3 Reasons to Use Green Energy Right Now

The market of green energy is growing exponentially. More and more people are going green and for good reason. Let's take a look at 3 reasons why you should use green energy right now.

Green for the Environment

Using green energy is one of the best ways to help out the environment. Green energy is clean and is renewable which means that it won't harm the environment and it will never run out. Fossil fuel emissions are slowly killing our planet which is why everyone needs to do their part in keeping our environment healthy. We need to take action now if we want keep our planet a sustainable place to live.

Green $$$

Along with helping out the environment, green energy can also save you a ton of cash. At the very minimum, a natural energy source will save you 80% on your energy bill. And this is just within a month’s time of using a renewable energy source. Not only will your natural energy source have paid for itself within a month, but you will also save you hundreds of dollars. But, even more incredible is the ability to make money off of your green energy source. Since green energy is renewable it has the ability to produce more energy than you actually need. This means you will be able to sell unused energy back to your utility company for a lot of cash.

Green Won't Always Be Cheap

The most important reason why you should go green now instead of waiting is because this market is growing rapidly and is bound to become huge within the next six months. And when this market becomes huge you can expect prices to soar as well. Right now you can make your own green energy source for around $50. How long will this be a realistic price? Not very long, in just a few months this price could easily increase to 3x times the current amount. Green energy will always have the ability to save you money, but when you have to dish out hundreds of dollars it may take a pretty long time.

The Environmentally Friendly Data Centre

Reduce Your Carbon Footprint In The Face Of Environmental Concerns & Rising Energy Costs

There's a lot of talk about reducing your carbon footprint these days, but many data centre managers are left scratching their heads as to how to go about making their operations more environmentally sustainable.

First, it helps to understand exactly what is meant by "carbon footprint." Basically, the carbon footprint is a measurement of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases, such as water vapour, methane, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons, created by the life cycle of a product or service and is used as a metric for the overall impact a person or organization has on the environment.

What's The Problem?
Tracking and reducing carbon footprints has become critical in recent years as many believe the sharp rise of greenhouse gases over the past century has led to a change in global weather patterns, including an increase in the number and severity of storms, coastal flooding, and drought. In turn, these climatic shifts have led to widespread personal and economic devastation throughout the world.

"Data centres have had a steady growth in capacity, which translates into more greenhouse gases," explains William Forrest, associate principal for IT at McKinsey & Company. According to a joint report released by McKinsey and the Uptime Institute, "between 2000 and 2006, the amount of energy used to store and handle data doubled, with the average data facility using as much energy as 25,000 households."
As consumers are increasingly conscious about lessening their impact on the planet, organizations that make a concerted effort to reduce their overall carbon footprints have become more competitive in this tight market.

The Uptime Institute and McKinsey & Company also estimated that CO2 emissions from data centres worldwide will increase from 80 metric megatons calculated in 2007 to 340 metric megatons by 2020. Energy accounts for the majority of the carbon footprint, but there are a number of additional ways organizations can reduce their overall environmental impact.

Reduce Energy Consumption
Virtualization, optimization, and consolidation are the heavy hitters when it comes to reducing power and cooling needs in the data centre. "On average, servers only use about 15% of their total computing capacity," points out Dr. Jonathan Koomey, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (www.lbl.gov) studying energy consumption within data centres.

Although the majority of Koomey's research focuses on energy consumption, he adds that underutilizing assets such as servers is economically a poor business practice. "There is all this capital sitting around and not being utilized, yet [it is] consuming energy."

Other companies are choosing to tackle their increasing carbon footprints by completely retooling with newer, highly efficient data centres altogether. Later this year, Syracuse University, in conjunction with IBM, is set to unveil one of the greenest data centres in the world. The 6,000 sqft data centre cost about $12.4 million to build but will consume just half the power of a traditional data centre. This is the second green data centre for a university on which IBM has collaborated. Its first project with Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, netted an estimated reduction of 230 tons of CO2 per year.

