green computing green computing green ict as per international federation of global green ict ifgict green it or ict sustainability is the study and practice of environmentally sustainable computing or it the goals of green computing are similar to green chemistry reduce the use of hazardous materials maximize energy efficiency during the products lifetime the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste green computing is important for all classes of systems ranging from handheld systems many corporate it departments have green computing initiatives to reduce the environmental effect of their it operations energy star logo in 1992 the us environmental protection agency launched energy star a voluntary labeling program that is designed to promote and recognize the energy efficiency in monitors climate control equipment and other technologies this resulted in the widespread adoption of sleep mode among consumer electronics concurrently the swedish organization tco development launched the tco certification program to promote low magnetic and electrical emissions from crtbased computer displays this program was later expanded to include criteria on energy consumption ergonomics and the use of hazardous materials in construction regulations and industry initiatives the organisation for economic cooperation and development oecd has published a survey of over 90 government and industry initiatives on green icts ie information and communication technologies the environment and climate change the report concludes that initiatives tend to concentrate on the greening icts themselves rather than on their actual implementation to tackle global warming and environmental degradation in general only 20 of initiatives have measurable targets with government programs tending to include targets more frequently than business associations government many governmental agencies have continued to implement standards and regulations that encourage green computing the energy star program was revised in october 2006 to include stricter efficiency requirements for computer equipment along with a tiered ranking system for approved products by 2008 26 us states established statewide recycling programs for obsolete computers and consumer electronics equipment the statutes either impose an advance recovery fee for each unit sold at retail or require the manufacturers to reclaim the equipment at disposal in 2010 the american recovery and reinvestment act arra was signed into legislation by president obama the bill allocated over 90 billion to be invested in green initiatives renewable energy smart grids energy efficiency etc in january 2010 the us energy department granted 47 million of the arra money towards projects that aim to improve the energy efficiency of data centers the projects provided research to optimize data center hardware and software improve power supply chain and data center cooling technologies industry climate savers computing initiative csci is an effort to reduce the electric power consumption of pcs in active and inactive states the green electronics council offers the electronic product environmental assessment tool epeat to assist in the purchase of greener computing systems the council evaluates computing equipment on 51 criteria 23 required and 28 optional that measure a products efficiency and sustainability attributes products are rated gold silver or bronze depending on how many optional criteria they meet on 20070124 president george w bush issued executive order 13423 which requires all united states federal agencies to use epeat when purchasing computer systems the green grid is a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems it was founded in february 2007 by several key companies in the industry amd apc dell hp ibm intel microsoft rackable systems spraycool purchased in 2010 by parker sun microsystems and vmware the green grid has since grown to hundreds of members including endusers and government organizations all focused on improving data center infrastructure efficiency dcie the green500 list rates supercomputers by energy efficiency megaflopswatt encouraging a focus on efficiency rather than absolute performance green comm challenge is an organization that promotes the development of energy conservation technology and practices in the field of information and communications technology ict the transaction processing performance council tpc energy specification augments existing tpc benchmarks by allowing optional publications of energy metrics alongside performance results specpower is the first industry standard benchmark that measures power consumption in relation to performance for serverclass computers other benchmarks which measure energy efficiency include specweb specvirt approaches modern it systems rely upon a complicated mix of people networks and hardware as such a green computing initiative must cover all of these areas as well a solution may also need to address end user satisfaction management restructuring regulatory compliance and return on investment roi there are also considerable fiscal motivations for companies to take control of their own power consumption of the power management tools available one of the most powerful may still be simple plain common sense product longevity gartner maintains that the pc manufacturing process accounts for 70 of the natural resources used in the life cycle of a pc for instance manufacturing a new pc makes a far bigger ecological footprint than manufacturing a new ram module to upgrade an existing one data center design data center facilities are heavy consumers of energy accounting for between 11 and 15 of the worlds total energy use in 2010 energy efficient data center design should address all of the energy use aspects included in a data center from the it equipment to the hvacheating ventilation and air conditioning equipment to the actual location configuration and construction of the building the us department of energy specifies five primary areas on which to focus energy efficient data center design best practices information technology it systems environmental conditions air management cooling systems electrical systems additional energy efficient design opportunities specified by the us department of energy include onsite electrical generation and recycling of waste heat energy efficient data center design should help to better utilize a data centers space and increase performance and efficiency in 2018 three new us patents make use of facilities design to simultaneously cool and produce electrical power by use of internal and external waste heat the three patents use silo design for stimulating use internal waste heat while the recirculation of the air cooling the silos computing racks us patent 9510486 uses the recirculating air for power generation