VIA Carbon Offset Program – Renewable Energy

VIA Carbon Offset Programs offer a range of investments designed to sequester or offset carbon dioxide produced by the VIA line of Carbon Free products. One of these programs utilizes renewable energies such as solar and wind power to achieve this goal of carbon neutrality.

• Renewable Energy Overview
• Offset Calculation
• Wind Power
• VIA Solar Computing Community Centers
• SunMark: VIA Solar Computing Rating System
  

Renewable Energy Overview

Renewable Energy sources are not just logical but necessary. The decades of reliance on regular energy sources, such as oil, coal, gas and nuclear have shown how destructive and unsustainable each one is. Clean energies such as solar and wind provide power without the pollution. Being able to have corresponding technologies that work with these great energy supplies is a big part of the VIA Green Computing initiative.

By powering whole systems based on power efficient VIA C7-D processors, carbon produced by traditional power stations to run VIA C7-D processors in other parts of the world can be offset by the replacement value of powering complete systems through non-polluting means.

The use of renewable energy raises the key issue of power efficiency of VIA Carbon Free products. The 2.0GHz VIA C7-D Carbon Free processor has a maximum design power (TDP) of 20 watts, whereas other desktop processors consume much more power: for example, the 2.66GHz Intel® Pentium® D has a TDP of 130 watts and the 2.4GHz AMD Athlon™ 64 of 89 watts. Therefore, the energy consumption of the VIA C7-D is one-tenth that of the Intel Pentium D and half that of the AMD Athlon 64. When combined with design changes in other components like monitors, power supplies and fanless options you change the whole face of computing, making it far more efficient and considerably more sustainable through dramatically reduced carbon emissions.

Offset Calculation

When calculating carbon offsets there are many variables which need to be factored into the equation, including processor power, usage profiles, averaged processor lifetime, and the appropriate kilowatt conversion, production measurements, and an appropriate renewable system to effectively offset the produced carbon.

To calculate CPU carbon production you first need to determine the usage profile. This needs to take into account average usage, as most people do not run their computers at peak performance all the time. This data can be calculated as follows:

To determine the actual carbon production requires the final calculations:

Based upon these calculations the carbon emission for the three processors reads as follows:

Wind Power

Electricity generated by wind turbines doesn't dirty the air we breathe or emit pollutants like other energy sources—that means less smog, less acid rain and fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Because it is a clean energy source, wind energy also reduces costs associated with air pollution, including both healthcare and environmental costs. What's more, its low operating costs and short construction lead times mean it can provide low cost, clean energy quicker and more conveniently than traditional power plants.

Wind energy is cost competitive compared to other fuel sources (like natural gas) and it is the least expensive of all renewable energy sources. Because the fuel is free, wind energy can provide a stable, long-term price for power production. The cost of electricity generated by modern wind farms has declined 80% since 1980 and is expected to continue to decline as the technology improves and the market for this source develops.

Another advantage of wind energy is that it is local. Wind projects keep more energy dollars in the communities where projects are located and provide a steady income through lease payments to the landowners. Wind projects also pay significant property taxes and state taxes each year and create local jobs. Unlike oil, the wind is not affected by international conflicts or embargoes, making it immune to supply problems or price shocks.

Anemon Enerji Wind Farm – Turkey

VIA's most recent investment in renewable energy is in a 30.4 MW wind farm in Turkey: Anemon Enerji. The new construction consists of a grid connecting 38 wind turbines and has anticipated electricity output of 108,000 MWh per year, which is expected to reduce the equivalent of 74,700 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. In the absence of income generated from investments such as that from VIA, operation of the wind farm and resulting environmental benefits, would be unachievable.

Anemon Enerji has been certified by The Gold Standard, a certification scheme that recognizes the best projects in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Joint Implementation (JI) and voluntary offset markets. Over 49 non governmental organizations, including Greenpeace, REEEP, and WWF International, endorse the Gold Standard method.

VIA Solar Computing Community Centers

The renewable energy carbon offset program encompasses the development of computer centers that are completely powered by renewable 'clean' energy sources, such as solar power, often in the regions where the VIA Carbon Free products are purchased. The centers involve a set up of 3, 6 or 12 VIA Certified Carbon Free Computer Systems, which are exclusively powered by renewable energy. The zero carbon emissions produced by these facilities offsets the reduced carbon produced by the VIA Carbon Free range of devices operating off of regular carbon producing power grids, such as oil, coal, gas, etc.  As an additional benefit, providing public access to these facilities also directly contends with issues of the global digital divide, by providing ICTs to those who may previously have not had access.

One such example of a VIA Solar Computing Community Center is in Samoa, where a 3 PC set-up was installed in the remote village of Ulutogia to bring connectivity to local communities; read more about this project here.

Over the averaged 20-year lifespan of solar panels (typical warranty for photovoltaic panels) a VIA Solar Computing Centre offsets the minimum carbon production of approximately 1,938 VIA C7-D processors:

SunMark: VIA Solar Computing Rating System

The savings of carbon production through the use of renewable energy sources to power VIA computing community centers can be best illustrated with SunMark™, the number of processors for which the carbon production is offset. In this diagram, each sun represents one thousand (1000) processors for which the total carbon production over three years is offset per community center:

Renewable energy is here to stay. It is cleaner, it is reliable, it is environmentally friendly, it is responsible, it is better in every way. Most of all, it is energy that can be accessed virtually everywhere, without having to exhaust finite natural resources or further contaminate the Earth through the transport of poisonous natural resources such as oil, coal, gas and nuclear. Renewable energy sources can be developed right where they are needed.