Jun. 13--Google and Intel threw their weight behind an initiative Tuesday to help blunt the impact of global warming by bringing greater energy efficiency to personal computers and servers.

An estimated 2 percent of worldwide carbon emissions comes from producing the electricity that powers computers and telecommunications gear. The two high-tech titans hope to reduce that by 54 million tons of carbon dioxide a year -- the equivalent of th output of about 11 million cars. They are being joined in their energy-saving push -- named the Climate Savers Computing Initiative -- by other big-name technology companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, International Business Machines, Dell and Mic osoft. About half the energy in a personal computer and about one-third of the energy in a server is wasted in the form of heat, said Urs Holzle, a senior vice president at Google.

The result is a lot of energy expended for "no good purpose," Holzle said during a presentation at Google's campus in Mountain View. By improving the machines' energy efficiency, the companies hope to show themselves as good stewards of an envi ronment under increasing stress from global warming, where increased levels of carbon in the atmosphere threaten Earth with higher temperatur s. Together, they hope to use their clout to influence the design of the approximately 250 million desktops, laptops and servers -- business computers that hold data and back-office programs -- sold each year to companies and consumers, even if the improve ents come with slightly higher purchase prices.

Climate Savers intends to reduce energy loss by urging the computer industry to use more efficient power converters and voltage regulators, big culprits of energy waste. The aim is for these devices to show a steady improvement in efficiency between now and 2010. By then, the group hopes power converters will be 93 percent efficient, compared with an 80 percent target this year. Targets for the voltage regulators were not available Tuesday, officials from the companies said. The organization intends to influence demand by calling on Fortune 500 companies to buy computers with the energy-efficiency improvements and educating consumers.

Technology to accomplish the group's goal is currently available but hasn't been used because of added costs, said Pat Gelsinger, a senior vice president at Intel. He said more efficient converters and regulators should add $20 to the cost of a desktop computer and $30 to the cost of a server, prices that should go down over time. Along with using energy more efficiently, the improvements should lead to better computers, said Google co-founder Larry Page, who made a brief appearance at Tuesday's kickoff. It is no fun having a fan blow constantly in a machine, he said. "The power computers are using is increasing," Page said.

"We realized we could make a very fast, very significant impact on power usage." If the more energy-efficient machines are adopted by buyers at a moderate pace, energy use by computers could be cut in half in 2010 and the cost savings could be $5.5 billion, the group claims. "We have a great deal of industry interest," Gelsinger said. "Manufacturers are committing to meet these initial targets." The organization also has the support of the Environmental Protection Agency and PG&E. "The toughest year for this initiative is the next six months -- (in) getting the momentum," Holzle said. He added that servers Google has deployed since 2003 already meet the 2007 target, and some achieve the 93 percent goal.

Contact Mark Boslet at mboslet@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5425.