Products, services and software use

HP is committed to providing products, services and software to help customers improve their energy efficiency and meet their sustainability objectives. We continue innovating, as we have since 1992 when we launched our Design for Environment program, to drive energy efficiency, reduce the carbon intensity of HP products and help customers to save energy. Further progress is essential, since greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from IT equipment are growing at about 6 percent a year in absolute terms¹ due to the growth in IT usage. We are committed to reduce the energy consumption of our products by 40 percent by 2011, from a 2005 baseline.

We take a holistic approach, from the desktop to the data center, including products, services and software. Each PC uses relatively modest amounts of energy – typically less than 50 watts when in “idle” mode. However, saving relatively small amounts of energy on each PC, server and printer results in large emissions reductions because of the high numbers of products in use – In total, PCs (including monitors) and printers are responsible for almost twice as much GHG emissions as data centers.²

In 2009 we extended the Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing to our personal computing products. The web-based HP Carbon Footprint Calculator helps customers to reduce the environmental impact—and costs—of computing and printing. (See case study.) It provides an estimate of how power-saving technologies and more efficient features can lower customers’ energy use, and carbon footprint. The tool covers printers, desktop PCs, notebooks, workstations, thin client³ computers, displays and point of sales equipment. (See case study.) We also launched Power To Change, a campaign that encourages personal computer users to change behavior to make the most of our low-energy features.

We help customers adopt more sustainable practices with products such as Halo Solutions (see case study) and SkyRoom (see case study), reducing energy costs and emissions by avoiding travel, while digital printing reduces energy and paper use in conventional printing. (See Enabling a low-carbon economy.)

Data center energy use reduction is important because each center uses substantial amounts of energy and the number of data centers is increasing rapidly—electricity consumption of U.S. data centers is expected to double between 2006 and 2011.¹ Reducing data center power consumption starts with more energy-efficient IT infrastructure and includes technology initiatives such as virtualization and automation. Further advances are achieved through optimization of data center planning, energy efficient data center designs and integration of facilities with IT. HP products and services are available in all these areas.

Notebook and desktop PCs and workstations

By 2009, the average energy consumption of our highest-volume desktop and notebook PCs had already decreased by 41 percent since 2005.

We continue working to increase energy efficiency, and at the end of 2009 we had over 120 HP PC product families with configurations that meet the new ENERGY STAR® 5.0 specifications, which include a requirement for 85 percent energy efficient internal power supplies. This includes HP thin client computers, making HP the first company to qualify products in this new category.

HP Power Assistant,⁴ available on desktop and notebook products, helps users to conserve power. And specifically in notebooks, it also stretches battery run time. On the network level, HP Power Assistant measures, records and reports platform energy use to provide IT departments the information needed to save money and energy.

In 2009, we estimate that by using HP Power Management Technology, customers reduced GHG emissions by 460,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e), the equivalent of taking 88,000 cars off the road for one year. Our goal is to save customers 1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity by 2011 through improved energy consumption of our notebooks, PCs and workstations, relative to 2008.

Imaging and printing

HP enables customers to make smart printing choices by providing products, services and tools to save energy and paper. Saving paper is an important way to reduce climate impact because some estimates suggest that making 1 tonne of paper results in 1.5 tonnes of CO₂e emissions. This is the major contributor to GHG emissions from the printing process. (See also Enabling a low-carbon economy.)

In 2009, HP shipped more than 24 million ENERGY STAR qualified printers—more than any other vendor. All new 2009 inkjet and LaserJet printer families have ENERGY STAR qualified offerings. The HP Officejet Pro 8500 Premier All-in-One uses only half the energy of comparative laser printers. (See case study.)

We introduced HP Auto-Off technology in 2009, which saves energy by putting the printer into a mode that uses less than one watt of power. It will help customers improve energy efficiency in personal desktop LaserJet printers by three times compared with normal sleep mode. HP will configure printers to power down, but customers can set their own power-down times.

HP Auto-Off works in concert with Instant-on Technology, found in HP LaserJet printers, which helped customers avoid 1.3 million tonnes of CO₂e emissions in 2009 (see case study). This feature enables a printer to warm up in a matter of seconds from the sleep mode or even off mode.

