April 27, 2008

Does More E-mail = Less Carbon?

Bookmark and Share Email this story Print this post Add your comments

Research currently underway at Sun Microsystems is trying to measure the carbon footprint of individual e-mails, BusinessGreen reports.

The aim of the exercise is to try and prove, quantifiably, that e-mail has an environmental advantage over other methods of communication.

The research also hopes to enable firms to benchmark the carbon footprint of their own e-mail systems against best practices.

The resulting metric should allow firms to identify the policies and systems they could implement to ensure the carbon footprint from their emails are as low as possible, said Richard Barrington, head of sustainability and public policy at Sun in the UK.

“It is not an easy task but we are looking at the mail servers, the different software applications used, the network devices and trying to extrapolate the energy used back to the email itself,” Barrington said.

Sun recently was named one of the “100 Best Corporate Citizens” and also made Infoworld’s Green 15.

Bookmark and Share Email this story Print this post Add your comments

Advertisers

Join the Discussion

Get EL Daily in your inbox, subscribe to free newsletter

Recent Daily News [ see all ]

  • 11/06/2009
  • 11/05/2009
  • 11/04/2009

Industry Voices [ see all ]

Greening the Automotive Supply Chain

Greening the Automotive Supply Chain

A Roadmap for a Renewable Energy Partnership

A Roadmap for a Renewable Energy Partnership

Forest Carbon Core to Climate Change Deal

Forest Carbon Core to Climate Change Deal

ARPA-E Deserves Support

ARPA-E Deserves Support

VCS and CarbonFix Tops in Review of Forestry Carbon Standards

VCS and CarbonFix Tops in Review of Forestry Carbon Standards