Nashville Technology Blog (6/4/2010)
Jeff McCorpin, LBMC Technologies, led a spirited and engaging roundtable on Greening Up Your Business. Panelist included Vic Hatridge from NES and Mike Sole from Trinisys. Jeff began the conversation in earnest with Vic Hatridge about whether NES wanted us to use more or less energy. Vic pointed out that power companies have to build infrastructure to handle the peak loads (very hot summer days and very cold winter nights). ”To meet the needs of consumers, businesses, and NES, we all have to work together and take action.” Vic Hatridge recommends $150 energy audit for both your home and your business.
Green Resources
Power detective to monitor your power usage
Creativerecycling will take computers and peripherals
U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED provides building owners and operators a concise framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions.
Greeniscalling.com to invest in led technologies.
Statistics
Are you recyclying your construction materials at work? Mike Sole noted “25-30% of landfills contain construction materials.” Probably even more in Nashville today with the Flood of 2010. Mike Sole also pointed out that an average document is printed 5 times and copied 9 times. Wow! Go green round-table starting in 30 minutes.
Gartner is predicting that there will be 4 million virtual machines installed on x86 servers by 2012. Gartner also predicts the number of virtualized PCs to grow from less than 5 million in 2007 to 660 million by 2011. This allows anytime, anywhere access to your virtual desktop and applications and should reduce energy consumption.
The US Green Building Council notes that carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted in a number of ways. It is emitted naturally through the carbon cycle and through human activities like the burning of fossil fuels. We burn these fuels to create energy for our homes and buildings. Energy consumed related to buildings in the United States are responsible for 39% of CO2 emissions, 40% of energy consumption, 13% water consumption and 15% of GDP per year, making green building a source of significant economic and environmental opportunity. Greater building efficiency can meet 85% of future U.S. demand for energy, and a national commitment to green building has the potential to generate 2.5 million American jobs.
This is both a corporate and personal responsibility and we all need to focus on helping out the environment. Plus, it really can be good for the bottom line as well.
Corporate Example – Gartner estimates that over the next 5 years, most enterprise data centers will spend as much on energy (power and cooling) as they do on hardware infrastructure.
Personal Example – Set your outside lights on timers or motion sensors. Reducing usage on a single outdoor floodlight can save you up to $120 a year in energy costs.
The event was held at Junior Achievement in Nashville and was sponsored by LBMC Technologies.
