Thanks to everyone to attended yesterday's webinar with Andrew Fanara from the Energy Star Program, at the US EPA.  You can access the recording of the WebEx here if you missed it or would like to share it with colleagues.

Here are some of the comments and questions that we discussed in the webinar, I'd like to invite you to post your responses here!

Comments

As servers become more "standardised" in terms of off-the-shelf specification, I'm sure the Energy Star will be easier to assess and award.

Just as there has been a tendency / trend towards PCs, laptops etc having the same kind of "shape", so servers will also, in my view.  All the CMS-type servers for example.

There may even be a trend or pressure in the opposite direction, in other words, starting from an Energy Star-type requirement, servers could be designed to apply Energy Star requirements first, for the type of application second.

IBM is trying to promote the benefits of lower energy use by having a "dumb terminal" network, rather than the fully functional client-server networks most people have now. It's going back in time!

Questions:

Jo Abbess - Is the Energy Star going to apply just to servers, or the style of network (i.e. thin client versus fat client)?

Bruce Boerner, Xcel Energy - Are manufacturers getting their servers energy star rated under the current specification? Is the data available?

Jo Abbess - What do you think of Google's approach to reducing non-renewable energy demand?

Do you have any idea whether some of the new CPU technologies (the chemistry, and also optical and nano and quantum concepts) will help with reducing energy demand?

In your view, do you think that of all applications, e-mail is the biggest consumer of power?