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 School of Geography and the Environment

Low Carbon ICT

New software tools are being developed by ECI to intelligently switch off desktop computers when not in use. Oxford University anticipates savings of over £250K per annum when implementing this software in 2008.

Worldwide carbon emissions from ICT have increased dramatically over recent years and now rival those from aviation. The Low Carbon ICT project seeks to address an important driver of this: the needless creation of emissions through leaving computers switched on when not in use. This is of particular importance in large networked computing environments such as those found at universities where, for a variety of reasons, ICT management practices have emerged such that energy saving is given a low priority.

At Oxford University it is estimated that some 1,500 tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere annually through computers being left on, adding around £250,000 to the annual electricity bill. The Low Carbon ICT project is evaluating and developing a combination of Power Management and Wakeon-Lan software that will enable computers to be powered down when not in use. Importantly, the project seeks to develop a solution that will cause no inconvenience to users or system administrators. The project was launched through an internationalconference at The Said Business School in April 2008. With speakers and representatives from the NHS, UK universities, industry and entrepreneurs, the conference stimulated wider discussion about the technicalities of implementing this type of power management plan across networks.

All software and tools being developed will be opensource and freely available and adaptable to all, as will all our modelling and monitoring documentation. The project aims to deliver these by April 2009.

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