Project of the Week: Cutting Budgets? Cut the Power!

We’re all being asked to cut back on our budgets these days – cuts are taking place in local, state and federal agencies across the country.


And while many of the budgetary decisions in the federal government will fall in the hands of the “super congress” this fall, there’s at least one way that each and every one of us can help the government save money.


What can we do to help? Save energy!


The federal government is the nation’s single largest energy consumer. For the fiscal year of 2010 it is estimated that the federal government spent $28.8 billion on energy consumption. With tightening budgets, and a growing demand to power our IT devices we use every day, we need to take control of our energy consumption!


In an effort to help control our energy use, we’re celebrating the 4th annual Power IT Down Day next week on August 26th. This event encourages civilian agencies, the military and industries that serve them to power down their computers, printers, monitors and other peripherals at the end of the workday in an effort to help reduce energy consumption for the weekend. For the 2nd straight year, Power IT Down Day takes place on a Friday, which means it is even more important to shut down your equipment to save more energy over the weekend.


Of course, this event is not just about saving money for the government, it is about taking those energy savings and putting them to good use. To demonstrate how the money saved could be put to good use, the Power IT Down Day Sponsors, HP, Citrix, GTSI and Intel are making a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project. Check out this recent blog post from Christina Morrison on the amazing work Wounded Warrior Project has done to help our warriors returning from the battlefield.


Turning off your IT equipment may not seem like much, but when we act together, we can truly make a difference!


Will you be powering down next Friday? Sign up on the Power IT Down website!

GovLoop is a proud Partner of Power IT Down Day.

Leave a Comment

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Sarah Ressler Wright

It seems like if government agencies made this a weekly mandate (as well as other green policies like using 2 sides of every piece of paper, saving items as PDFs rather than printing them, etc), that there would be so much energy saved that budgets would be far less crippled. Going green=saving green!

Paul Homan

I agree with Sarah. This should be a weekly occurrence (if not daily). It seems incredibly wasteful. Are there any arguments against powering down?