Whilst this may seem "obvious" good practice, in 2006 the National Energy Foundation estimated that in the United Kingdom around 18 per cent of computers are never turned off, resulting in 1.5bn kWh of power being wasted and 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted due to workers simply not shutting down their PCs. A similar study in the United States in 2007 even more starkly reported up to 60 per cent of office PCs being left on overnight, resulting in 19.82bn kWh of electricity wastage and 14.4 million tonnes of associated carbon dioxide emissions.

Measures such as turning off idle PCs -- or even just turning off screens when not in use (rather than running an energy-consuming screen saver) -- are simple but highly effective. Trewin Restorick, Director of environmental charity Global Action Plan that helps companies to make energy savings, even suggests that companies should find "non-intimidating ways" of naming and shaming staff who leave monitors on, such as tying balloons to their desks.

MEASURES FOR GREENER COMPUTING

Beyond the above "good housekeeping" user initiatives, there are a number of more fundamental steps that can be taken to significantly decrease the environmental impact of computing. These mainly involve measures for reducing energy consumption, and may be grouped under the following six headings:

• Lower power hardware
• Virtualization
• Cloud computing
• Energy efficient coding
• Improved repair, re-use, recycling and disposal
• Less pollutant manufacture

The following sections explore the above measures in more detail.
To promote green computing concepts at all possible levels, the following four complementary approaches are employed:

• Green use: Minimizing the electricity consumption of computers and their peripheral devices and using them in an eco-friendly manner
• Green disposal: Re-making an existing computer or appropriately disposing of, or recycling, unwanted electronic equipment
• Green design: Designing energy-efficient computers, servers, printers, projectors and other digital devices
• Green manufacturing: Minimizing waste during the manufacturing of computers and other subsystems to reduce the environmental impact of these activities

Government regulatory authorities also actively work to promote green computing concepts by introducing several voluntary programs and regulations for their enforcement.

Average computer users can employ the following general tactics to make their computing usage more green:

• Use the hibernate or sleep mode when away from a computer for extended periods
• Use flat-screen or LCD monitors, instead of conventional cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors
• Buy energy efficient notebook computers, instead of desktop computers
• Activate the power management features for controlling energy consumption
• Make proper arrangements for safe electronic waste disposal
• Turn off computers at the end of each day
• Refill printer cartridges, rather than buying new ones
• Instead of purchasing a new computer, try refurbishing an existing device

Lower Power Hardware

When, in 2005, Intel announced the new computing mantra to be "performance per watt" (rather than processor speed) green computing in general and lower power hardware in particular started to go mainstream. PCs can be made to use less electricity by using a lower power processor, opting for onboard graphics (rather than a separate graphics card), using passive cooling (rather than energy consuming fans), and either a solid state drive (SSD) in place of a spinning hard drive as the system disk, or else a 1.8" or 2.5" rather a than 3.5" conventional hard drive.

For some time, VIA has been promoting low-energy computing with the development of its lower power processors. For example, in 2006, VIA launched a lower-power (7.5W) "carbon free CPU" - the C7-D - as used in many lower-power mini-itx PCs. The C7-D is carbon-offset via a range of VIA partner initiatives involving reforestation, alternative energy use and energy conservation. For more information see the VIA C7-D Processor Website.

Intel is also getting into greener desktop computing in a big way, not least with a highly energy-efficient processor called the Atom. Whilst early Atom processors were largely intended for use in ultramobile PCs and TV net-top boxes, the Atom is now to be found in some small, green desktop PCs. Indeed, using the Atom, or processors such as VIA's C7-D or Freescale's MPC5121e, several companies -- including Very PC and Tranquil PC -- have now launched energy efficient "green" PCs that consume as little as 20W of power (compared to the typical 100W to 200W of an average desktop computer).

Most recently Intel has launched a dual core Atom processor and accompanying 'Pinetrail' motherboard which can form the heart of a quite powerful PC that still uses only around 20W of power. You can watch me building a green PC using this motherboard and processor in this video.

Several mainstream manufacturers are now starting to launched relatively-low-power PCs -- or "nettops" -- usually based around an Atom processor. At the very extreme, CompuLab have even launched a tiny, noiseless "Fit PC" with a power consumption of only 5W. Hard disk manufacturer Western Digital is also highly active in the green computing arena with its range of Caviar Green low-energy hard disks. These are the first hard disks "designed to deliver power savings as the primary attribute", and achieve up to 40 per cent power savings in part by varying the spindle speed to achieve minimal energy consumption.

Very low power computers are often not able to perform some of the tasks (such as video editing and games playing) demanded of their more power-hungry current counterparts. However, being largely silent, they are more pleasant to use.

 

Potential Benefit

The ever rapid growth of technologies and innovations brings forth many ways on how green computing will have a positive impact, along with great benefits. The benefits of green computing is large, not only from just the consumer, or business, or country's standpoint, but a global benefit. Green computing helps reduce energy demands, waste, and money of how we use technology which positively effects the environment, and our costs.Though the method of green computing can also benefit in simple ways, methods such as turning off your computers during the night. For example, a computer left on for "24 hours will cost you between $115-160 in annual electric costs and also produce 1,500 pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere" (Schneider, 2008). By simply turning off your computer during the nights, you ultimately can save up to" 67 percent annually in your electric bill"(Schneider, 2008), along with reducing greenhouse gases. Overall the benefits of green computing will result in saving money, reducing costs, and conserving energy, along with helping the environment.

  Security Concerns & Social Problems

Many belief that being eco-friendly is a get rich idea from big corporations that know that if the consumer is unhappy then they will not buy their product. Even though this is somewhat true and the consumer does look bad at companies believed to be unjust, it is also true that such companies care for the environment. We all remember the "Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill" (Mufson, 2010) and how things like that can "seriously burn their reputation" (Wharton, 2007), this is why such big companies care for the environment and how they affect it. We all remember the oil spill on the gulf of Mexico in 2010 and how that dilemma hurt the BP company and still is hurting it even after a year, if they had followed all the right protocols maybe this tragedy could have been averted.

SHUT DOWN AND SWITCH OFF

Whilst putting a computer into a "standby" or "sleep" mode will save a lot of power, many people remain unaware that even shutting down a desktop computer completely does not turn it off. This is because the computer's power supply will remain physically switched on, with the motherboard partially powered and waiting for a signal from the switch on the front of the PC (which is not a mains power switch) to boot up again. To actually prevent a desktop computer from using power, after being shut down it must either be switched off at the wall socket, or turned off using the small rocker switch on the back of the power supply.

As shown in the Explaining Computers video shut Down and Switch off, a typical desktop computer uses about 8W of electricity an hour when shut down but not switched off. That's about 1KW of electricity being wasted a week for a PC turned off around 16 hours a day. It therefore really is worth remembering that simply turning off a PC at the back or at the wall when not in use can have a major impact on energy consumption and its environmental impact.