Why your computer must sleep

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It’s part of an ongoing environmental debate — is the IT industry doing enough to reduce the world’s energy consumption?

Consider these: Case 1 — Mumbai consumes 2300 MW of power. Case 2 — Google has about 4,50,000 servers and each server consumes roughly 20KW that is about 90,000 MW. If one applies green computing and saves even 5% of this, it would be about 450 MW. It is more than enough to power a small city in India.

For though, smart and intelligent work counts above everything else and that technology plays a dominant part in our lives, automation cannot happen at the cost of nature. A balance has to be maintained between automation and environmental resources, say experts.

In 2002-2003, Greenpeace conducted a study by which they listed the companies that were producing e-wastes like mercury, lead chromium and cadmium, alongside harmful brominated flame retardents (BFR) too.

Ramapati Kumar, campaigner, Greenpeace, says: “Statistics show that the e-waste generated today is as high as 40,000 tonnes every year in India and 50 million tonnes in the world.” It is harmful to recover the metals from the cables as the waste contains BFR. Thus, the target is to eliminate the harmful elements from the electronic gadgets as they are causing cancer, kidney and bone diseases.

This has led to the manufacturing of products that are green, meaning disposing the gadgets will be easy and harmless. Moreover, the companies are to bear the responsibility of recycling the products after the lifespan of the gadgets expires.

With global warming and an increasing percentage of CO2 in the air becoming a matter of grave concern today, the leading manufacturers of computers are trying to manufacture “green” computers that reduce harmful emissions.

But, what is green computing? “Green computing is a concept and not a product,” says Diptarup Chakraborti, principal analyst, Gartner Research Services. “It is the right way of using power for manufacturing, selling, packaging and every other level of industrial development. It is in need as global warming has increased the energy consumption level by two to three percentages,” adds Chakraborti.