Green Touch initiative targets improvement in energy efficiency

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London: Green Touch, a global consortium organized by Bell Labs, aims to improve the efficiency of communications networks. The consortium's goal is to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1,000 times more energy efficient than they are today. A thousand-fold reduction is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world's communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day. Green Touch brings together leaders in industry, academia and government labs to invent and deliver radical new approaches to energy efficiency that will be at the heart of sustainable networks in the decades to come. With its launch, the consortium also has issued an open invitation to all members of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) community to join forces in reaching this ambitious target. "Over the next decade billions more people will upload and share video, images and information over public and private networks as we communicate with each other in new, rich ways. We also expect ICT usage to dramatically increase as other industries use networks to reduce their own carbon footprints. This naturally leads to an exponential growth in ICT energy consumption which we, as an industry, have to jointly address. This consortium is unique in looking way beyond making incremental efficiency improvements and tapping into innovation and expertise from around the globe to achieve fundamental breakthroughs in ICT carbon emissions reduction," Gee Rittenhouse, Vice President of Research at Bell Labs and Consortium Lead. This 1000-fold efficiency target is based on research from Bell Labs that determined that today's information and communication technology (ICT) networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient then they are today. This conclusion comes from a Bell Labs' analysis of the fundamental properties of ICT networks and technologies (optical, wireless, electronics, processing, routing, and architecture) and studying their physical limits by applying established formulas such as Shannon's Law.1 To support its objectives the Green Touch Initiative will deliver - within five years - a reference network architecture and demonstrations of the key components required to realize this improvement. This initiative also offers the potential to generate new technologies and new areas of industry. "With the boom in broadband usage, ICT energy consumption is rapidly increasing and immediate steps need to be taken to address this trend and mitigate its impact," said Vernon Turner, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Enterprise Computing, Network, Consumer, Telecom and Sustainability at IDC, industry analyst firm. "What distinguishes the Green Touch Initiative is its commitment to a hugely ambitious yet quantifiable goal that is rooted in hard science. Its global profile and multi-disciplinary approach will accelerate the necessary fundamental rethinking and development of new technologies." The first meeting of the consortium will take place in February and will be dedicated to establishing the organization's five-year plan, first-year deliverables, and member roles and responsibilities.