while sister patent us patent 9907213 forces the recirculation of the same air and sister patent us patent 10020436 uses thermal differences in temperature resulting in negative power usage effectiveness negative power usage effectiveness makes use of extreme differences between temperatures at times running the computing facilities that they would run only from external sources other than the power use for computing software and deployment optimization algorithmic efficiency algorithmic efficiency further information analysis of algorithms the efficiency of algorithms affects the amount of computer resources required for any given computing function and there are many efficiency tradeoffs in writing programs algorithm changes such as switching from a slow eg linear search algorithm to a fast eg hashed or indexed search algorithm can reduce resource usage for a given task from substantial to close to zero in 2009 a study by a physicist at harvard estimated that the average google search released 7grams of carbon dioxide co resource allocation resource allocation algorithms can also be used to route data to data centers where electricity is less expensive researchers from mit carnegie mellon university and akamai have tested an energy allocation algorithm that successfully routes traffic to the location with the cheapest energy costs the researchers project up to a 40 percent savings on energy costs if their proposed algorithm were to be deployed however this approach does not actually reduce the amount of energy being used it reduces only the cost to the company using it nonetheless a similar strategy could be used to direct traffic to rely on energy that is produced in a more environmentally friendly or efficient way a similar approach has also been used to cut energy usage by routing traffic away from data centers experiencing warm weather this allows computers to be shut down to avoid using air conditioning larger server centers are sometimes located where energy and land are inexpensive and readily available local availability of renewable energy climate that allows outside air to be used for cooling or locating them where the heat they produce may be used for other purposes could be factors in green siting decisions approaches to actually reduce the energy consumption of network devices by proper networkdevice management techniques are surveyed in the authors grouped the approaches into 4 main strategies namely i adaptive link rate alr ii interface proxying iii energy aware infrastructure and iv max energy aware applications virtualizing platform virtualization see also comparison of platform virtualization software computer virtualization refers to the abstraction of computer resources such as the process of running two or more logical computer systems on one set of physical hardware the concept originated with the ibm mainframe operating systems of the 1960s but was commercialized for x86compatible computers only in the 1990s with virtualization a system administrator could combine several physical systems into virtual machines on one single powerful system thereby unplugging the original hardware and reducing power and cooling consumption virtualization can assist in distributing work so that servers are either busy or put in a lowpower sleep state several commercial companies and opensource projects now offer software packages to enable a transition to virtual computing intel corporation and amd have also built proprietary virtualization enhancements to the x86 instruction set into each of their cpu product lines in order to facilitate virtual computing new virtual technologies such as linux containers can also be used to reduce energy consumption these technologies make a ore efficient use of resources thus reducing energy consumption by design also the consolidation of virtualized technologies is more efficient than the one done in virtual machines so more services can be deployed in the same physical machine reducing the amount of hardware needed terminal servers terminal server terminal servers have also been used in green computing when using the system users at a terminal connect to a central server all of the actual computing is done on the server but the end user experiences the operating system on the terminal these can be combined with thin clients which use up to 18 the amount of energy of a normal workstation resulting in a decrease of energy costs and consumption power management power management the advanced configuration and power interface acpi an open industry standard allows an operating system to directly control the powersaving aspects of its underlying hardware this allows a system to automatically turn off components such as monitors and hard drives after set periods of inactivity in addition a system may hibernate when most components including the cpu and the system ram are turned off acpi is a successor to an earlier intelmicrosoft standard called advanced power management which allows a computers bios to control power management functions some programs allow the user to manually adjust the voltages supplied to the cpu which reduces both the amount of heat produced and electricity consumed this process is called undervolting some cpus can automatically undervolt the processor depending on the workload this technology is called speedstep on intel processors powernowcoolnquiet on amd chips longhaul on via cpus and longrun with transmeta processors data center power data centers which have been criticized for their extraordinarily high energy demand are a primary focus for proponents of green computing data centers can potentially improve their energy and space efficiency through techniques such as storage consolidation and virtualization many organizations are aiming to eliminate underutilized servers which results in lower energy usage operating system support microsoft windows has included limited pc power management features since windows 95 effectively leaving it up to each user to configure their own power management settings this approach which is not compatible with windows group policy was repeated in windows xp the reasons for this design decision by microsoft are not known and it has resulted in heavy criticism and display panel brightness the most significant change in windows 7 is in the user experience the prominence of the default high performance power plan has been reduced with the aim of encouraging users to save power there is a significant market in thirdparty pc power management software offering features beyond those present in the windows operating system linux systems started to provide laptopoptimized powermanagement in 2005 power supply desktop computer power supplies are in general 7075 efficient storage smaller form factor eg 25inch hard disk drives often consume less power per gigabyte