Template:Valley Sep-07

From Lauraibm

Full article: How Green is Silicon Valley (7-Sep-07)

PC makers Hewlett Packard and Dell, chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, as well as Microsoft and Google, have joined consortia to improve energy efficiency of hardware and within the firms' giant data centres.

A recent EPA report estimated that US data centres consumed around 61bn kilowatt hours in 2006 at a cost of about $4.5bn. That's about 1.5% of total US electricity consumption, more than the electricity used by all American TV sets.

Gartner is sceptical about the influence the consortium will have. "Competition among the majority of vendor contributors is likely to slow the development of clear standards that can be used by data centre managers," it wrote in a note to clients.

A report from research company, Ipsos, says that a majority of respondents would buy consumer products from companies that demonstrated their environmentally sensitive credentials.