Environmentalists called yesterday for public participation in a campaign that helps save energy through computer efficiency.
They are being encouraged to turn off their computers and other peripheral equipment, such as scanners, printers or speakers when they are not using the computers.
Liou Ming-lone (劉銘龍), chairman of the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation, said many of his students living in the school’s dormitory tend to leave their computers on 24 hours a day because they do not want to wait for the computer to restart. This has resulted in a tremendous waste of electricity, he said.
Liou said the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), an energy-saving campaign launched by Intel Corp and Google last year, has calculated that more efficient use of one computer would help reduce the emission of carbon dioxide by about 0.5 tonnes per year and help save about US$60 in electricity.
“In Taiwan, that means each computer, when used efficiently, could save 600 kilowatts of electricity a year, which equals NT$1,500,” he said.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics has calculated that there were approximately 104.2 million personal computers in the country, Liou said.
In that case, about 6.4 billion kilowatts of electricity could be saved a year, which could translate to a decrease of 4.09 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission, he said.
The foundation is the only non-profit organization in Taiwan that has joined CSCI.
Besides turning off the computers, the foundation also suggested a few energy-saving ideas for computer users. For example, users could change computer settings so that they automatically switch to standby mode after idling for 30 minutes.
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