Renewable Resources
With energy being the elephant in the room when it comes to your carbon footprint, many companies have also chosen to take the EPA Green Power Partnership's Fortune 500 Green Power Challenge in addition to reducing overall power consumption. The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that helps organizations purchase energy from renewable resources such as wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric.
For example, Intel uses 1.3 billion kilowatt hours each year. The company is currently purchasing 46% of its total energy from wind-generated sources. At its Foster City, Calif., facilities, IBM procures 100% of its power from renewable resources, as does AMD at its Austin, Texas, location.

Similarly, many organizations opt to purchase carbon credits which mean they are buying the energy savings of another organization in an effort to offset their total carbon footprint. Carbon credits are created when an organization opts to "trade" its energy savings to another organization that may not be able to reduce its energy consumption.

Accountability
Jim Cerwinski, senior product manager at Raritan, believes that in order to effectively reduce their carbon footprints, organizations need to have an inherent understanding of the power consumption of the equipment within the data centre. "To effectively reduce greenhouse gases, you must have some method for tracking and auditing power consumption," he says.

To effectively address the carbon footprint issue, forward-thinking organizations are appointing "chief environmental officers" and "energy czars." In these roles, individuals are responsible for researching energy-saving programs and technologies, creating metrics, and tracking success. "There are numerous benefits from being able to quantify carbon usage," says Cerwinski.

Responsible Life Cycles
Although companies tend to focus on reducing their energy consumption, the method of disposing of outdated and non-functional equipment, as well as other types of consumables, at the end of their usefulness can significantly contribute to a reduction in the carbon footprint. Because a carbon footprint is calculated over the life cycle of a product, emissions from the raw materials procurement, the actual manufacturing process, and eventually the disposal are all part of the overall footprint equation.

"When companies repurpose outdated, yet still useful, equipment, it is not only a good business decision but an environmentally sound choice," says Vuk Trifkovic, senior analyst at Datamonitor. "It is critical to follow through the entire life cycle of an electronic product. It's not enough anymore just to examine a product's efficiency. The entire manufacturing process must be considered, and then we need to make sure it gets recycled or disposed of in a proper way."

Other Renewable Energy Sources

Many nations count on coal, oil and natural gas to supply most of their energy needs, but reliance on fossil fuels presents a big problem. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. Eventually, the world will run out of fossil fuels, or it will become too expensive to retrieve those that remain. Fossil fuels also cause air, water and soil pollution, and produce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Renewable energy resources, such as wind, solar and hydropower, offer clean alternatives to fossil fuels. They produce little or no pollution or greenhouse gases, and they will never run out.

Wind Power

Wind power is actually a form of solar power, because wind is caused by heat from the sun. Solar radiation heats every part of the Earth’s surface, but not evenly or at the same speed. Different surfaces—sand, water, stone and various types of soil-absorb, retain, reflect and release heat at different rates, and the Earth generally gets warmer during daylight hours and cooler at night.

As a result, the air above the Earth’s surface also warms and cools at different rates. Hot air rises, reducing the atmospheric pressure near the Earth’s surface, which draws in cooler air to replace it. That movement of air is what we call wind.

When air moves, causing wind, it has kinetic energy-the energy created whenever mass is in motion. With the right technology, the wind’s kinetic energy can be captured and converted to other forms of energy such as electricity or mechanical power. That’s wind power.

Just as the earliest windmills in Persia, China and Europe used wind power to pump water or grind grain, today’s utility-connected wind turbines and multi-turbine wind farms use wind power to generate clean, renewable energy to power homes and businesses.

Wind power should be considered an important component of any long-term energy strategy, because wind power generation uses a natural and virtually inexhaustible source of power—the wind—to produce electricity. That is a stark contrast to traditional power plants that rely on fossil fuels.

And wind power generation is clean; it doesn’t cause air, soil or water pollution. That’s an important difference between wind power and some other renewable energy sources, such as nuclear power, which produces a vast amount of hard-to-manage waste.

