SUBJECT:

National Pledge Drive Supports Energy Efficiency

UC San Diego is one of the founding universities of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, which encourages participating universities to adopt green computing practices. "Power Down for the Planet" is a challenge program designed to encourage universities to get their students, faculty, and staff to reduce their IT power consumption to help fight against climate change. The challenge includes a competition to see which university can recruit the largest percentage of their campus community to pledge support to Climate Savers Computing. The challenge winner and the collective results of all participants will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2009.

For example, a university with 70,000 networked computers can save as much as $3 million per year just by activating power management features on all of its computers. That's the equivalent of removing 4,500 cars from the road for an entire year.

Most campus and personal computers can safely utilize settings to conserve energy. By pledging through "Power Down for the Planet" you can join UC San Diego students, faculty, and staff in the effort to reduce our environmental impact. Details on how to activate your computer's energy saving mode are at http://www.powerdownfortheplanet.org/pledge/.

Please check with your unit/departmental IT personnel to see if your work computer's energy saving features can safely be enabled. The pledge drive ends April 17th.

Russell Thackston Assistant Vice Chancellor - Auxiliary & Plant Services