Scientists recently warned us about how much our computer use is costing the planet, so it was inevitable that attention would turn to ways of making these machines a little bit more green. A Dutch student who helped pioneer the world’s first carbon-neutral computer room told Radio Netherlands Worldwide much of the project was simply based on common sense.

Ewoud de Kok is a fourth-year student in econometrics at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) who won a competition to help make the place more planet-friendly. After explaining his plan to cut carbon emissions he set about finding a few practical solutions.

Half the energy
The UvA’s new computer room features special lighting with LED bulbs, which use half the energy of the ones they replaced. But the other main change is what Ewoud calls ‘PC power management’, which basically involves making sure the 250 computers are on sleep-mode when nobody is using them. So far, so straightforward. But it was an idea, says Ewoud, that was hard to put in to practise.

“Actually, PC power management is really simple. But to do it on your laptop it takes five minutes, to do it in a whole university took one and a half years.”

Big impact
So, has something as obvious as changing the settings on a computer's drop-down menu made a big dent on the UvA’s electricity bill? Ewoud says it is impressive how such a small change can have such a big impact.

“The energy use of this computer room was the same as that of 26 households per year and we reduced that to the equivalent of 12 households through PC power management and the new light bulbs. And then we generate the same amount of energy on a yearly basis that is being used.”

That energy is the third, and most ambitious, strand of Ewoud’s project and involves a series of solar panels on the UvA’s roof. The long tubes cover an area of 300m² and are suspended above a white surface that reflects the sun and helps them store power.

Attracting interest
There is currently only one computer room at the UvA that is CO²-neutral but other students have been inspired by Ewoud and are planning similar projects. Ewoud has also had interest from the universities of Maastricht and Tilburg in the Netherlands, which hope to follow suit. He says his success has been based on focussing as much on the financial benefits as saving the world.

“Economics students think of sustainability as a left-wing talk, and what I wanted to show them was that it’s really pure business. It’s business and it’s good for the environment, and these two things have to be married.”

And it’s an idea the University of Amsterdam clearly agrees with, as a spokesman told Radio Netherlands:

“The CO²-neutral computer room is a good example of the way the University of Amsterdam approaches the issue of sustainability. We have committed to this concept and will apply it to all aspects of our organisation.

“In the years to come we will work on upgrading our accommodation, we’re investing hundreds of millions of euros in this.”