One obstacle to increasing worldwide use of wind power is that wind farms must be located on large tracts of land or along coastlines to capture the greatest wind movement.

Devoting those areas to wind power generation sometimes conflicts with other priorities, such as agriculture, urban development, or waterfront views from expensive homes in prime locations.

As the need for clean, renewable energy increases, and the world more urgently seeks alternatives to finite supplies of oil, coal and natural gas, priorities will change.

And as the cost of wind power continues to decline, due to technology improvements and better generation techniques, wind power will become increasingly feasible as a major source of electricity and mechanical power.

Hydropower

Water flowing downstream is a powerful force. Water is a renewable resource, constantly recharged by the global cycle of evaporation and precipitation. The heat of the sun causes water in lakes and oceans to evaporate and form clouds. The water then falls back to Earth as rain or snow, and drains into rivers and streams that flow back to the ocean. Flowing water can be used to power water wheels that drive mechanical processes. And captured by turbines and generators, like those housed at many dams around the world, the energy of flowing water can be used to generate electricity.

Biomass Energy

Biomass has been an important source of energy ever since people first began burning wood to cook food and warm themselves against the winter chill. Wood is still the most common source of biomass energy, but other sources of biomass energy include food crops, grasses and other plants, agricultural and forestry waste and residue, organic components from municipal and industrial wastes, even methane gas harvested from community landfills. Biomass can be used to produce electricity and as fuel for transportation, or to manufacture products that would otherwise require the use of non-renewable fossil fuels.

Hydrogen

The jury is still out on whether hydrogen will ultimately be our environmental saviour, replacing the fossil fuels responsible for global warming and various nagging forms of pollution. Two main hurdles stand in the way of mass production and widespread consumer adoption of hydrogen “fuel-cell” vehicles: the still high cost of producing fuel cells; and the lack of a hydrogen refuelling network.

Reining in manufacturing costs of fuel-cell vehicles is the first major issue the automakers are addressing. While several have fuel-cell prototype vehicles on the road—Toyota and Honda are even leasing them to the public in Japan and California—they are spending upwards of $1 million to produce each one due to the advanced technology involved and low production runs. Toyota hopes to reduce its costs per fuel-cell vehicle to around $50,000 by 2015, which would make such cars economically viable in the marketplace. On this side of the Pacific, General Motors plans to sell hydrogen-powered vehicles in the United States by 2010.

Another problem is the lack of hydrogen refuelling stations. Major oil companies have been loath to set up hydrogen tanks at existing gas stations for many reasons, ranging from safety to cost to lack of demand. But obviously the oil companies are also trying to keep customers interested in their highly profitable bread-and-butter product: gasoline. A more likely scenario is what is emerging in California, where some 38 independent hydrogen fuel stations are located around the state as part of a network created by the non-profit California Fuel Cell Partnership, a consortium of automakers, state and federal agencies, and other parties interested in furthering hydrogen fuel-cell technologies.

The benefits of ditching fossil fuels for hydrogen are many, of course. Burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil to heat and cool our buildings and run our vehicles takes a heavy toll on the environment, contributing significantly to both local problems such as elevated particulate levels and global ones such as a warming climate. The only by-product of running a hydrogen-powered fuel cell is oxygen and a trickle of water, neither of which will cause any harm to human health or the environment.

But right now, 95 percent of the hydrogen available in the United States is either extracted from fossil fuels or made using electrolytic processes powered by fossil fuels, thus negating any real emissions savings or reduction in fossil-fuel usage. Only if renewable energy sources-solar, wind and others-can be harnessed to provide the energy to process hydrogen fuel can the dream of a truly clean hydrogen fuel be realized.

Stanford University researchers in 2005 assessed the environmental effects of three different hydrogen sources: coal, natural gas, and water electrolysis powered by wind. They concluded that we’d lower greenhouse gas emissions more by driving gasoline/electric hybrid cars than by driving fuel-cell cars run on hydrogen from coal. Hydrogen made using natural gas would fare a little bit better in terms of pollution output, while making it from wind power would be a slam-dunk for the environment.

