The Power of Technology to Make a Difference a report by Kevin O’Donovan New Business Group, Intel EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa)
Today, one billion people are connected to the Internet. It is anticipated that in the next five years an additional 2.5 billion users will come online, using over 10 billion devices.1
These devices will
include PCs (including servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablets), mobile phones, TVs and a vast array of consumer and industrial devices with embedded technology.
Just think about this for a moment: consuming half as much energy and producing 17 times the computational capability of current computers. It is an astounding fact that demonstrates the incredible energy efficiency improvements that have been achieved in computing thanks to Moore’s law (see Figure 1) and other technological innovations. In fact, in the 35 years since Moore’s law was first formulated, the ratio of energy used per transistor has improved approximately one million times.1
It is as a direct result of
Moore’s law that increasing computing capabilities are being built into non-PC devices, such as phones, TVs and cars.
The Opportunity and the Challenge
With so many new users and devices, endless opportunities will exist for new usage models, services and innovations. The challenge, however, will be that this growth must be managed to ensure that the net effect on the environment is positive and sustainable.
Intel strongly believes that it has a dual responsibility to not only improve its own environmental footprint, but also to collaborate with others to develop innovative ways that address long-term sustainability challenges in other sectors. It believes that technology has a pivotal role to play in helping address environmental concerns that range from reducing the amount of energy and raw materials that computing devices consume, both during manufacturing and usage, to increasing the new usages these devices will be applied to.
Gartner recently estimated that that the information and communications technology (ICT) industry generates about 2% of the world’s carbon emissions. As the number of users connecting to
Kevin O'Donovan leads the Strategic Marketing function within Intel’s New Business Group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He is responsible for defining and driving Intel’s environmental and energy efficiency strategy and execution for Intel Sales and Marketing across EMEA and for assessing Intel’s medium- to long-term competitiveness in new and evolving usage segments and identifying new and emerging usage models and trends.
E: kevin.o’
donovan@intel.com
Intel estimates that compared with the first billion PCs in use today, the next billion PCs will use half the energy and have 17 times the performance.1
the Internet grows, one can assume that the percentage of the world’s carbon emissions consumed by the ICT sector may increase. The opportunity is that as ICT technology is applied, the quantity of the world’s carbon emissions will be dramatically reduced. This will be due to technology enabling dematerialisation and simulation of existing physical processes and/or providing more distributed intelligence to existing processes in order for them to be more energy efficient and sustainable. The net effect will be that the total absolute value of the world’s carbon emissions will be reduced. This is the opportunity and the challenge.
With Leadership Comes Responsibility
Intel has a long history of incorporating environmental performance goals throughout all its operations, seeking continuous improvement in energy efficiency, emission reductions and resource conservation. For almost 10 years, Intel has published a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report where all performance goals and results have been documented.
Thus operational changes alone have enabled Intel to improve its overall carbon footprint significantly; similar to removing 50,000 cars from the road. The 2009 CSR report contains many more details, including how the company has been recognised by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as being the largest purchaser of green power in the US.3,4
It is not just about reducing the amount of energy and raw materials used in manufacturing. Intel also continues to incorporate more environmentally sensitive materials into its design processes. For example, although lead has been used by the electronics industry for decades, Intel has worked closely with the industry to develop lead- free products. All of Intel’s new products are lead-free as a result of co-optimisation of materials, design and manufacturing, along with close collaboration with the supply chain.
In addition to this, Intel is driving the voluntary global industry halogen-free initiative. It has successfully enabled the elimination of brominated flame retardants from Intel products through a phased approach.
The Opportunity to Reduce General Carbon Emissions The Climate Group suggested that the use of ICT within ‘smart grids’ and smart buildings has the potential to reduce 3.71 gigatonnes of carbon by 2020 or 15% of business-as-usual emissions.5,6
smart grid means many things to many people and the required functionality and standards for smart grids are still evolving worldwide.
112 © TOUCH BRIEFINGS 2010
Over the past three years, the company has managed to reduce its operational energy consumption by 20% per product unit, while significantly increasing the total number of product units manufactured.2
The term
Transmission & Distribution
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