In this Section
- The new environmental imperative
- The new marketplace
- The new arena of community
The new environmental imperative: innovation for sustainability
There is little debate today that the impact of environmental degradation is real and quantifiable. And there is also a growing consensus that the health of our planet must be addressed if human society is to develop in a sustainable manner. Doing so will not be easy. To preserve our resources requires the development of new systems to monitor environmental impacts and new solutions to limit them.
From the escalating cost of energy to growing concern about climate change, energy efficiency has become a critical global challenge—creating both an imperative and an opportunity for IBM innovation.
For every dollar spent on computer hardware, 50 cents are spent on power and cooling—and that ratio will increase to 1:1 by 2012. IBM, with the world’s largest commercial IT infrastructure—8 million square feet of data centers on six continents—is already innovating on multiple levels. By 2010, we expect to double our computing capacity without increasing our centers’ power consumption, saving 5 billion kilowatt-hours of energy per year. We will do this through initiatives such as:
- Project Big Green: An initiative announced in May 2007 to devote $1 billion annually to products and services that can increase the energy efficiency of the average data center by as much as 42 percent.
- Cool Blue Portfolio: Technologies and solutions that reduce the heat servers produce, improve management of their energy use and more.
- Microprocessor innovation: Our newest POWER6 chip can double performance at virtually unchanged power usage. A new “airgap” manufacturing process can make our next-generation chips 15 percent more efficient.
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2007 IBM Corporate Responsibility Report
A new model of global citizenship among individuals, organizations and society at large.