Manufacturers join WWF Green IT group

Intel and Google sign up, though concerns are raised that new energy efficiency standards could undermine existing schemes

Leading IT manufacturers have today thrown their weight behind a new World Wildlife Fund (WWF) initiative to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through ambitious new energy efficiency targets and a new certification scheme for green IT kit.

However, some critics have argued that the emergence of another set of energy efficiency benchmarks may serve to undermine established initiatives such as the Energy Star labelling scheme.

Intel, Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Lenovo and over 30 major IT manufacturers, customers, retailers and energy companies have all joined the WWF's new Climate Savers Computing Initiative and pledged to meet stringent new targets on IT energy consumption and promote wider adoption of power-saving management tools.

Pat Gelsinger of Intel said that the new targets for energy efficient IT would deliver a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. "By 2010, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative will cut greenhouse gas emissions in an amount equal to removing more than 11 million cars from the road or shutting down 20 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants," he said. "The commitment of the member companies that are here with us today is a firm statement to the collective resolve to make an enormous impact."

Under the scheme, manufacturers have agreed to surpass the US Environmental Protection Agencies' (EPA) Energy Star standards in order to attain a new initiative certification. For example, 2007 Energy Star specifications require that PC power supplies meet at least 80 percent minimum efficiency, while the new initiative would require a minimum of 90 percent by 2010. In addition, the initiative sets a higher efficiency target in the power supply for volume servers - 1U and 2U single-socket and dual-socket systems – requiring an increase from 85 percent to 92 percent efficiency by 201 0.

Urs Holzle, senior vice president of operations at Google, said that meeting these new targets would deliver major environmental and costs savings with the 90 percent efficiency target for power supplies alone likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year and save more than $5.5bn in energy costs.

The EPA is a member of the new initiative and as such has given its blessing to the new standard, but experts have questioned whether another certification scheme will undermine the credibility of the already well-established Energy Star badge.

Similarly, the recently established Green Grid consortium, which counts many of the new initiative's supporters as its members, could see some of its work to develop server and datacentre energy efficiency standards duplicated by the new WWF scheme.

Nigel Montgomery of analysts AMR Research said that any scheme that raises the profile of environmental issues was to be welcomed, but voiced concerns that the latest initiative could lead to customer confusion. "Ideally there would be one common standard, because many customers just aren’t in a position to check the credentials of different schemes," he said. "The problem is that we have all these political bodies, with a small p, that are driving in slightly different directions. There is a danger that some of these schemes are just adding to something that is already well under way."

John Madden of analyst Ovum agreed there was a growing risk that multiple standards could lead to customer confusion. "In the grand scheme of things more initiatives are beneficial as they help to raise the profile of the issue further," he said. "But we already have the Green Grid, Energy Star, other standards, and now this and there will come a point where customers could end up confused about which standard is better than the other."

However, a spokesman for Intel insisted the various schemes were complem entary. "This initiative is more about hitting specific targets and is focused more on the client side than the Green Grid so we see it as entirely complementary," he said. "Similarly, it actually uses Energy Star as a base [for its benchmarks] so again we would argue the two are complementary."

A spokeswoman for the Energy Star initiative agreed that the two schemes could co-exist successfully, claiming that "whilst Energy Star [aims] to qualify the top performing 25 percent of the market, the Climate Savers Initiative may eventually provide a mechanism for purchasers to identify the very best of the energy efficient computers on the market, and as they are working closely with… the Energy Star label it is likely that the two initiatives will complement each other going forwards".