Verizon Establishes Energy Efficiency Standards

To reduce its power consumption and energy costs and shrink its carbon footprint, Verizon has established its own energy-consumption standards and an associated measurement process for new telecommunications-related equipment.

The standards will be applied to certain broadband, video, data-center, network and customer-premises equipment purchased after Jan. 1, 2009. The target provided to the manufacturers of such equipment is 20 percent greater efficiency than today's gear.

Sun Microsystems To Launch Energy Efficient Flash SSD

Sun Microsystems Inc. announced plans to introduce new Sun solid state disks or SSD to the market providing greater application performance, massive scale and value through the integration of the Solaris operating system, Solaris ZFS and other open source technologies.

Sun Microsystems indicated the Flash technology SSDs to consume around one fifth of the power of both memory DIMMs and disk drives, with no rotating media and consume very little power when not in use, more eco-friendly than alternatives.

Limiting Power Used By Electronics

The federal government will unveil new standards to limit the amount of power used by consumer electronics while in standby mode. The standards would limit the amount of power consumed by televisions, CD players, computers and other electronic devices.

A July 2007 news release said standby power accounts for up to 10 per cent of an average household's yearly electricity consumption. It said the estimated savings of limiting standby power consumption would be equivalent to taking a large coal-fired power generating unit off-line.

Energy Efficiency In Germany

Energy efficiency is becoming a major branch in the German economy. For example, energy-efficiency technology includes Light-Emitting Diodes (LED). These technologies can be used in homes and in streetlamps; they drastically reduce the amount of energy required to disseminate light, in comparison with traditional light bulbs.

Germany combines a tradition of scientific excellence, and a government establishing a favorable legal framework to encourage new investments in renewable energies and energy efficiency.