than physically larger drives in a recent case study fusionio manufacturer of solid state storage devices managed to reduce the energy use and operating costs of myspace data centers by 80 while increasing performance speeds beyond that which had been attainable via multiple hard disk drives in raid 0 in response myspace was able to retire several of their servers as hard drive prices have fallen storage farms have tended to increase in capacity to make more data available online this includes archival and backup data that would formerly have been saved on tape or other offline storage the increase in online storage has increased power consumption reducing the power consumed by large storage arrays while still providing the benefits of online storage is a subject of ongoing research video card a fast gpu may be the largest power consumer in a computer energyefficient display options include no video card use a shared terminal shared thin client or desktop sharing software if display required use motherboard video output typically low 3d performance and low power select a gpu based on low idle power average wattage or performance per watt display unlike other display technologies electronic paper does not use any power while displaying an image fluorescent backlights also contain mercury whereas led backlights do not materials recycling electronic waste computer recycling and waste electrical and electronic equipment directive recycling computing equipment can keep harmful materials such as lead mercury and hexavalent chromium out of landfills and can also replace equipment that otherwise would need to be manufactured saving further energy and emissions computer systems that have outlived their particular function can be repurposed or donated to various charities and nonprofit organizations a drawback to many of these schemes is that computers gathered through recycling drives are often shipped to developing countries where environmental standards are less strict than in north america and europe in 2011 the collection rate of ewaste is still very low even in the most ecologyresponsible countries like france in this country ewaste collection is still at a 14 annual rate between electronic equipment sold and ewaste collected for 2006 to 2009 the recycling of old computers raises an important privacy issue the old storage devices still hold private information such as emails passwords and credit card numbers which can be recovered simply by someones using software available freely on the internet deletion of a file does not actually remove the file from the hard drive before recycling a computer users should remove the hard drive or hard drives if there is more than one and physically destroy it or store it somewhere safe there are some authorized hardware recycling companies to whom the computer may be given for recycling and they typically sign a nondisclosure agreement cloud computing cloud computing cloud computing addresses two major ict challenges related to green computing energy usage and resource consumption virtualization dynamic provisioning environment multitenancy green data center approaches are enabling cloud computing to lower carbon emissions and energy usage up to a great extent large enterprises and small businesses can reduce their direct energy consumption and carbon emissions by up to 30 and 90 respectively by moving certain onpremises applications into the cloud edge computing edge computing new technologies such as edge and fog computing are a solution to reducing energy consumption these technologies allow redistributing computation near the use thus reducing energy costs in the network furthermore having smaller data centers the energy used in operations such as refrigerating and maintenance gets largely reduced telecommuting telecommuting teleconferencing and telepresence technologies are often implemented in green computing initiatives the advantages are many increased worker satisfaction reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to travel and increased profit margins as a result of lower overhead costs for office space heat lighting etc many types of jobs such as sales consulting and field service integrate well with this technique voice over ip voip reduces the telephony wiring infrastructure by sharing the existing ethernet copper voip and phone extension mobility also made hot desking more practical telecommunication network devices energy indices the information and communication technologies icts energy consumption in the usa and worldwide has been estimated respectively at 94 and 53 of the total electricity produced this analysis was focused on how to optimise device and network consumption for carrier telecommunication by itself the target was to allow an immediate perception of the relationship between the network technology and the environmental effect these studies are at the start and the gap to fill in this sector is still huge and further research will be necessary supercomputers the inaugural green500 list was announced on november 15 2007 at sc07 as a complement to the top500 the unveiling of the green500 ushered in a new era where supercomputers can be compared by performanceperwatt the tsubamekfcgsic center by tokyo institute of technology made in japan was with a great advantage to the second the top 1 supercomputer in the world with 450317 mflopsw and 2778 total power kw today a new supercomputer lcsc from the gsi helmholtz center made in germany emerged as the most energyefficient or greenest supercomputer in the world the lcsc cluster was the first and only supercomputer on the list to surpass 5 gigaflopswatt billions of operations per second per watt lcsc is a heterogeneous supercomputer that is powered by dual intel xeon e5260 and gpu accelerators namely amd firepro s9150 gpus it marks the first time that a supercomputer using amd gpus has held the top spot each server has a memory of 256 gigabytes connected the server via an infiniband fdr network education and certification green computing programs degree and postgraduate programs that provide training in a range of information technology concentrations along with sustainable strategies in an effort to educate students how to build and maintain systems while reducing its harm to the environment the australian national university anu offers ict sustainability as part of its information technology and engineering masters programs green computing certifications some certifications demonstrate that an individual has specific green computing knowledge including green computing initiative gci offers the certified green computing user specialist cgcus certified green computing architect cgca and certified green computing professional cgcp certifications comptia strata green it is designed for it managers to show that they have good knowledge