US government could save $1bn with green IT

Two new reports from HP suggest that the US Federal Government could save upwards of $1bn over the next five years in energy costs, by upgrading its datacentre equipment and PCs to green alternatives.

The two reports, Go Green Power Play and Go Green PC Power, entice Government agencies with suggested savings of $275m per year.

The bulk of the savings would come from energy efficiencies in Federal datacentres, which HP and report co-sponsor Intel believe currently uses $480m annually in energy costs. Using virtualisation, consolidation, and better cooling technology, the companies think that the Government could save $192m on this figure.

The report echoes recommendations made by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its report to Congress on datacentre efficiency opportunities last year. That document suggested that Government datacentres accounted for 10 per cent of energy use across all datacentres in the US. It also pointed out that the Government was a heavy user of large supercomputers, making it a disproportionate consumer of high-end server energy.

The "Go Green PC Power" report estimates the US Government uses around 4.5m desktop PCs. Roughly 444,000 of its monitors are CRT based, says the document, which estimates that EnergyStar 3.0-compliant Federal PCs use $293m in energy costs per year. By upgrading from the EPA's EnergyStar 3.0 power saving specification for electronics to equipment boasting the latest EnergyStar 4.0 standard, it could save $82m per year, the report suggests.

Energy Star 4.0 was released last year and mandated new power consumption requirements for PCs operating in standby mode, and in computer power supplies.