Universities Take Climate Savers Computing Pledge to Save Energy, Emissions

Published April 22, 2009

With nearly 25 percent of its campus community pledging to do more to manage the energy used by their computers, the University of Maine at Farmington won the first-ever pledge drive to bring campuses on board with green IT practices.

The contest was part of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative's "Power Down for the Planet Pledge," which brought 19 colleges on board with CSCI's mission to practice smart computing. Together, the group estimates that the 17,000 total pledges will save around 4.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year, saving $450,000 or more in costs and offsetting over 3,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

"The University of Maine at Farmington won by getting the highest percentage of their campus to pledge," said Pat Tiernan, executive director of Climate Savers Computing Initiative. "Their commitment means they'll offset 125 tons of carbon per year, save 164,000 kilowatt-hours of energy and more than $17,000 in energy costs."

Rounding out the top five universities were Mississippi's Jackson State University, the University of Iowa, Furman University in South Carolina, and the University of Michigan.

By participating in the pledge drive, each of the schools is now a member of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit group launched in 2007 to promote energy-efficient and environmentally friendly IT practices. The universities have agreed to adopt power management strategies for their campus computer fleets, and take energy-use criteria into account in future PC and server purchases.

Last month, the Climate Savers teamed up with the U.S. EPA to present a Power Management Summit aimed at exploring and explaining the benefits of power management for companies of all sizes.

The full list of the universities that participated in the pledge drive, as well as the amounts of electricity, money and greenhouse gases they'll save, is online at PowerDownForThePlanet.org.

University photo CC-licensed by Flickr user j-a-x.

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Universities Take Climate Savers Computing Pledge to Save Energy, Emissions