[Engineering Feature]
It Isn't Easy Being Green
With most of the industry finally on board with RoHS, the eco-design focus switches to the slew of emerging energy-efficiency requirements—and how best to comply.
Now that the dust is beginning to settle on the European Union’s Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, what’s next? What new environmental legislation will change the way the indus- try designs its products? It pretty much comes down to two key words: energy efficiency.
The EU will phase in its Energy-Using Products (EuP) directive beginning in August 2007. Like RoHS when it was first introduced, the EU is still tweaking the language of EuP, which calls for the development of more energy-efficient products. Its impact will be significant, with much of the industry already working on EuP-compliant designs.
“The whole idea of managed power is definitely gaining traction in the industry,” says Martin Mason, director of silicon product marketing at Actel Corp. “When chip companies are playing the environmental angle, you know there’s some kind of megatrend going on here.”
The United States—which has lagged well behind the curve until recently in developing, promoting, and procuring environmentally sound products—is beginning to pick up the slack. Curiously, both the federal government and major corporations are leading the way.
In January, President George W. Bush signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to consider environmental issues when purchasing information technology (IT) equipment. Executive Order 13423—Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management— directs federal agencies to include eco-friendly design, energy efficiency, materials choices, acquisition, specifications, distribution, and recycling of electronics in its procurement planning.
With a federal IT budget that exceeds $65 billion, the industry is paying close attention to the new White House order. EO 13423 currently covers only desktop and laptop computers and monitors. In time, though, it will add other electronic products like TVs, imaging devices (printers and copiers), cellular phones, PDAs, and computer servers.
Implementing the policies of the EO requires electronics purchased by federal agencies to meet at least 95% of the requirements of Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registered products, unless there’s no EPEAT standard for such products. Computers and monitors also will require Energy Star features.
SETTING THE STANDARD EPEAT requirements are based on a set of standards established by several stakeholders, including industry companies, under IEEE 1680, published in 2006. I specifies 23 required and 28 optional criteria across eight areas of environmental impact covering all product life-cycle stages. IEEE 1680 integrates a wide variety of existing regulations and standards, including the Energy Star program and the EU’s RoHS and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives.
Putting additional pressure on anyone who hopes to do business with the U.S. government, the new EO also calls for every agency to “seek to reduce” the environmental and energy impact on how they purchase electronic equipment. That means they must take into account improvements in the design and materials choices of new electronic equipment.
The EO also requires federal agencies to report their progress on procuring “green” electronics at least annually. Federal agencies with special requirements—the Pentagon is one example—will be given more room to operate when it comes to the electronics hardware they’re allowed to procure.
It’s not clear at this point how much of the federally procured electronics is actually “green” by EPEAT standards. But a multi-agency committee headed by the White House Office of the Federal Environmental Executive (OFEE) has been meeting regularly to develop a plan on how to create a database for this information.
EPEAT TAKES ON NEW LIFE Some research indicates that companies are already picking up the pace in adopting EPEAT-registered products and Energy Star requirements. The Green Electronics Council (GEC), the agency that administers EPEAT, says that about 36 million EPEAT-registered products were sold over a seven-month span last year (July through December).
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