‘Green Touch’ unites industry, academics on IT efficiency goals

Major information technology and telecommunications companies are joining forces with academic researchers around an outsized goal: Making communications networks 1,000 times more energy efficient.

The “Green Touch” initiative launched Monday combines companies and institutes including AT&T, French telecom giant Alcatel-Lucent, China Mobile, chip maker Freescale Semiconductor, the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, and many others.

The consortium is organized by Bell Labs, which is the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent.

It is “dedicated to fundamentally transforming communications and data networks, including the Internet, and significantly reducing the carbon footprint of ICT [Information and Communications Technology] devices, platforms and networks.”

“By 2015, our goal is to deliver the architecture, specifications and roadmap — and demonstrate key components — needed to reduce energy consumption per user by a factor of 1000 from current levels,” the consortium’s website states.

The group will hold its first meeting in February to lay out a five-year plan, first-year “deliverables” and hash out member roles and responsibilities, according to the announcement today.

If Green Touch can reach its goals, it will help take a large bite out of energy consumption. According to the Department of Energy, information technology and telecommunications facilities account for three percent of all U.S. power use.