Intel Ireland's Lisa Harlowe, Michael Cullen and Cathy Cronin at the Reduce our Energy initiative one-year review at Intel's Leixlip, Co Kildare, campus. Image by Marc O'Sullivan
World Earth Day is in two days’ time, and here in Ireland Intel has released data for its Reduce our Energy initiative, whereby it worked with 10 local businesses and organisations close to its Leixlip, Co Kildare, campus in order to help them reduce their energy consumption via technology.
According to Intel, savings across the board from the participating organisations and businesses have so far amounted to 20,000 kWh of electricity per year.
Of late, it’s not just large corporations that are rethinking their energy strategies. Smaller businesses, especially SMEs, are embedding some form of sustainability strategy into their business planning in order to reduce their energy costs in the long run.
Intel said today it worked with 10 local businesses, a library and schools in Leixlip to help them passively monitor the amount of energy being consumed within their buildings through a power metering device and a display system.
It said the display system enabled the business owners to instantly see how much energy was being used at any given time.
Intel then set up a website called Reduceourenergy.com, so it could record this information every five minutes in order to provide live updates and reports on the participants’ energy usage.
Energy audits
Each of the participating entities also had an energy audit, before they set about adjusting their energy usage.
Confey College in Leixlip, for instance, made some minor changes in its PC room by turning off computers instead of leaving them on stand-by.
Based on this change, the college reduced its energy consumption by 8000 kWh of electricity per year. Apparently, this is equivalent to a saving of €1,300 per year and a reduction of more than six tonnes of CO2.
Sharing energy data
Intel said the 20,000 kWh of electricity per year in savings equates to a saving of €3,300 and equivalent to having three cars off the road permanently or 16 tonnes less of CO2.
Lisa Harlow, Intel Ireland’s external relations manager, said Intel would now release all of the technical details of how the project was constructed, as well as sharing the list of hardware used and the software which was written.
She said this would allow any other interested people or organisations to run similar energy-saving projects.
