Substituting computers for services - potential to reduce ICT's environmental footprint
Författare
Summary, in English
The environmental footprint of IT products are significant and, in spite of manufacturing and product design improvements, growing consumption of electronics results in increasing absolute environmental impact. Computers have short technological lifespan and a lot of the in-build performance, although necessary, remains idling for most of the time. Today, most of computers used in non-residential sectors are connected to networks. The premise of this paper is that computer networks are an untapped resource, which could allow addressing environmental impacts of IT products through centralising and sharing computing resources. The article presents results of a comparative study of two computing architectures. The first one is the traditional decentralised PC-based system and the second - centralised server-based computing (SBC) system. Both systems deliver equivalent functions to the final users and this can be compared on a one-to-one basis. The study evaluates product lifespan, energy consumption in user stage, product design and its environmental implications in manufacturing.
Avdelning/ar
Publiceringsår
2004
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
217-222
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Electronics Goes Green 2004 (Plus): Driving Forces for Future Electronics, Proceedings
Dokumenttyp
Konferensbidrag
Förlag
Fraunhofer IRB Verlag
Ämne
- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Conference name
International Congress and Exhibition on Electronics Goes Green 2004+
Conference date
2004-09-06 - 2004-09-08
Conference place
Berlin, Germany
Status
Published