May 5, 2008—Enterprise Rent-A-Car announced that this summer it will complete a multi-year rollout of a new rental transaction system that will streamline the company’s rental processes and enable Enterprise to cut its annual CO2 emissions by 6.5 million pounds—a reduction of nearly 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per branch office per year.
The new system—ECARS 2.0—connects the reservations, billing and reporting operations of more than 7,000 Enterprise rental offices around the world. Instead of using personal computers for ECARS 2.0, Enterprise is deploying a network of 45,000 energy-saving thin client terminals, operated through 743 terminal servers, to connect its rental offices throughout the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, and Puerto Rico.
Hewlett-Packard helped develop the system, which is also less expensive than using PCs and does not compromise operating requirements. Thin clients use only 13.6 watt-hours and 2.4 watt-hours of electricity in active and passive states, respectively, compared with the 77.1 watt-hours and 1.8 watt-hours consumed by PCs.
Enterprise is a contributor member of The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems. For more information about Enterprise’s comprehensive environmental stewardship platform, visit online.