HP’s Eco Solutions printing practice includes products and services such as Managed Print Services and HP Web Jetadmin (see case studies) that help large organizations reduce their environmental impact by improving printing efficiency.

Data centers

Energy use for data centers is high and growing, driven partly by an information explosion (see essay)—it is estimated that the world digitized about 186 exabytes of data in 2007 (one exabyte is a billion gigabytes) and that will grow to nearly 1,000 exabytes in 2020.

Improving the energy efficiency of data centers, including our own is therefore a priority for HP. We collaborate and consult with government authorities and industry bodies to help improve IT industry practices relating to data center energy use. This includes being part of the team that created the EU Code of Conduct and data center Code of Conduct best practice, and working with the United States Green Building Council to develop standards for better environmental design for data centers. We are also participating in a U.S. Department of Energy steering committee developing a framework to certify data center energy specialists.

We deliver a wide range of solutions, from energy-efficient servers, storage and networking devices, through automation, to data center consulting, design and management. In 2009, we introduced HP ProLiant Generation 6 (G6) servers, delivering twice the performance at half the power of the HP servers they replace. HP ProLiant DL 360 and DL380 G6 servers were the first in the industry to meet the ENERGY STAR for Computer Servers 1.0 guidelines released in May 2009. (See case study.) Several ProCurve network switches have been certified to Miercom’s Green Standard. One of these switches measured as up to 45 percent more efficient than the industry average. (See case study.)

Our data center service capabilities include the following:

• HP Energy Efficiency Analysis helps customers calculate facilities’ baseline energy efficiency and the scale of potential improvements and identify ways to achieve them. (See case study.)
• HP Critical Facilities Services provides consulting, design and assurance services to design and build next generation facilities as well as upgrade and modernize current data centers so they are both energy- and space-efficient. (See case study.) HP CFS innovations include multi-tier hybrid designs that can drive down capital costs by 15–25 percent compared with current industry benchmarks and significantly reduce energy-related operating costs. (See more.)
• Facility and Technology Assessment Services, including power and cooling analysis and energy efficiency analysis.
• Energy Efficiency Design helps maximize data center space utilization, performance and efficiency.
• Assessment Service for blade servers gauges data center readiness to meet potential environmental challenges and to provide guidance for improving data center capacity and efficiency.

See customer case studies for more information.

Other enterprise solutions

HP offers numerous other solutions that help organizations decrease energy use and GHG emissions, such as the following:

• HP Carbon Emissions Management Services help customers calculate, record and analyze IT-related GHG emissions, enabling the measurement and management of emissions for compliance purposes. They include HP Carbon Accounting Solution and C-Counter. (See case study.)
• HP Managed Print Services, which enables organizations to reduce their energy and paper use and cut costs related to printing. (See case study.)
• HP works to improve the energy efficiency of customers who outsource their operations and data centers to us. Innovations such as at Wynyard in the UK demonstrate our capabilities.

Our products, software and services are also enabling the development of a low-carbon economy.

Software

HP software products also can help customers identify ways to cut costs and save energy:

• Performance Center helps customers analyze and validate the performance of applications against business requirements. It simulates resource requirements for new applications and identifies inefficiencies, to better help customers avoid unneeded capacity and use energy efficiently.
• TRIM document and records management software helps customers efficiently manage storage requirements. It provides secure storage while helping customers dispose of redundant data that is unnecessarily taking up space and using energy.
• Business Service Automation works in conjunction with data center hardware to dynamically adjust capacity, switching off equipment when it is not needed.

1. ¹ “ Smart 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age ,” The Climate Group, a report on behalf of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, with analysis by McKinsey & Company, 2008.
2. ² Kumar, Rakesh and Mieritz, Lars, “Conceptualizing “Green IT” and data centre power and cooling issues”, Gartner Research Paper No. G00150322, (2007).
3. ³ A thin client is a device that typically only connects to a network and starts up a dedicated web browser, using a server for processing and storage.
4. ⁴ Power and cost calculations are estimates. Results will vary based on variables that include information provided by the user, the time the PC is in different power states, on battery or AC, the hardware configuration, variable electricity rates and the utility provider. HP advises users to use the information provided for reference only and to validate impact in their environment. Environmental calculations were based on U.S. EPA eGrid 2007 data found at www.epa.gov/egrid . Regional results will vary.