Business leaders around the world are trying to figure out how to reduce the amount of energy their companies use. Reducing energy has the dual benefit of lowering your carbon footprint (good for the environment) and realizing the cost savings that go along with energy efficiency (good for the bottom line).
Every company uses its resources differently so there's no one-size-fits-all solution to the energy reduction challenge, but there are a few things most companies can do to get started:
- Understand your current power usage and set goals for reducing consumption.
- Take small steps at an individual level and benefit from organization-wide implementation.
- Invest in energy efficient products and replace old, inefficient devices
Promote good energy efficient habits
Give every individual in your company a chance to participate in company-wide energy reduction initiatives by giving them the tools to monitor and modify their own consumption. When you have everyone in the company working at full efficiency, your finance team is going to take notice.
Easy-to-use HP Power Manager
Promote good energy efficient habits with tools like HP Power Manager, available on select HP Business Desktop PCs, which gives you and every employee in the company the ability to understand and control the amount of power consumed by desktops and monitors.
This easy-to-use manager lets you configure your PC power settings so you can save energy without interfering with your ability to perform your work. HP Power Manager gives you control of how long after being idle your computer:
- Shuts off your display
- Spins down your hard drives
- Suspends your system
Choose your optimal mix
Using these controls, you can choose the optimal mix of performance and conservation that fits your needs. If you don't know where to start, the HP Power Manager has pre-set sleep settings that can be adjusted to select the level that works for you.. High conservation settings mean greater energy savings.
Measure your impact
Because dollars often speak louder than words, the HP Power Manager gives you more than just power settings and options. If you don't know what sort of impact they're going to have, it's hard to know if you're achieving your reduction goals.
The HP Power Manager includes tabs that quantify your PC power savings into energy savings in kilowatt hours (kWh). By customizing real energy costs in your area, you can also get an estimate of how these power savings translate into real dollars.
But energy and money aren't the only impact energy efficiency can have on you and your environment. To get a more complete picture, the HP Power Manager also provides the estimated environmental impact in:
- Pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2)
- Liters of oil
- Miles driven
Enterprise-wide energy control
For enterprise-wide control over your energy usage, products like Verdiem Surveyor give you the ability to remotely manage the PC and monitor power settings throughout your network. This pre-loaded power management software lets you manage settings based on groups, events, times and even the day of the week, which simplifies getting started. You'll realize significant savings when all PCs and monitors are turned off over the evenings and weekends [1].
To ensure you're meeting your impact reduction goals, Verdiem Surveyor gives you the ability to model, measure and report the impact of different power setting profiles to your stakeholders. For once, you can accurately chart your carbon footprint reduction.
Replacement technologies
If you're serious about reducing your environmental impact, you should consider replacing old computer equipment with newer, more efficient models. HP offers a variety of energy efficient PCs that meet the following compliance standards:
- ENERGY STAR ®: The specifications ensure that the product you’re buying uses less energy to perform regular tasks, and when not in use, automatically enters a low-power mode. ENERGY STAR qualified office and imaging products use as much as 60% less electricity than standard equipment [2].
- 80% efficient power supplies: These products are 80% efficient and can help to reduce power consumption.
- EPEAT™: The Electronic Product Assessment Tool (EPEAT) evaluates desktop computers, notebooks and monitors for their environmental attributes and then tiers them into Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels.
By setting goals, incorporating tools that give your entire organization the power to affect their own consumption and looking for compliance with a number of environmental standards when buying replacement equipment, you can take control of your PC energy consumption and reduce your environmental footprint quickly and easily.
1. Requires activation of Verdiem Surveyor license.
2. Energy Star Public Website
For more information
Energy Efficient Computing
HP 5000 Series Desktop PCs
EPEAT standards
ENERGY STAR
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