The IT energy drain on school budgets can be better managed. A survey of IT public-sector professionals found that Most organization care about reducing energy consumption and significant savings are realistic. However, lack of information and competing priorities impede energy-reduction. Many available tools for efficiency go unused.

The CDW_G 2008 Energy Efficient IT (E2IT) Report found that K-12 institutions are least confident in their knowledge of energy efficiency. Fifty-seven percent say they do not know everything they could do to improve efficiency; that compares to 47 percent of the other groups. Seventy-six percent of K-12 IT departments say that they lack a way to isolate and measure their IT energy consumption, creating a major barrier to energy efficiency

When organizations have access to information about their energy use and manage energy consumption, substantial energy savings are possible. The report found that 39 percent of IT professionals whose organizations have energy management initiatives successfully reduced their total IT energy costs by as much as 40 percent annually by employing a range of measures such as:

• Buying equipment with low-power/low-wattage processors
• Buying ENERGY STAR 4.0 qualifying devices
• Training employees to shut down their equipment when it is not in use
• Implementing server consolidation, optimization and virtualization
• Making full use of power management tools incorporated into equipment as diverse as desktop devices and load-shedding uninterruptible power supplies in data centers

CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G), a wholly owned subsidiary of CDW Corporation, provides technology solutions for federal, state and local government agencies, as well as educational institutions at all levels.

For a copy of the complete CDW-G Energy Efficient IT Report, please visit http://www.cdwg.com/e2it

Source: CDW-G press release, CDW-G Report: Ninety Percent of IT Professionals Care About Energy Efficient IT (E2IT); Less Than Half of Organizations Have It