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With efforts to fight climate change growing apace
around the world, the IT industry is also doing its bit, as the
world's largest technology fair starting next week in Germany aims
to show.
CeBIT, starting in the German
city of Hanover on Monday, brings together 5,500 tech firms all keen
to show off gadgets that are innovative, cutting edge and cool --
and this year also green.
Worldwide Internet usage needs
the equivalent of 14 power stations to power the required computers
and servers, producing the same amount of carbon emissions as the
entire airline industry, according to German magazine Stern.
And with energy prices rising
around the world, if the threat of climate change doesn't persuade
you to change then your rising electricity bill will.
Germany's biggest web hosting
company for instance, Berlin-based Strato -- home to 3.5 million
websites -- uses the same amount of electricity as a small town, and
power is the firm's single biggest cost item, Stern says.
And it is with this in focus, and
with some Gallic tech flair provided from this year's co-host
France, that CeBIT organisers hope to restore some of the event's
somewhat waning appeal.
The trade fair, which runs until
March 9 in Hanover's sprawling exhibition centre, is the world's
biggest tech gathering, leaving the likes of Las Vegas, Barcelona
and Berlin in the dark.
But this year has seen a five
percent fall in the number of exhibitors and a 10 percent drop in
the surface area they are using to display their wares. The event
has even been shortened by a day in an effort to cut costs.
In going green CeBIT organisers
have teamed up with the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group
comprising leading tech giants like Intel, Google and Microsoft
trying to lessen the industry's carbon footprint.
And exhibitors at CeBIT will be
getting in on the act.
Deutsche Telekom, for instance,
says its stand at CeBIT will be 100 percent powered by renewable
energy, while German PC maker Fujitsu Siemens will present
"Green PCs, intelligent cooling concepts, low power consumption
and innovative power management."
IBM, meanwhile, plans to unveil
an emissions-free computing centre model that uses energy recycling,
relying on a "smart heating and cooling circuit based on an
innovative water-cooling system implemented at chip level."
But is it all genuine concern
about the environment or just PR puff and greenwashing?
Pressure group Greenpeace will be
at CeBIT to decide, vowing to "cut through the corporate green
speak and see which companies and products are on the cutting edge
of environmental innovation," it says.
Bucking the trend will be Intel,
which plans to use CeBIT to unveil the veritable gas-guzzler of the
computer world: the 1000 watt PC for gamers, according to German
weekly Spiegel.
A normal PC uses just 80 watts,
and even in extreme cases gaming PCs running at full whack with high
performance graphic chips and running off several hard discs only
consume 600 watts, according to Spiegel.
Monday evening will see the fair
opened by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, sharing the limelight with
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Commission President Jose
Manuel Barroso and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Relations between the host
country and Sarkozy have been less than warm in recent weeks, but
France is guest of honour at this year's CeBIT with 150 exhibitors
flying the tricolore and showing off high tech a la francaise.
 --AFP
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