It seems like Silicon Valley’s giants are in a race to out-green one another. Hewlett-Packard said today it will buy 80 gigawatts hours of renewable energy from wind farm operator Airtricity for an undisclosed sum, to be used at a number of its facilities in Ireland. H-P hopes the one-year contract, part of its goal to make 90 percent of their energy consumption in Ireland renewable, will save them $40,000 and prevent 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted.
H-P (HPQ) also said it will install a one-megawatt solar array for a printer manufacturing plant in San Diego, generating about 10 percent of the facility’s power. Through a 15-year maintenance contract with SunPower (SPWR), H-P hopes to save $750,000 over the next decade and a half and will reduce CO2 emissions by 500 tons a year.
H-P has been trying to be greener, especially after being criticized by environmentalists like Greenpeace for allegedly having large amounts of chemicals in products like laptops. H-P also says its has achieved a goal of recycling 1 billion pounds of electronics. It now aims to recycle another billion by pounds 2010.
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