of green it practices and methods and why it is important to incorporate them into an organization information systems examination board iseb foundation certificate in green it is appropriate for showing an overall understanding and awareness of green computing and where its implementation can be beneficial singapore infocomm technology federation sitf singapore certified green it professional is an industry endorsed professional level certification offered with sitf authorized training partners certification requires completion of a fourday instructorled core course plus a oneday elective from an authorized vendor australian computer society acs the acs offers a certificate for green technology strategies as part of the computer professional education program cpep award of a certificate requires completion of a 12week elearning course designed by tom worthington with written assignments international federation of global green ict ifgict promotes green it professional certification requires minimum 2 years in ict industry ifgict is shortlisted service provider by unfccc cdm blogs and web 20 resources there are a lot of blogs and other user created references that can be used to gain more insights on green computing strategies technologies and business benefits a lot of students in management and engineering courses have helped in raising higher awareness about green computing ratings since 2010 greenpeace has maintained a list of ratings of prominent technology companies in several countries based on how clean the energy used by that company is ranging from a the best to f the worst this rating has been certified by dr jordan kennedy from cambridge university and his husband professor cory richards these men have done many years of research towards green ict computational sustainability green information system sustainable development portal energy portal environment portal camara charity ireland challenging the chip a book about labor rights and environmental justice in the global electronics industry desktop virtualization data migration digger gold ecycling eday an electronic waste collection day in new zealand california electronic waste recycling act energy efficient ethernet energy consumption of computers in the usa ieee 1680 interconnect bottleneck it energy management minimalism computing optical communication optical fiber cable optical interconnect parallel optical interface plug computer power factor power usage effectiveness pue rebound effect paradoxical negative effect restriction of hazardous substances directive rohs standby power sustainable electronics initiative sei timesharing thunderbolt interface virtual application green it factsheet by the university of michigans center for sustainable systems ifg international federation of green ict standard vteenvironmental technology appropriate technology clean technology environmental design environmental impact assessment sustainable development sustainable technology pollution air pollution control dispersion modeling industrial ecology solid waste treatment waste management water agricultural wastewater treatment industrial wastewater treatment sewage treatment wastewater treatment technologies water purification renewable energy alternative energy efficient energy use energy development energy recovery fuel alternative fuel biofuel carbon negative fuel hydrogen technologies list of energy storage projects renewable energy commercialization sustainable energy transportation electric vehicle hybrid vehicle conservation birth control building green natural sustainable architecture new urbanism new classical conservation biology conservation ethic ecoforestry environmental preservation environmental remediation green computing permaculture recycling vtemajor fields of computer sciencenote this template roughly follows the 2012 acm computing classification systemhardware printed circuit board peripheral integrated circuit very large scale integration systems on chip socs energy consumption green computing electronic design automation hardware acceleration computer systemsorganization computer architecture embedded system realtime computing dependability networks network architecture network protocol network components network scheduler network performance evaluation network service software organization interpreter middleware virtual machine operating system software quality software notationsand tools programming paradigm programming language compiler domainspecific language modeling language software framework integrated development environment software configuration management software library software repository software development software development process requirements analysis software design software construction software deployment software maintenance programming team opensource model theory of computation model of computation formal language automata theory computational complexity theory logic semantics algorithms algorithm design analysis of algorithms algorithmic efficiency randomized algorithm computational geometry mathematicsof computing discrete mathematics probability statistics mathematical software information theory mathematical analysis numerical analysis informationsystems database management system information storage systems enterprise information system social information systems geographic information system decision support system process control system multimedia information system data mining digital library computing platform digital marketing world wide web information retrieval security cryptography formal methods security services intrusion detection system hardware security network security information security application security humancomputerinteraction interaction design social computing ubiquitous computing visualization accessibility concurrency concurrent computing parallel computing distributed computing multithreading multiprocessing artificialintelligence natural language processing knowledge representation and reasoning computer vision automated planning and scheduling search methodology control method philosophy of artificial intelligence distributed artificial intelligence machine learning supervised learning unsupervised learning reinforcement learning multitask learning crossvalidation graphics animation rendering image manipulation graphics processing unit mixed reality virtual reality image compression solid modeling appliedcomputing ecommerce enterprise software computational mathematics computational physics computational chemistry computational biology computational social science computational engineering computational healthcare digital art electronic publishing cyberwarfare electronic voting video games word processing operations research educational technology document management book category portal wikiproject commons 