Geothermal Energy

The heat inside the Earth produces steam and hot water that can be used to power generators and produce electricity, or for other applications such as home heating and power generation for industry. Geothermal energy can be drawn from deep underground reservoirs by drilling or from other geothermal reservoirs closer to the surface.

Ocean

As any board or body surfer will tell you, the ocean’s tidal currents pack considerable wallop. So why wouldn’t it make sense to harness all that formidable ocean power-which is not unlike that of the rivers that drive hydropower dams or the wind that drives wind turbines-to make energy?

The concept is simple, says John Lienhard, a University of Houston mechanical engineering professor: “Every day the moon’s gravitational pull lifts countless tons of water up into, say, the East River or the Bay of Fundy. When that water flows back out to sea, its energy dissipates and, if we don’t use it, it’s simply spent.”

According to Energy Quest, an educational website of the California Energy Commission, the sea can be harnessed for energy in three basic ways: using wave power, using tidal power, and using ocean water temperature variations in a process called “ocean thermal energy conversion”.

• In harnessing wave power, the back-and-forth or up-and-down movement of waves can be captured, for example, to force air in and out of a chamber to drive a piston or spin a turbine that can power a generator. Some systems in operation now power small lighthouses and warning buoys.
• Harnessing tidal energy, on the other hand, involves trapping water at high tide and then capturing its energy as it rushes out and drops in its change to low tide. This is similar to the way water makes hydroelectric dams work. Already some large installations in Canada and France generate enough electricity to power thousands of homes.
• An OTEC system uses temperature differences between deep and surface waters to extract energy from the flow of heat between the two. An experimental station in Hawaii hopes to develop the technology and someday produce large amounts of electricity on par with the cost of conventional power technologies.

Proponents say that ocean energy is preferable to wind because tides are constant and predictable and that water’s natural density requires fewer turbines than are needed to produce the same amount of wind power. Given the difficulty and cost of building tidal arrays at sea and getting the energy back to land, however, ocean technologies are still young and mostly experimental. But as the industry matures, costs will drop and some analysts think the ocean could power nearly two percent of U.S. energy needs.

Tidal energy pioneers are also hard at work on the U.S. Atlantic coast. The New Hampshire Tidal Energy Company is developing tidal power in the Piscataqua River between New Hampshire and Maine.

Latest on Solar Energy around the World

The Concept of Spray on Solar Power Cells

Solar energy is one of the many renewable sources of energy that is today used for providing electricity and for use in many consumer products. Though solar energy does not emit harmful gases into the atmosphere; it has a drawback that it works only in the presence of sunlight. So in a bid to overcome this default of solar energy, scientists have now invented a plastic solar cell that has the ability of turning sun power into electricity even on cloudy days.

These plastic solar cells work based on nanotechnology and is the first solar cell that can harness the energy found in the sun’s invisible and infrared rays. With this finding, theorists predict that plastic solar cells are basically five more times efficient than the technology that is presently used for solar energy.

Making these plastic solar cells is easy as the composite just has to be sprayed onto the material to make it be able to use solar energy. In other words, with this composite, you have a sort of portable source of electricity. With a sweater that is coated with this composite, you will be able to power a cell phone or any other wireless device. Similarly, a hydrogen powered car that is painted with the composite helps in converting solar energy into electricity, which in turn can be used to continually recharge the battery of the car.

With this idea, scientists and researchers envision a ‘solar farm’ to develop in the future where the plastic material is rolled across deserts so that the solar energy found here is harnessed to generate sufficient energy to supply power to the whole planet.

It is a known fact that the sun power that reaches the earth delivers 10,000 times more energy than is consumed by man today, so scientists infer that if at least 0.1 % of the earth’s surface is covered with very efficient, large area solar cells like this composite material, it is possible to replace all the other energy sources on earth with a single source of power that is not only clean but also renewable.

