Saturday, November 15, 2008 Major IT firms present ‘green’ products, corporate programs
PANGLAO, Bohol—Two big names in the global information technology industry have answered calls for greener or more environment-friendly products.
Officials of Intel and Hewlett-Packard (HP) said they are aware that their manufacturing operations also emit greenhouse gases (GHG) and consume a significant amount of fuel and water.
Acknowledging that they are part of the estimated two percent IT-caused GHG emissions across the globe, the companies said they “relentlessly” pursue strategies that reduce the environmental impact of their operations.
Ricky Banaag, country manager for Intel Technology Philippines Inc., said Intel’s latest microprocessors are designed to consume less power.
He said Intel’s microprocessors are developed based on a new microarchitecture design that enables better performance and efficiency such that this “tick-tock” drive, launched in 2006, resulted to 20 terawatt hours less energy consumption and $2 billion in energy cost savings.”
Power savings
The following year, Intel reported another 20 percent reduction in energy use.
“We increased the core speed of our microprocessors in order to generate better power savings,” said Banaag, during the annual Synergy Forum last Thursday at Amorita Resort in Panglao, Bohol.
He said a consumer’s potential energy savings in a year will also be reduced 17 times by shifting to a managed Core 2 Duo Processor T7700 mobile platform compared to an unmanaged Pentium D Processor 945 with CRT display.
Banaag also introduced “Intel’s high-performance solid-state drives,” which are designed for disk drive efficiency that will mean about five times less power consumption.
HP, on the other hand, said that its flat panel displays consume less material and energy than CRT screens. Its notebooks, PC and flat panel display have also been designed to weigh less.
David Tan, managing director and general manager of Technology Solutions Group for HP Philippines, said that the company’s new packaging for inkjet printers mean 2,813 delivery cars are off the road, which mean 1.48 million gallons of gasoline saved. The new packaging also means a reduction of 4,375 tons in landfill wastes.
Less travel
Tan also presented other HP energy-efficient products that include server processors, deskjet printers, xw6400 Workstation, LaserJet printers, Blade PCs, and servers and storage.
HP, together with Dreamworks Animation, also developed the Halo studio, which enables “life-size, real-time, eye-to-eye conferencing with outstanding audio” that will remove the need for corporate executives to travel—reducing the financial and environmental cost of traveling.
In the next five years, Banaag said Intel will further reduce the energy consumption of its chips by five percent and chemical waste generation per chip by 10 percent.
The company also intends to recycle as much as 80 percent of the chemical and solid waste it generates per chip and reduce the volume of water consumed in the production of chips.
“This is our commitment to one of our corporate social responsibility goals, which we always publicly disclose. We are (also) looking at how HP and Intel can work together to produce products that are compliant, energy sufficient and environmentally friendly,” he said.
HP, for its part, is targeting a 25-percent reduction in the GHG it generates and the recovery of two billion pounds of computing and printing equipment by 2010. (NRC)
