Becoming “greener” has been a hot topic lately, not only amongst the general public but also in high-tech companies. Many businesses are looking into green tech as a way to save energy , save the environment, or to simply save money. One of the first things you must know when looking into conserving energy is what uses the most energy?
At the CEATEC conference this month in Japan, Toshiba and Intel announced some of their upcoming plans to better allow companies to monitor their energy usage. In this “Green Age,” it’s no surprise to see major players in the technology world coming forward with big developments that allow more regulation and monitoring of the amount of energy being used. Below are a few of the ecologically-forward changes and additions these two companies announced they will be implementing in 2012.
Intel has created an application that permits PC users to monitor the energy consumption of their PC. The application has an easy-to-read dashboard that organizes the data into graphs, charts, and statistics, which make it very user-friendly.
Toshiba is using it’s recent acquisition of Landish Gyr as part of its “smart home” offering. Landish Gyr specialize in smart-meters for homes. With this offering people can monitor the quantity of energy consumed throughout their homes. Also on the agenda is the development of “green cloud” technologies for a number of different industries ranging from city infrastructure to healthcare.
While these two companies have big plans for energy monitoring in 2012, it seems as though many organizations in the US are moving away from it, namely, Microsoft and Google. In June, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Hohm, their energy-monitoring service launched in 2009. Google also seems to be changing its green game by shutting down Google Powermeter, which they also launch in 2009.
We can see that though companies in the US are moving away from energy monitoring, companies in Japan are focused on it. What will the future be for the green technology world? It’s hard to say, but if you have any ideas or speculations about this, we would love to hear them!
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