Verdiem, a Seattle company whose name means “Green Day” in Latin, is making a tidy profit off the fact that we just can’t seem to turn our computers off when we’re not using them. Just a few weeks ago, the company reached the half-million mark for PCs now using their energy-saving software, SURVEYOR.

Verdiem’s SURVEYOR software works by providing centralized management of networked computers to shift them into lower power states when they are not being used. The company estimates that the average office PC can reduce its power consumption by 30% when using SURVEYOR.

CEO Kevin Klustner states, “We’ve created a business here by taking advantage of the fact that all PCs come with lower power settings that can be invoked. The problem is that end users either ignore them, or override them, for whatever reason…Department of Energy studies show that 90% of the end users never do that.”

You can go to their website (www.verdiem.com) to check out a live tally of not only the estimated kilowatt hours of energy and dollars saved by their customers, but also the amount of greenhouse gas reductions (and automobile removal equivalency) the software has provided for so far.

Current clients of Verdiem using SURVEYOR include the state of California, Citigroup, and a number of cities and school systems.

Via Veridiem Press Release

Well, we're not quite to the point where our laptops are solar-powered and our server farms run on sewage. So for now, let's set our sights on some realistic intermediate goals, like the ones set forth by the good folks at The Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a consortium consisting of virtually every major player in the PC industry (Intel, AMD, Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Sun Microsystems... the list goes on and on). CSCI has an ambitious gameplan: reduce power consumed by computers worldwide by 50% over the next three years.

I know that sounds far out, but when you consider that the average lifespan of a computer today is somewhere between three and five years, that's 60-100% of all computers in use today replaced by 2010. The average desktop produced today wastes over half the power delivered to it, and the average server more than a third... so simply improving hardware energy efficiency, implementing virtualization, and using automated power management software might be enough to meet these goals. As part of a push to see improved technologies brought to market, CSCI has launched a catalog featuring many of the latest green offerings:

With 300 products, the Initiative’s new online catalog offers individuals and enterprises a comprehensive and searchable listing of Climate Savers Computing-compliant desktop PCs, laptops, servers, power supplies, power supply components, motherboards and power management software.

Unfortunately, this kinda celebrates obsolescence, and as computers use about as much energy being produced as they do during their lives, short life spans are also something that we need to deal with. Understandably, that's a problem that HP and Dell are less interested in solving.

Browsing through, one sees a lot of product listings containing third-party green certifications, such as EPEAT silver and gold, Energy Star 4.0, RoHS, and 80+. Although there are many consumer-level products available, including desktop and laptop offerings from HP, Dell, and Lenovo, this seems mainly geared towards IT professionals - servers, power supplies, converters, and rectifiers make up the bulk of the catalog. Though you can't do any holiday shopping on the site itself, it's a great place to start when searching for energy-efficient computers, components, and software.

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