OAKLAND, Calif. — The Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) announced this week two significant partnerships: one finds the group joining with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to speed the adoption of Energy Star-rated products, and another marks the group's biggest step into China to date.

Over the next three years, the CSCI will work with the EPA to develop technical specifications and promote the use of energy-efficient PCs and servers and the use of power management to enterprises and consumers.

And at the Intel Developer Forum in China this week, the CSCI signed a memorandum of understanding with the China Electronics Energy Saving Committee (CEESC), the first organization to push for a more energy efficient computing infrastructure within China. Under the terms of the MoU, the groups will collaborate and share technologies and information toward the goal of significantly dropping the energy used by computers within China and those sold abroad.

"Over the past half year we are glad to see that the Chinese IT industry has actively engaged in energy conservation," said Liu Rulin, secretary general of the Chinese Institute of Electronics and co-chairman of the CEESC at a signing ceremony for the partnership. "By working with the CSCI we will formulate the best known methods of energy efficiency and promote them to the industry and end users."

Climate Savers, which was created in June 2007, has set a goal of cutting the amount of power used by computers in half by 2010. Companies that join the initiative commit to purchasing high-efficiency computer equipment, maximizing the power management capabilities of existing machines and steadily increasing the efficiency of computers purchased in coming years.