Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Intel & Others Join Greener Computing Effort

Google announced that it and many other computer and Internet heavyweights have joined together in the global Climate Savers computing initiative launched by the World Wildlife Federation. The idea is to improve the efficiency of computer hardware and data centers so that they require less power and give off less heat. Here’s the Google Blog post about the announcement.

The companies are adopting the most stringent EPA Energy Star requirements now and plan to exceed them going forward. The initiative is aimed at both enterprises and consumers and the participating organizations hope to offset potentially increased consumer costs in the near term with rebates and subsidies from utility companies. Costs are expected to go down over time.

Participating companies and organizations include Yahoo, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, the EPA, IBM, HP and various universities including the University of California and Stanford, in addition to Google and Intel. At the press conference, the claim was made that if targets are reached it will save in excess of $5.5 billion in annual energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54 million tons per year.