“Power IT Down Day” scheduled for Friday, August 27th, 2010 – How 1E takes a good idea even further

Promoted by partners such as Intel, HP, and Citrix, “Power IT Down Day” is scheduled for Friday, August 27^th, 2010. Per the web site, powering your computer down for a single day can help save tens of thousands of costly kilowatt hours.

Powering down a computer for a single day is a great way to promote a concept that is clearly important, and it’s an ongoing, worldwide issue that 1E (Green IT solutions provider) addresses in a more complete manner. The data 1E discovered in their 2009 PC Energy Report is staggering: “... if all the world’s 1 billion PC’s were powered down for just one night – it would save enough energy to light up New York City’s Empire State Building – inside and out – for more than 30 years.” 1E has pioneered the technology to make IT more efficient by providing tools to “power down” every day of the year instead of just one. Consider the significant impact that can be realized by implementing the “power down” concept all year long! Read more about these solution here; NightWatchman, NightWatchman Server Edition, and WakeUp.

mobile phone charged by pedal-power

The latest green gadget; charge your phone while cycling with the ‘Bicycle Charger Kit’ from Nokia.

The phone mount is rubberised to minimise vibrations and the holder comes with a transparent bag to protect it from the elements. It’s compatible with all Nokia phones that have a 2mm charging interface. The charger kicks in when the bicycle reaches 6 km/h and stops when your speed reaches 50 km/h. The total charging time varies, but Nokia gives the example that with 20 minutes of cycling at 10 km/h you can power up a Nokia 1202 for 1 hour of talk time or 74 hours of standby time.

This would be an ideal piece of kit for long distance, camping, cyclists. Or for using your GPS for navigation which invariably drains the battery quite quickly. More info is available here.

Are you Ready for Mandatory Carbon Footprinting?

Phil Wilcock from 1E writes: A new survey finds that only 25% of businesses here in the UK are measuring their Carbon Footprints. While that may not set alarm bells ringing in most other parts of the world, here in the UK it's a little more serious as it's only six weeks before the deadline for the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, a cap-and-trade program for large private and public organizations that are not covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. This means organizations such as Universities, supermarkets and city councils.

The CRC will apply to around 5,000 large organizations that use more than 6,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually. The UK's Environment Agency said last week that just 1,229 organizations had signed up to meet the Sept. 30 deadline. Those that take early action through various certifications, such as the Carbon Trust Standard, can earn a higher ranking on the CRC league table, which will eventually be made public so that poorer performing companies can be 'named and shamed'.

According to the report, most companies are now resigned to the fact that Carbon Footprinting (and paying for the emission of excess carbon) is going to become law sooner rather than later.

“The debate about whether or not carbon footprinting and payment will become mandatory for business appears to be over as far as finance heads are concerned," Harry Morrison, general manager of the Carbon Trust Standard Co., which conducted the survey, said in a statement. "Yet only a minority have taken action so far and these early movers have a clear advantage. Building carbon management into the DNA of the business now not only ensures preparedness for future compliance requirements but also brings immediate cost and efficiency benefits and competitive edge."

In another interesting report, it seems that even those companies that are recording sustainability stats aren't doing it so efficiently.

In a recent a US survey by iReuse Companies were polled to find out which sustainability metrics were being tracked, which were most important and how data was being managed. Responses came from a variety of people within these companies, but overall one of the main conclusions is that while managing and reporting electricity use is seen as critical, the systems used to record such data are usually quite basic. The report finds that Excel-based systems are most often used, but many are looking for solutions that are easier to use and more sophisticated in the interpretation of the data.

Luckily for them, both NightWatchman and NightWatchman Server Edition have sophisticated reporting engines which can be used to feed into a company-wide sustainability report. Here at 1E we believe that Carbon Management is just as important as financial management and should be firmly embedded in your company at all levels. With more and more legislation coming down the road in order to force companies to account for their energy use, now is the time to be looking to both report on and reduce your Carbon Footprint. With 1E's current Energy Management software and great free resources such as the Carbon Management Center from GreenBiz.com to get you started, help is at hand.

Use 30% less ink with Century Gothic Font

The University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, has changed its default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic. It seems that Century Gothic uses 30% less ink than Arial, the most commonly used default font. Ink costs the university around $10,000 a gallon, with toner cartridges and drums not far behind, and accounts for 60% of the cost of the printed page, so it’s potentially a significant saving across a university campus.

In this case changing the default option is an effective way of nudging people towards greener behaviour. There’s no force involved - the University made it clear that users can change back to a different default font if you wish. The university is also encourage everyone to switch to Century Gothic as their default font in Entourage for Macintosh, Word, and Excel.

If you want to go even further, there are specially designed green fonts. With Ecofont, for example, users can work with their usual font but for printing use its ink-saving variant. The green font has additional holes to reduce ink use with, apparently, no impact on legibility. Ecofont claims that its font is even more economical than Century Gothic. Preton has a solution that deletes unnecessary pixels from all aspects of a print job as well as providing the capability to eliminate unneeded text or graphics from print jobs and providing analysis of print usage and savings.

So there’s a lot that can be done to reduce the environmental impact, and cost, of printing – the above are just a few examples of what’s on the market. Read more on Green Printing at The Green IT Review

Whitepaper - Empowering Energy Efficiency in Federal Data Centers

This white paper discusses the Federal data center consolidation initiative and describes areas where greater energy efficiency and carbon reductions can be achieved using a number of quick wins. Don't be fooled by the title - this paper is not only relevant to Federal Data Centers, there's lots of great, usable info for anyone out there who is interested in Data Center energy savings, and more specifically how 1E's NightWatchman Server Edition can help.

Just to whet your appetite, some of the topics covered in this paper are:

IT Asset Utilization

Consolidation and Power Management

NightWatchman Server Edition - Quick Wins

Read the full document here:http://www.docstoc.com/docs/46793305/Empowering-Energy-Efficiency-in-Federal-Data-Centers