The concept of plastic solar cells is not new; however the material that was used so far only harnesses the sun’s visible light. It is only half of the sun’s power that is found in the visible spectrum; the other half lies in the infrared spectrum. It is this new material that is the first plastic composite that has the capacity of harnessing this infrared portion of the sun.

All things that are warm radiate heat; even people and animals. This is because there is some power remaining in the spectrum, the infrared portion that is emitted even when it is dark outside.

Specially designed nano particles called quantum dots are combined using a polymer so that the plastic detects energy in the infrared energy of the sun.

In the future, with further developments, it is predicted that this new plastic will be able to harness a maximum of 30% of the sun’s energy, in comparison with the 6% of solar power that is harnessed today in the best plastic solar cells.

Thin Solar Cells for Cheaper Green Power

The increase in the amount of harmful gases from the burning of fossil fuels has led to an increase in global warming of the earth. This is why people are now turning to alternative sources of renewable energy that can be harnessed to provide for the electricity and energy needs of mankind. One such source of energy is solar energy. Though solar energy is available for free and aplenty around the world, the costs associated with setting up a solar energy unit proves to be too expensive for everyone to use solar energy to power their homes. This is why scientists are looking for new ways of harnessing this solar energy so that it will be cheaper for everyone to use solar energy to power their homes.

Scientists have now working on developing light absorbing materials that can be used in the production of thin-layer photovoltaic (PV) cells. These PV cells are used for converting light energy into electricity. This research involves the scientists conducting experiments while using different materials that are less expensive and more sustainable for the manufacture of solar panels.

Presently, most of the solar panels are manufactured using thicker silicon based cells with compounds that contain indium which is a rare and expensive metal. As this is thick and is manufactured from a rare metal, this is an expensive option for producing solar energy. Researchers are therefore working on developing thin layered PV cells with the help of materials like copper indium dieseline and cadmium telluride.

Research is going on for the development of cheaper and more sustainable variants of these materials for producing solar energy. In addition to this, researchers are looking for means of changing the growth of these materials so that they form a continuous structure. Having a continuous structure is essential for conducting energy trapped by solar panels, before this energy can be turned into usable electricity. With this, there is an improved efficiency in these thin-layered PV cells.

Researchers hope that the development of more affordable thin filmed PV cells will lead to a decrease in the cost of solar panels in the domestic market. With this, it is envisioned that the use of solar power is increased while the dependence on fossil fuels, reduced.

At present, only one hundredth of one percent of the home energy needs in UK is provided by solar energy.

With the new thin layered PV cells, solar panels will be made and fitted to roofs to help power homes. Any surplus electricity in a home will be fed back to the National Grid, for safety purposes. With this, cheaper fuel bills are also envisioned in the future.

So with the cost of the materials required to start harnessing solar energy being rather expensive, its uptake has slowed down considerably.

So researchers hope these thin solar cells will make it cheap enough for a consumer to be able to buy a solar energy system off the shelf, to use for their energy needs in the future.

Solar Power in Cars

Solar energy is one of the many renewable sources of energy that is used for fuelling vehicles, running consumer products and for the efficient running of homes and business establishments. Solar power is harnessed with the help of solar cells and solar panels which are placed in the item that has to be powered.

The solar car is something that is envisioned to materialize in the future, with some countries already having solar cars racing across countries.

With this, it is proven that it is viable to indeed produce and manufacture solar power cars in bulk, in the near future so that everyone will soon own a solar power car.

Of course, once solar power cars are manufactured, it does not implicate that all other fuel sources for cars on highways will be removed. All that is done in solar power cars is the supplementation of traditional fuel with solar energy so that you save not only on your economy, but also save the environment in more ways than one every year.

The solar power cars that are used in races today run only on solar power, and thus look odd in appearance. This is because these cars are designed in such a way that they can collect maximum solar energy with which it is possible for the car to gain the required speed and desired efficiency.

The solar cells used in solar power cars are large, and usually cover the entire vehicle. However in case of commercial uses, solar cells are much smaller and designed so that the vehicle not only looks attractive, but is also efficient in its functioning. Solar cars can be used for short commutes in town as these cars can work only on solar energy.

