Sustainable Computing Intiative
Did you know? The average computer wastes nearly HALF the power it consumes, servers lose approximately one-third of their power as heat, and 90% of desktops do not utilize power management settings.
On the U-M campus, energy usage is not measured to the level of the individual PC or server, and so the enormous impact of our computing habits is often hidden from us. The Sustainable Computing Intiative believes it is important to make these facts known and to take measures to increase the energy conservation of our computing resources at the University of Michigan.
The goal of the Sustainable Computing initiative at U-M is to:
- Raise awareness about the impact of computing on the environment
- Provide tools to help U-M faculty, staff, students and IT professionals be better environmental stewards of our computing resources
- To ultimately change the culture of the University to always consider the environment when making decisions about computing.
The Sustainable Computing initiative has developed best practices for sustainable computing and strives to provide tools to help reach that end. We rely heavily on volunteers to develop our programs, which to date include:
- Best Practices for Desktops, Data Centers and Server Rooms
- Partnering with Information and Technology Services (ITS) to provide assistance with services like Virtualization as a Service (VaaS) and Computer Power and Patch Management(CPPM)
- Green IT Achievement program designed to recognized departments following sustainable computing Best Practices
As we kick off new efforts, we will again rely on campus volunteers to develop more tools such as white papers and case studies as well as techniques to overcome barriers to practicing sustainable computing.
Please let us know if you'd like to get involved.
Note: we are working on improving our web presence, so visit often to see more tools, more resources and more information to help with your sustainable computing efforts.
