Green fix for Digital Education Revolution budget

In "Developing a Green IT strategy - Saving the planet, one classroom at a time" at the Australian Computers in Education Conference 2008 (ACEC'08), 2pm tomorrow, Mark Winter will propose power saving measures for computers in schools. He claims that this can save enough on power bills to resolve the dispute between the state and federal governments on funding of the Digital Education Revolution program:

“... states can save upwards of 50%-70% off their PC power consumption, that in turn saves money and CO2 emissions”. “The states can then use these savings to fund the installation of the new PC’s being allocated to them through the Digital Education Revolution (DER)”.

“We know that the Rudd Government’s “Digital Educational Revolution” Policy will change the way that the education of our youth is delivered, however at what cost”. “With the promised $1.2 bn in funding, more schools will have access to more PCs than ever before. More PCs means more energy consumption, which means higher electricity bills and greater carbon emissions” Winter said.

“NSW was allocated 74,838 PC’s in round one of the DER and with this comes a power bill to run these PC’s of around $4.6 million dollars per annum, so you can understand why Verity Firth, the NSW Education Minister is upset and is wanting clarification on who will be paying the ongoing costs associated with the scheme.” Mark went onto say.

“The NSW Education Minister has the ability to self fund the shortfall and can save $3.8 million in power consumption by mandating simple measures that all PC’s within school are centrally shut down when not in use. This will not only have substantial savings for the states, allowing them to use these savings to fund the ongoing costs it will also assist with reducing Australia’s carbon footprint”, Winter concluded. ..."

From: Australian Green IT initiative can resolve the federal governments funding crisis with the states around the Digital Education Revolution, Media Release, Computers Off Australia, 29 October 2008.

ps: Hope this makes sense. It was my suggestion, as one of the advisers to the CoA campaign. The Hon Julia Gillard MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education is speaking at ACEC'08 on Wednesday morning.

For more details on how government can reduce energy costs, see my report for the Envrionment Department . For measures individual teacher can take, see the CoA web site.