As usual there seems to not even be a thought of the continuously rapidly never-endingly increasing number of computers.

The object of the exercise seems to be entirely to reduce the per-capita or per-computer use of power, without a thought for the overall use of power via computers.

For goodness sake, a very large part of any increase in efficiency / reduction in energy use / reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.. has GOT to be limits to the growth of our population.

The scale of the overall usage is at least as important as the per-unit efficiency. Given our complete addiction to endless growth, it is a whole lot more important.

Surely you are not sucked in by this nonsense that carbon dioxide is a pollutant?
The IPCC took scientific research and altered it for their purpose which was to scare people.
Google Larry Gould and then read his first article, an Open Letter. Read it carefully, don't skip pages.
If CO2 is a polltant, why do hydroponic greenhouses recycle it? Because it promotes plant growth.
Scientists who are protecting their income are not suitable people to advise Government on global warming.

TomW and Bronwyn,
The whole approach you are assuming is a business as usual one.

Because of my life long interest and employment in electronics and
computers I have been attempting to research the effect of energy
decent, or in other words peak oil, on the infrastructure used by the
telecommunications industry.

There is virtually nothing published, yet talking to friends in various
parts of the radio & electronics industry it seems that the support
for the telecommunications infrastructure will be very shaky at some
not too distant time. The supply of spare parts is seen as a major
looming problem. A lot will depend on the allocation of oil products
to transport vs plastics.

Early in the depletion cycle video conferencing will load up the
network due to a reduction in air travel, and will require
rationing by setting tighter byte limits.
If those insisting on reducing coal burning get their way then the
elctrical supply reliabilty may become like Karachi.

I would strongly reccomend against adopting the "Cloud data system"
or you might in the future find that is where your data will remain.

If anyone has seen papers or articles on this subject I would be
pleased to know of them.

Col Rouge wrote 23 September 2008 1:00:59 PM:

"... more effective to either turn down the temperature on a electric water system ... or swap your light globes ... than bother with PC standby status."

Yes, computers only contribute about 1.5% to 2% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the study the ACS funded, which I cited in my report: <http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/pcmees/pc-report-04.html#3.Background|outline>.

But it is a lot easier to increase the efficiency of a computer, than something like a hot water system or by changing light bulbs. If new computers come with standby turned on by default and we can convince people not to turn it off, that would be an easy 1% overall saving.

Ludwig wrote 23 September 2008 1:14:09 PM:

"... The object of the exercise seems to be entirely to reduce the per-capita or per-computer use of power, without a thought for the overall use of power via computers. ..."

Good point. But I took my inspiration from the Climate Savers Computing Initiative <http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/about/>. They are proposing (as am I) an absolute 50% cut in computer power use. That is even if we ended up with more computers, in total they would use half as much energy as the ones we have now.

This is not as hard as it sounds, with more use of mobile devices instead of desktop computers, the overall power use should drop, as long as the people buying and installing the systems keep power use in mind.

This topic I find absolutely intriguing!

I visited tomw's website using the OLO icon below his post. I was immediately perplexed when I saw his experience and qualifications in IT. Had digitally saurian I seriously underestimated the technical literacy, with respect to computer hardware, of the average OLO user? It was not immediately obvious to me, at the level of technical knowledge I had, perhaps mistakenly, ascribed to such users, what they would be able to contribute towards strategy formulation that tomw couldn't do in his sleep.

I worry.

Bronwyn's post impresses me, particularly her observation: "An issue that has always concerned me is the turnover of computer equipment. It seems to be superseded so quickly and so much wastage results." One of the consequences of my move to the (Ubuntu) linux operating system (and it was a motivating factor for that move as well) was that I was able to use older, lower specification, equipment to do things which would otherwise have required newer hardware if I had stuck with the proprietary OS of Microsoft Windows and its forced upgrade path.

In that vein, tomw's response to Polycarp's post (and isn't it good to see a response from an author, even if its not an article thread?) "The Energy Star program I recommended currently covers only standby power for PCs. The new version 5 is supposed to also measure the power used by a PC when running typical applications." brought joy to my heart.

Yea, bring it on, tomw! Just make sure comparable applications under Windows are run under Linux and show the resource usage comparison as between operating systems. To my way of thinking, mandating hardware compatibility with Linux would be an important strategy to pursue. I suspect OS bloat and clunckiness may be a major factor in determining power usage in an holistic sense.

I worry because I sense in setting a strategy related solely to hardware standards an attempt may be being made to lock open source out of government procurement.

Please write an OLO article as Bronwyn suggested, tomw.