By Richard Thurston, 9 October 2006 08:30
NEWS
Employees who leave their PCs on overnight are costing their companies £70 each per year, according to a report produced by the National Energy Foundation.
The report found 18 per cent of UK-based office workers never turn off their PC when they go home and a further 13 per cent frequently leave their PC on after hours.
The result of this neglect is spiralling electricity use for the businesses concerned and additional carbon dioxide emissions across the UK equivalent to the output of 120,000 4x4 cars.
The report found workers did not turn off their PCs for five main reasons:
- They can't be bothered (17.5 per cent)
- No one else in their office does (10 per cent)
- Because it's unimportant (10 per cent)
- They forget (eight per cent)
- They are afraid of losing their work (1.8 per cent)
A spokesman for the National Energy Foundation said: "This is a problem for two reasons. Energy prices have doubled in the last 24 months, and companies' expenditure on electricity is obviously directly affecting their profits."
He added that leaving PCs on overnight is also causing environmental harm. "Electricity is the dirtiest fuel we use and there is an awful lot of carbon dioxide generated, which is the main greenhouse gas. That gives us problems with climate change," he said.
The UK government has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 60 per cent by the middle of the century.
The spokesman suggested business managers should insist staff shut down their PCs when they are not being used. He added that IT managers might consider deploying software that automatically shuts down unused PCs - or sends them into hibernation.
According to analyst group Gartner, companies' electricity usage is set to rocket further - particularly because of energy-sapping high performance data centres.
Gartner vice president Rakesh Kumar predicted last week that companies which do not control their energy usage could end up spending half their IT budget on energy.
UK businesses waste £115m each year by leaving unattended PCs switched on, according to the National Energy Foundation.
A business with 20,000 employees typically has around 2,500 PCs left on in any one evening, translating into extra electricity usage costing £175,000 per year.
Computers left on in standby mode save little energy, with a power usage of 70 per cent of their maximum, PC supplier Fujitsu Siemens estimates.
Software supplier 1E has created an online tool and game to calculate business electricity usage.
Richard Thurston writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 5 comments. Join the discussion
1. Stephen Johnson
So when is the IT staff supposed to update AntiVirus signatures, and run scans, Update Windows and run spyware scans. If you have ever tried to accomplish this when the employees are using their computer it is almost impossible. The amount of money a company would spend due to a virus outbreak inside LAN with more than 2500 machines would end up costing more than 175000 euros when you take into consideration the employees not able to do their work possible lost contracts work needing to be redone and the IT cost of cleaning the infected machines. This is only accounting for one instance now just imagine if this happened multiple time within the year. How much do you think that would cost the company then?
2. D Fletcher
The root cause of excessive greenhouse gas emissions is too many people.
I don't see how the UK government can make promises on our behalf to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60% whilst we have a UK prime minister who has produced four children. If everybody did this the population and therefore greenhouse gas emissions would double every generation. And by the way I don't regard religion as being a valid excuse for this behaviour.
3. Graham Coles
So the government have 'pledged to cut carbon emissions by 60 per cent by the middle of the century.'
Right.
So how come one of the sources of CO2 emission get away without a mention.
0% duty on aviation fuel? Try explaining that to the poor sods who have to drive to work paying 60% fuel duty and a further 17.5% vat on their petrol, or people who pay yet more fuel duty and tax on fuel to heat their homes in the winter ... all in the name of the environment.
Meanwhile the airlines make nice profits and yet pay no tax on their carbon emissions, and apparently far from reducing air flights, were expanding them (exactly how does this reduce our emission level).
Amazing what a few well-placed donations to a government committed to reducing our carbon emissions can achieve.
Oh, and if you want to save money on PCs, stop using those x86 intel chips and switch to a decent RISC chip that consumes half the power--or just integrate your PC into your central-heating system and put that heat to good use!
(And, yes, I saw a copy of the full page advert from 'unlimited-spurt.org' highlighting how much Blair cares about airline CO2 when he’s not bleeding ordinary people dry with taxes :-)
4. Richard
Unhelpful, inaccurate report apparently sponsored by a company which sells remote control software:
Yes some people are thoughtless or lazy, but most people have no idea how much power their electrical appliances actually use; some are just obeying company instructions.
The figures quoted by the UK government and by various campaigning groups are usually wildly inaccurate, so their hectoring announcements are usually ignored.
Practical Suggestions:
1. In many companies, the IT department requires PCs to be left ON at night, so that updates can be downloaded:
There are better ways; remote control software can control the PCs; updates can be scheduled for particular evenings; monitors can be switched OFF even when the PC's base unit is left ON.
2. "Screen-savers" may be pretty but they often prevent the PC from entering low-power modes:
Educate users that "screen-savers" are very wasteful: It's far better to set the PC's "screen-saver" to "none." That causes the monitor to switch to "standby."
3. Pentium 4 processors and most graphics cards are very wasteful:
When shopping for a new PC, if it needs a noisy fan or you can feel warm air coming from its vents - don't buy it!
Only games players need powerful graphics cards, little other software needs them. (Even digital video editing and encoding software normally uses the CPU rather than the GPU, the graphics card is used only for display purposes.)
Unfortunately, MS Vista seems to need just such a wasteful PC - do we need MS Vista?
4. When possible, switch all appliances OFF at the wall socket.
5. anonymous
"Electricity is the dirtiest fuel we use" - what ?
It's not even a fuel, just a means of transferring energy. And I'm sure a massive power station can burn coal in a cleaner and more efficient manner than I could at home in a grate.
So what does that statement mean ? Please enlighten.