ENERGY conservation remains in the least of the priorities of companies when purchasing computers even if this is causing their electricity bills to rise by up to 10 times, a study commissioned by Lenovo found.
Vicky Agorilla, Lenovo Philippines country manager, said there is a need to raise the level of awareness of businesses in the country on the cost savings if they will shift to computers that have built-in energy saving features.
“When they go to the stores to buy [computers], they usually ask first what are the features and then the price, serviceability and [safety]. If they [are concerned] about energy consumption, [they only ask] if these consume less electricity?’ But there are some who are already conscious about it,” Agorilla told the BusinessMirror.
She said the behavior of Philippine corporate buyers is consistent with those in other countries based in a study Lenovo commissioned on Corporate PC Trends and Buyer Behavior Survey that was conducted by ZDNet and Connection Research.
The survey revealed that acquisition practices, such as consistent green procurement policies, are practiced by only 20.7 percent of the respondents. Only 26 percent communicate firm policies that employees should switch off their PCs after working hours.
According to a report of research firm Gartner, companies waste $4 billion yearly in powering PCs that are not in use, and the lack of system to manage PC energy consumption can cause firms electricity bills to rise by 10 times.
Agorilla said Lenovo’s response to this is its “Think Green” approach to computing across multiple areas including eco-friendly materials selection, creating energy efficient products, product packaging, and product stewardship.
She said there is now a growing number of enterprises who are looking at global environmental product marks such as the GreenGuard, EPEAT (or Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) and Energy Star in their purchasing strategy.
Agorilla said Lenovo computers are made to save on power consumption.
“We build products that require less power consumption, with faster boot-up, shutdown feature and applications so you conserve energy,” she said.
The survey also showed that buyers consider safe data access and mobility as among the prime considerations in buying PCs.
“When they buy PCs, they should be able to use them safely anytime, anywhere. So it should have longer battery life and can subscribe to new technologies,” Agorilla said.
Also, the survey showed an increasing preference to cloud computing as consumer begin to look at saving files in the cloud better than when saving these in their computer hardware.