The batteries found in the vehicle stores excess solar power so that this power can be used when solar power is not available on demand like on cloudy days and at night time. The engines found in these solar power cars are very much like the engines found in electric cars found today. In addition to this, the cars are lightweight, so that solar power can be used more efficiently.

At present, there are many types of solar power cars in the development stage today, which are also available for sale. However as these cars are in the developmental stage, the car is not available to the general public. With so many benefits found in solar power cars, its cost will not be much higher than the cost of the traditionally powered vehicles of today.

Another benefit of solar power cars is there is no hassle of stopping at gas stations for gas nor is there the need of getting worried of rising gasoline costs. With a solar power car, you save on the money that you would have otherwise have needed for buying fuel to run your car. In addition to this, with solar power cars you will be doing your bit in stopping global warming problems as there are no fuel emissions from solar power cars.

Why Solar is the Best Energy Solution

The amount of energy the sun sends towards our planet is 35,000 times more than what we currently produce and consume. Some part of this energy - better known as solar radiation - is reflected back into space but a lot of it is absorbed by the atmosphere and other elements surrounding the inner atmosphere. This energy can be easily harnessed for practical purposes such as heating homes, lighting bulbs and running automobiles and even airplanes. The uses can be as varied as the uses of energy itself. And the great thing is that we are never going to run out of this massive energy resource even for thousands and thousands of years.

Solar energy can be generated in two forms, namely electricity and heat. Solar cells or "Photovoltaic" are used to convert solar radiation into electricity. Photovoltaic systems release no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and they don’t even need direct sunlight to produce energy; they just need daylight and this means they can operate even during cloudy and less bright days.

Electricity is generated indirectly too by first generating heat from solar energy and then using the steam produced in the process to run power generators. Here too, since no fossil fuels are being burned to produce heat, the resultant energy to 100% eco-friendly.

Although the oil lobby does its best to throttle endeavours to tap into renewable energy resources like solar energy, many countries are taking proactive strides towards setting up solar-energy generation plants. The United States has taken a lead by having 9 of the world’s 13 biggest photovoltaic solar energy projects.
The concept of using sun as an energy source is not new; even during ancient times the Greeks, the Chinese and the Native Americans were using the sun to warm their homes and keep them disease free.

Thin Client Computing meets Companies Energy Reduction Requirements

Introduction: What is thin client computing?
Thin Client Computing is a technology whereby applications are deployed, managed, supported and executed on the server and not on the client. Instead, only the screen information is transmitted between the server and client. This architecture solves the many fundamental problems that occur when executing the applications on the client itself.

In server based computing environments, hardware & software upgrades, application deployment, technical support, and data storage & backup, are simplified because only the servers need to be managed. Data and applications reside on a few centrally managed servers rather than on hundreds or thousands of clients. PCs become terminals. They can be replaced by simpler, less expensive and more importantly, easier to manage devices called "thin clients”.

A thin client mainly focuses on conveying input and output between the user and the remote server. A thin client does not have local storage and requires little processing resources. In contrast, a thick or fat client does as much processing as possible and passes only data for communications and storage to the server.

Meet the emission commitments
Today environmental activeness is not just a marketing tool. Reduce emissions is a political issue. With no or less agreement on how nations should actually go about achieving a more carbon free environment. Conflicting debates regarding a cap-and-trade carbon emission or an introduction to imposing carbon tax on all users are held worldwide.

In fact industries and governments are noticeably under political pressure to meet their commission commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Company’s emission rights have to comply with the company’s commitments and if the result does not comply they will be fined. A carbon tax rate set on the consumption of carbon in any form would encourage industries to consume less in order to save expenses. In any case, investments in technological innovations with which companies can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, must be the result.

Accordingly to Gartner IT contributes two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and by 2010 environmental issues will be among the top five IT management concerns in North America, Europe and Australia. In the USA today about 1% of the national electricity consumption is caused by PCs and in Germany 110000t electronic waste per year is caused by IT.

