Power To Change

On June 2, 2009, Hewlett Packard announced a campaign called Power To Change (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2009/090602xc.html).  The campaign encourages owners of personal computers to help support the environment by downloading a new desktop widget. The new desktop widget tracks the "cumulative energy savings associated with participants turning off idle PCs when not in use." The Power To Change campaign is being launched across all HP regions: Asia Pacific and Japan, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the Americas. The widget will be available in five languages: Chinese, English, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. 

The widget can be downloaded by individual or company and is even compatible with all PC computing platforms. The cool thing about the widget is that it enables users to actually "watch and explore the energy savings the campaign generates through the power of behavioral changes across individual and global users." An estimation by HP shows that if 100,000 users shut down their work computers at the end of each day, the energy savings could total more than 2,680 kilowatt hours. Also, carbon emissions reductions could total over 3,500 pounds per day - the equivalent of eliminating more than 105 cars from the road every day. 

America's sustainability executive at HP states, "Power To Change is the manifestation of HP's long-held philosophy that industry leadership is about an ongoing contribution to society. With Power To Change, individuals and organizations can make a small environmental commitment that has the potential for a large impact on addressing sustainability challenges today." 

Not only is HP offering the desktop widget as a means to help the environment, but they are making big additions to their Eco Solutions green IT program. In an article on GreenBizSite (http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/02/hp-eco-solutions-additions) HP announced the new additions including, a new line of servers, printing hardware and software solutions, an upcoming "telepresence-lite" program and new company-wide environmental commitments. HP is aiming to save 40 percent in energy efficiency, equivalent to 1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, which could power a town of 90,000 people for a year. 

HP has begun unveiling new servers which are 50 percent more energy efficient than 2005's products. The servers are Proliant G6 servers which manage themselves to optimize their power usage. In other words the servers can "identify low-demand times of day and switch to low-power modes for those times." 

HP has begun a revolution in turning their company to being environmentally savvy. Their consistent products and additions have truly made them a remarkable company. The company is truly sustainable with keeping up with environmental concerns while remaining economically sound. Here is a video called, "HP Eco Solutions Discussion" which gives an inside look at HP environmental leaders discussing new technologies that will help consumers save money while reducing the impact on the environment: http://h30418.www3.hp.com/index.jsp?fr_story=a01b0b952fb2f635dc64a090b725f2ca21550768&rf=bm