General Facts about Computer Energy Use

•  Computer technology use accounts for 2% of anthropogenic CO2

• Roughly equivalent to aviation industry
• IT energy usage will double next 4 years

•  For every 12 consumers who keep power settings enabled for their on their monitors and PCs, CO2 emissions equivalent to removing one average automobile from the road will be avoided.

• A typical desktop PC with a 17-inch LCD monitor requires about 145 watts—110 watts for the computer and 35 watts for the monitor.

• If left on 24x7 for one year, this same computer will consume 1,270 kilowatt hours of electricity—that’s enough to release 1,715 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the equivalent of driving 1,886 miles in the average car!

Datacenter energy use

•   Power used by servers, cooling and ancillary infrastructure in 2005 accounted for about 1.2 percent of the United States’ electrical usage—the equivalent in capacity terms of about five 1,000 MW power plants (Jonathan Koomey, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
•  U.S. energy consumption by data centers is expected to almost double in the next five years (U.S. EPA, August 2007)
•  U.S. commercial electrical costs increased by 10% from 2005 to 2006 (EPA Monthly Forecast, 2007)
•  Data center power and cooling costs have increased 800% since 1996. (IBM/Consultant Studies)
• Over the next five years, it is expected that most U.S. data centers will spend as much on energy costs as on hardware, and twice as much as they currently do on server management and administration costs. (IBM/Consultant Studies)
• With annual energy costs per square foot that are 10 to 30 times that of a typical office building, data centers are an important target in energy-saving efforts.