Origins

In 1992, the U.S. Eviromental Protection Agency launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program which 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. The term "green computing" was probably coined shortly after the Energy Star program began; there are several USENET posts dating back to 1992 which use the term in this manner. Concurrently, the Swedish organization TCO Development launched the TCO certification program to promote low magnetic and electrical emissions from CRT-based computer display; this program was later expanded to include criteria on energy consumption, ergonomics, and the use of hazardous materials in construction.

Regulations and industry initiatives

Government

Many governmental agencies have continued to implement standards and regulations that encourage green computing. The Energy Star program was revised in October 2006 to include stricter efficiency requirements for computer equipment, along with a tiered ranking system for approved products. The Europian Union's directives 2002/95/EC ( Rohs), on the reduction of hazardous substances, and 2002/96/EC ( WEEE) on waste electrical and electronic equipment required the substitution of heavy metals and flame retandarts like PBBs and PBDEs in all electronic equipment put on the market starting on July 1, 2006. The directives placed responsibility on manufacturers for the gathering and recycling of old equipment (the Producer Responsibility model). [ citation needed ]

There are currently 26 US States that have established state-wide recycling programs for obsolete computers and consumer electronics equipment. The statutes either impose a fee for each unit sold at retail (Advance Recovery Fee model), or require the manufacturers to reclaim the equipment at disposal (Producer Responsibility model).

Industry

• Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) is an effort to reduce the electric power consumption of PCs in active and inactive states. [6] The CSCI provides a catalog of green products from its member organizations, and information for reducing PC power consumption. It was started on 2007 - 06-12 . The name stems from the World Wildlife Fund 's Climate Savers program, which was launched in 1999. [7] The WWF is also a member of the Computing Initiative. [6]
• Green Computing Impact Organization, Inc. (GCIO) is a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting the end-users of computing products in being environmentally responsible. This mission is accomplished through educational events, cooperative programs and subsidized auditing services. The heart of the group is based on the GCIO Cooperative, a community of environmentally concerned IT leaders who pool their time, resources, and buying power to educate, broaden the use, and improve the efficiency of, green computing products and services. Members work to increase the ROI of green computing products through a more thorough understanding of real measurable and sustainable savings incurred by peers; enforcing a greater drive toward efficiency of vendor products by keeping a community accounting of savings generated; and through group negotiation power.
• Green Electronics Council -- The Green Electronics Council offers the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) to assist in the purchase of "green" computing systems. The Council evaluates computing equipment on 28 criteria that measure a product's efficiency and sustainability attributes. On 2007 - 01-24 , President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13423, which requires all United States Federal agencies to use EPEAT when purchasing computer systems. [8] [9]
• The Green Grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. It was founded in February 2007 by several key companies in the industry – AMD, APC, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems and VMware. The Green Grid has since grown to hundreds of members, including end users and government organizations, all focused on improving data center efficiency.
• Green ICT Strategies Course is free open source courseware sponsored by the Australian Computer Society (ACS). It was released in January 2009 [10] . The course teaches how to estimate the carbon footprint of the ICT operations of an organisation and both technical and management methods to reduce the carbon footprint. The ACS runs a certified version [11] of the course, globally accredited by IFIP [12] .

Approaches to green computing

Algorithmic efficiency

The efficiency of algorithms has an impact on the amount of computer resources required for any given computing function and there are many efficiency trade-offs in writing programs. As computers have become more numerous and the cost of hardware has declined relative to the cost of energy, the energy efficiency and environmental impact of computing systems and programs has received increased attention.

• The 'energy cost' of a single google search . [13]
• The Green500 list, rating supercomputers by energy efficiency.

Virtualization

Main article: Platform virtualization

See also: Comparison of platform virtual machines