Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: PERSONAL COMPUTING=EPA Nudges Firms to Take the Lead in 'Green Computing'=By Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 05:02:45 EST Message-ID: <64.1992Nov16.050246@AmeriCast.com> PERSONAL COMPUTING=EPA Nudges Firms to Take the Lead in 'Green Computing'=By T.R. Reid=Washington Post Staff Writer= Even though it smacks of "industrial policy," a concept that is supposed to be taboo in Republican administrations, the federal government's push for "green computing" poses a lot of potential benefits for U.S. computer makers and consumers. "Green computing" is the catch phrase commonly used to describe Washington's recent drive to get PC hardware and software makers to produce computers that conserve energy - and thus reduce the air pollution caused by generating electricity. This effort, formally known in Washington as the "Energy Star Computers Program," is the brainchild of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Working with some of the country's biggest PC makers - including International Business Machines Corp., Apple Computer Inc., Digital Equipment Corp. and Zenith Data Systems - the EPA is trying to promote energy-efficient personal computers. As I've noted before, a single PC doesn't use much electricity. You can keep your home computer turned on around the clock for a month and barely notice the difference when the electric bill comes around. But with personal computers now humming away in tens of millions of offices and tens of millions of homes, the EPA started counting kilowatts and came up with a striking con- clusion. The agency released figures earlier this year suggesting that personal computers account for 5 percent of the total commercial electricity consumption in the United States; with computer use spreading like crazy, the figure was projected to rise to 10 per- cent by the end of the decade. When you start talking about 5 percent or 10 percent of all U.S. electricity, you're counting an awful lot of kilowatts. So the EPA, working with computer, chip and software makers, has promot- ed "green computing" as a way to save energy and reduce air pol- lution at home. Further, the effort may help put U.S. companies in the forefront of the energy-efficient computer market when foreign buyers get interested. The whole thing sounds similar to the kind of "administrative guidance" that Japan's famous industrial policy agency, the Min- istry for International Trade and Industry, likes to issue to Japanese companies. But, hey, whatever works, right? The push for "green computing" is perfectly timed to take advan- tage of American technological strengths. U.S. companies have been at the forefront of the effort to get increased energy effi- ciency and, thus, longer battery life for laptop and notebook computers. Now, with "green computing," those energy-saving tech- nologies can be incorporated into desktop computers as well. The EPA's analysis is based on the thesis - which sounds right - that most people leave their desktop PCs turned on all the time. But those machines are actually used only about 20 percent to 30 per- cent of the time. So if the computer could be designed to switch automatically to a low-power "sleep" mode when not in use, there could be significant savings in power consumption. That notion is perfectly familiar, of course, to anybody who has used a port- able computer equipped with Intel Corp.'s 80386SL or 80486SL mi- croprocessor chip. To save battery power, these newest portable PCs will drop into a "sleep" mode when not in use. This preserves all your data with minimal power consumption. When you're ready to work again, the system will "wake up" and put you back at the same point in the same program where you were when your portable went to "sleep." For the PC user, this is much better than turning off the com- puter and then turning it on again later, when you have to wait through the boot-up routine and then navigate around the hard disk to get back to where you were before. And on a desktop machine, it would also be better for the environment because the "sleep-resume" system uses less electricity. Accordingly, Intel is going to put the same "sleep-resume" capa- bility now on its SL chips into the microprocessors it builds for desktop machines. The first such "green" desktop computers should hit the market in the first half of 1993. Intel has said all fu- ture versions of the 80486 microprocessor will have "sleep- resume" capability, as will the upcoming Pentium, Intel's brand name for the microprocessor chip that would have been the 80586. Software firms, too, have a role to play in power efficiency. Any Windows user will already know about screen-saver programs that automatically blank the display monitor if a computer hasn't been used for a certain number of minutes. This, too, can be an important energy saver. We used to think that "green computing" was what you got when your color monitor went on the blink. Now we see it as a good idea for American manufacturers and consumers, even if it is in- dustrial policy.endquad03:03 11-16C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)