In succession, CIOs need to be aware of what constitutes to the environmental impact of the whole organisation and on what extent IT can be a liability in this aspect. This paper focuses on the client and points out some of the ways to reduce a company’s environmental impact by moving to server based computing (SBC.) Environmental impact happens in a direct and indirect way during all phases of PC production and/or use. Here we do not focus in detail on production chains, in-house-use or the recycling process of a Thin Clients v/s PC. This is a summary that points out the advantages of SBC in regards to reduce emission and looks on direct and indirect impact of SBC in general.

View on impact:
First Degree Impact: The most direct way of impact which Gartner classifies as `First Degree Impact’. This is the impact of IT itself which includes electronic waste and consumption of energy in the data centre.
Second Degree Impact: Besides this ´First Degree Impact´ we have to consider a ´Second Degree Impact´ which is the impact of IT on business operations and the supply chains.
Third Degree Impact: Moreover the ´Third Degree Impact´, which describes the ´in use´ phase of the enterprise’s products or services, plays a relevant rule and can contribute to reduce CO2 emission.

Operating figures and key data:

A Thin Client consists of less electronic elements and spare and wear parts than a PC and this reduces its:

weight: Thin Clients weight 30% of PCs.
volume: their specific volume is 20 % of PCs.
electronic use: Thin Clients consume only 30% of electricity.

Evidence:
Moving IT to thin client technology causes a direct first degree impact of 70% less consumption of energy, and a significant cutback of electronic waste and asset disposition. Moreover the second and third degree impact contributes meaningfully to reduction of CO2 emission.

Ten Arguments:

• Thin Client Computer hardware consumes 20W to 40W compared to an average PC that consumes 60W to 110W during operation mode. However, considering that a single PC cannot be replaced by one TC due to the fact that for every 20 to 50 users you need one Terminal Server, because executable files are processed on a terminal server, still makes electricity consumption about 70% less.
• Less components are causing less electronic waste as a direct impact for the organisation.
• A thin client can be used longer and has a longer life cycle since it consists of less removable components and since processing is executed on the server. A longer life cycle reduces electronic waste.
• Less components cut down the complexity of the manufacturing. The supplier chain in general is less complex.
• Thin Clients need less maintenance during the actual operation because they consist of less removable components which reduces again the impact of the supplier chain.
• Thin Clients have dimensions of only one fifth of PCs, therefore the transportation and shipment consumes less volume and obviously emission is reduced as a second degree impact. Both PCs and Thin Clients are produced in ASIA, while the raw materials are shipped from Africa or South America.
• Heat emission of a Thin Client is less since no HDD is included. This plays a significant rule for an organisation situated in the hot areas of the world. The result is a cut down in cooling system usage.
• Converting inventory of fat clients into Thin Clients expands the life cycle of fat clients. As a result the annual amount of electronic waste is reduced.
• Publish Applications to home workspaces reduces the need for workforce mobility and implicates reduction of emission caused by travel.
• Centrally manage the shutdown of Thin Clients during off hours reduces electricity consumption and CO2 emission. A machine in sleep mode consumes 35w.

Conclusion
This paper is aimed to focus on the effects that thin client computing impact has on environmental affairs and a number of direct and indirect effects have been discussed when moving to server based computing (SBC).

Every company does experience the potentials of impact in different ways within their individual organisation. Therefore understanding where an organisation offers the most opportunities to decrease CO2 emission as well as understanding the SBC products and where the most impact can be realised by implementing and using them is the individual challenge.

A good start is to look at the relative weight of each company department’s overall environmental impact and the situation is certainly different for the manufacturing industry than for the service sector or for governmental institutions. Then looking for the right vendor who can provide the product and/or service to reduce pollution and energy consumption is constitutive.

The environmental value of IT has become an important matter for running an organisation, and SBC can definitely contribute to improve a company’s Carbon Footprint.