A U.S. Senate Committee heard testimony on Improving Energy Efficiency Through Technology and Communications Innovation. Witnesses included Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel; Adrian Tuck, Chief Executive Officer, Tendril Networks; Kathrin Winkler, Chief Sustainability Officer, EMC2 Corporation; and Lorie Wigle, General Manager, Eco-Technology Program Office, Intel Corporation.
Some notes from the testimony:
- Sprint has expanded its commitment to green-power use, recently announcing an agreement with Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) that facilitated the building of the Spearville, KS Wind Farm. As part of that agreement, Sprint agreed to purchase 87M kilowatt hours per year for its 200-acre Overland Park, KS, headquarters campus from
KCP&L via the Spearville, KS wind farm. - Sprint's network consumes approximately 80 percent of its total corporate-energy use.
- Sprint has a partnership with the Department of Energy to conduct alternative-energy research and
currently works with two national laboratories -- Sandia in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. Their projects include energy storage and photovoltaic-panel research. - Sprint has already deployed more than 250 hydrogen fuel cells at cell sites, with more installations planned. Sprint is also using solar-powered energy at cell sites in California and New York.
- Sprint has committed to absolutely reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2017 and to increase its use of renewable energy to 10 percent by 2017.
- Over a 20-month period, Sprint has significantly reduced its IT based power consumption by retiring more than 3,850 servers.
- Sprint is launching a new, vastly expanded wireless handset buyback program that offers a financial incentive, in the form of instant account credit, to current and new Sprint customers who turn in up to three eligible wireless devices.
- In June 2009, Intel hosted an IEEE meeting in Santa Clara that brought in energy industry experts to discuss creation of open smart grid standards.
An archived webcast is online.http://tinyurl.com/y85vr49http://
