A few weeks ago, I attended the Dartmouth Energy Council's final meeting of the year. Having attended Energy Council meetings all year long, I had come to expect very little from the administrators and faculty who convene every other month to review the College's energy guidelines and propose new ways to cut energy costs. The meetings that I have attended have all started with a report that energy use has gone up by about five percent over the previous year. This is followed by some very general discussion and a few new ideas until the hour has passed and the meeting is over.
But at the last meeting, things took a different course. After the regular graphs and reports on rising energy costs, the council turned its attention to the energy demands of the 9,000 computers at Dartmouth. A few of us had suggested at previous meetings that all new computers be retrofitted with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved Energy Star software. This feature allows a computer to go into a low wattage "sleep mode" while not in use. Almost all the new Apple models are Energy Star compatible -- all they need is for someone to install the software and turn the function on.
The advantages of this simple step became clear as the engineers at the Council meeting made some quick calculations of the potential energy savings. The most conservative estimate of energy reduction with Energy Star was 50 watts. Multiply that by 20 hours (the average time students in our class leave their computers on), a 75 percent idle time factor, 4,000 student and 200 days a year. Then convert to kilowatt hours costing ten cents and you get $60,000 a year in potential savings! And that does not even include all the non-student computers on campus!
Not only is this an enormous amount of money for a college looking to cut costs in the future, but it also means a reduction in pollution and our dependence on non-renewable resources.
So why hasn't this been done already? Why doesn't Kiewit automatically retrofit computers with Energy Star software before they are sold?
One answer came out in the last Energy Council meeting. The Kiewit people had until now not seriously considered these ideas. Without a mandate from the Energy Council or money to do the retrofits, they have retained their policy of providing computers at the lowest cost, with only those features which the user needs. Since the user generally does not pay directly for his/her energy demands, there has been little interest in energy saving measures.
But the fact is, we as students pay for these inefficiencies. It simply does not make sense for the College to bankroll rising energy bills each year when we could take some simple steps to reduce costs. As evidenced by the recently released Committee on Environmental Policies for College Operations (CEPCO) report, administrators have thought about these issues. Unfortunately, however, few have been willing to look for creative solutions and really make a commitment to implementation.
If it is going to cost Kiewit too much to do the retrofit, then the money should come from somewhere else. It is a piddling investment with enormous returns -- potentially over $100,000 all non-student computers were retrofitted as well!
The Energy Council needs to take an active role to ensure that Energy Star software is installed on the computers sold to the Class of 1999. Hopefully, success on this project will prompt the Council to become more involved in other energy matters where creative ideas and small investments can lead to great savings.
In the meantime, we can do their part by turning our computers off we go to bed or leave for the day. Shutting a computer off does not damage it and will lead to campus-wide savings. We also need to remember that as much as we love our computers at Dartmouth, they are only tools, and like all tools, can be misused. You'll rest better at night without the buzz of your machine will feel better during the day knowing that you are not contributing to pollution and waste at Dartmouth.
