That's the name of Dell Computer's newly announced program to help offset the effect of computer energy consumption on the environment.

Donation amounts are based on expected average carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the production of electricity needed to power the systems over three years – for a notebook .42 tons and for a desktop 1.26 tons. The cost of the carbon offset is $4.75 per ton. It costs approximately $6.31 per tree planted. On average a tree will sequester 1.33 tons of CO2 over 70 years through the program. Thus, the offset donation required to neutralize the carbon impact for notebooks is $2 and $6 for desktops.

It's great to see industry giants take advantage of huge media events to promote an idea like this (Michael Dell announced Plant a Tree for Me at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday), but regular readers know that I'm an advocate for reducing electrical consumption first, and paying for offsets second, so I'd like to share the following story with you.

In the glut of pre-Christmas ads for 21st Century toys, a couple of carbon neutral tools caught my eye: the first, is a concept eco-laptop called the e-Book from LG Electronics in Korea (gotta have it!); the second, LocalCooling, is a free desktop application for PCs that optimizes your computer's power consumption by using a more effective power save mode (requires Windows XP and 2.5 MB).

According to LocalCooling, their goal is to introduce 100 million PC users to the application, which they estimate could prevent over 300 billion kilograms of CO2 emissions–in just the first year.

Now that's a BIG idea!

To bring this story home to Jackson, I was asking my friend Toby of Nuts & Bolts about the things he and his colleagues were doing to reduce their carbon footprint (which I'll be writing about in a future post). When I brought up LocalCooling, Toby said he hadn't heard of the application, but immediately made the following pledge:

Of the estimated 300+ computers we work with in the Jackson Hole area, we view 2007 as a great year to begin implementing power saving strategies to save money on energy and equipment wear and tear for our clients. We will begin working on a centralized way to calculate these numbers and the energy we are saving.

Sounds like every Nuts & Bolts' client is going to become a part of the carbon neutral movement.

Now that's a GOOD idea!

Carbon Neutral Journal's tips are brought to you by Nuts & Bolts.

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