Green solutions for e-pollution

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: And you thought only vehicles on our roads are throwing dirty particles in the air. Even computers are notorious sources of pollution. Estimates suggest that the world over, the amount of ozone-depleting greenhouse gases emitted by tech equipment annually is equivalent to what a couple of million vehicles would do. If that’s not bad enough, computers waste half the energy they guzzle.

Thankfully, India is not a major contributor to this looming environmental doom because computer usage is so scarce. The local market for PCs is just around 5 million units a year—a mere 2% of global shipments. And the total installed base of computers in India is a piffling 15 million. Still, the country can’t afford to be just a spectator to green consciousness in the tech world. It needs to be a participant in any movement that pushes the electronic frontier forward. The positive fallout: tech users can save big bucks on energy cost as well.

On this front, the new Energy Star 4.0 specifications—effective from July 20, 2007, and suggested by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—promise significant energy efficiency for computer systems. The products that meet the new standards would be able to run on nearly half the electricity that conventional systems consume. The Energy Star initiative was conceived in the early 1990s to control energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission by power plants, and now it is being extended to cover IT gear. While the older version, 3.0, requires computers to consume not more than 15 watts when idle (referred to as “sleep mode”), the new standards allow them to use only 4 watts. As the compliant systems would use energy-saving power-supplying boxes, they are expected to be over 60% more efficient. Thus, these systems would not only help computer user companies (and individuals) cut operating expenses, but they will also do their bit for global warming.