British businesses could save £78m in electricity bills
and slash CO2 emissions by 485,000
tonnes a year by switching from PCs to thin clients, researchers
have claimed.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany used thin
clients from Igel Technology to
investigate the power and CO2
emissions of thin clients against traditional business PCs, and
discovered significant power, ecological and financial savings.
“Energy consumption when in operation was up to 50% lower than
for conventional PCs,” said Dr Hartmut Pflaum, a Fraunhofer
researcher. “While PCs consume about 85W on average, thin clients
including their server get by with 40W to 50W. In view of climate
change and the need to reduce CO2
emissions, this is an important factor,” he said.
Igel said that when using a conservative estimate of 10 million
business desktop PCs in operation around the UK, businesses could
save a total of £78m a year and cut
CO2 emissions by 485,000 tonnes,
if they switched to thin clients.
Igel estimated such a reduction in
CO2 emissions would remove the
equivalent environmental impact of 85,000 average UK households
each year.
Accessing information stored on a server, thin clients have no
moving parts and little memory, whilst maintaining most PC
functionality. Thin clients therefore use less power and can be
centrally managed.
The Igel sponsored thin client research can be viewed at:
www.igel.com
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