How Windows XP contributes to global warming

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that no more than 10% of all PCs in use by organizations have power management enabled, and as a result are wasting large amounts of electricity and contributing to greenhouse gases. One major culprit may be Windows XP.

Unlike the Vista operating system, Windows XP does not give system administrators the ability to natively manage power settings on PCs over a network. That may be hindering adoption of the power management functions available in the operating system.

But XP isn't going away anytime soon, and EPA believes that PC power management is an obvious way to save power. It has gone as far as develop a source tool, EZ GPO (Group Policy Objects), and has made it freely available for download. This tool gives system administrators the ability to control power management over the network. It's not needed for Vista, which has these management controls included.

The EPA estimates that a typical 1,000-PC environment can save $40,000 annually by activating power management, which would reduce power use by 400,000 kWh -- enough electricity to light 220 homes annually. From a greenhouse gas perspective, it reduces gas emissions by 300 tons, or the annual emissions of 50 cars.