Green Computers

As 21st century belongs to computers, gizmos and electronic items, energy issues
will get a serious ring in the coming days, as the public debate on carbon emissions, global
warming and climate change gets hotter. If we think computers are non-polluting and
consume very little energy we need to think again. It is estimated that out of $250 billion
per year spent on powering computers worldwide only about 15% of that power is spent
computing- the rest is wasted idling. Thus, energy saved on computer hardware and
computing will equate tonnes of carbon emissions saved per year. Taking into consideration
the popular use of information technology industry, it has to lead a revolution of sorts by
turning green in a manner no industry has ever done before. It is worth emphasizing that
this “green technology” should not be just about sound bytes to impress activists but
concrete action and organizational policy. Opportunities lie in green technology like never
before in history and organizations are seeing it as a way to create new profit centres while
trying to help the environmental cause. The plan towards green IT should include new
electronic products and services with optimum efficiency and all possible options towards
energy savings.
NextGen Research Findings:
Personal computers and servers are power hogs that exacerbate growing
electrical consumption trends, which results in increased pollution.
Purchases of green desktop and notebook computers and notebooks will grow from
less than a sixth (US$37 billion) of the $249-billion PC market in 2009, to nearly twothirds
(more than $190 billion) of the $323-billion PC market in 2013.
A properly planned migration to green PCs can lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
by 20-50 percent.
The Situation in India
After consumer electronics and mobile phones, it's now the turn of computers to turn
green. Leading vendors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell and Acer are adopting ‘green
computing' in a... [continues]

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