"There's been a lot of talk about efforts (that) everybody's doing, steps they are undertaking in terms of greening," said Ricky Banaag, Intel Technology Philippines Inc. country manager, who explained that Intel's approach to "eco-technology" is driven through four pillars: sustainable manufacturing, energy-efficient performance, design for the environment, and policy and industry.
According to Banaag, Intel has long been working on reducing the environmental impact of the company's operations through various initiatives like: solid waste and consumer recycling to reduce e-waste, packaging reductions of 16-40% which decreased number of shipments and fuel consumption, and the pursuit of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for fabrication plants and buildings, among many others.
In the next five years, Banaag said Intel has the following environmental goals: to reduce absolute global warming gas footprint by 2012 from 2007 levels; reduce energy consumption per chip 5% per year from 2007 through 2012; ensure that Intel products maintain energy efficiency for the next two product generations; reduce water use per chip by 2012 from 2007 levels; reduce generation of chemical waste per chip by 10% by 2012 from 2007 levels; and recycle 80% of chemical and solid waste generated per year.
In terms of the products they will be releasing, Banaag says the company will continue to focus on delivering performance without compromising energy efficiency. The official said this is why the company has been generating better power by adding or improving cores on the CPU instead of just increasing processor core speed. Intel's newest 45nm processors are, likewise, lead- and halogen-free, the official said. Banaag likewise touted the use of solid-state drives in the future since, according to him, the requirements for cooling an SSD are much less. "Expect to have greater than a 5x reduction in power with the transition to SSDs," he said.
Banaag also shared that Intel, along with Google and the World Wildlife Fund, has been actively promoting the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which aims to improve computing energy efficiency by 50% (by collectively saving $5.5 billion in energy costs) as well as to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 54 million tons per year.