Open Computing Alliance

Green IT

The Computer and Telecommunications Industry and the Environment

The role of IT in combating climate change is well known, however this is not yet fully reflected in the policy of either governments or companies. Increased use of the new technologies can also lead to substantial financial savings. A solution which saves the planet and improves the balance sheets at the same time, is certainly something governments and companies cannot overlook when developing their policies.

Information and communications technology (ICT) is a critical component in helping the world to meet the energy challenges of the 21st Century. The ICT industry is committed to achieving even greater energy efficiency in our products. Perhaps more importantly, innovation in ICT enables greater energy savings throughout all sectors of the global economy.

The Open Computing Alliance recognizes sound environment policies benefit society as a whole and that IT equipment should play its role in energy conservation for the benefit of the environment. Energy efficiency though industry driven, voluntary initiatives and tech-neutral standards (e.g. the U.S. EPA's Energy Star program and energy saving programs in Europe and elsewhere) and innovative "cradle-to-cradle" eco-design and manufacturing with strong "green software patent" protection and special e-skills training and certifications for wind power and other alternative energy providers, is addressing this. The disposal of unused computer equipment is a key element of a larger issue of general end of life waste disposal faced by all communities.　

More importantly, most estimates are that the IT industry is only responsible for about 3 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions – making the case for using technology to reduce environmental impact across broader business operations compelling, indeed some analysts have said that the application of ICT may lead to an overall reduction of 15%. A major innovation is large scale next generation utility computing, often described as ‘Cloud Computing’ which appears to be more environmentally friendly compared to traditional data centre operational / deployment models, due to greater asset utilization. Industry consensus indicates that by reducing the number of local hardware components and replacing them with remote cloud computing software/hardware systems reduces energy costs for running hardware and cooling as well, thus reducing both the carbon footprint while higher data centre consolidation / optimization will also save energy, overall reducing costs.

The ICT industries are willing to play a key role a green and economic friendly policy, in cooperation with end users that have realized the benefits of the products they have bought, will do their part to address this issue.

For a list of all Green IT articles, click here.

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Wednesday

May202009

E-commerce and CO2

May 20, 2009

The papers presented at the IEEE Symposium included this report which considers the growth of e-commerce and that alternative retail channels have some distinct differences with regard to environmental costs. The authors build on prior comparative research and conduct a streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify variations in energy use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for the alternative systems using data received from the e-commerce industry for an electronic product. The results confirm prior findings that e-commerce delivery uses less primary energy and produces less CO2 emissions than traditional retailing.

Weber, C.L., et al. “Life Cycle Comparison of Traditional Retail and E-commerce Logistics for Electronic Products: A Case Study of Buy.com” can be downloaded here.

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Wednesday

May202009

IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology

May 20, 2009

A number of interesting papers were presented at the 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology.

All papers presented at the Symposium can be downloaded here.

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Friday

Jan022009

Data Center (DC) Genome Cooling

January 2, 2009

The IT industry is the one of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy in terms of its energy consumption. Reducing data center energy consumption is a pressing issue for the entire IT industry now and into the future. In this article, the authors argue that dense and real-time environmental monitoring systems are needed to improve the energy efficiency of IT facilities.

This Article is featured in The Architecture Journal, Microsoft, January 2009 and can be read here.

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European Commission Joint Research Centre, ‘Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency’

October 30, 2008

This Code of Conduct has been created in response to increasing energy consumption in data centres and the need to reduce the related environmental, economic and energy supply security impacts. The aim is to inform and stimulate data centre operators and owners to reduce energy consumption in a cost-effective manner without hampering the mission critical function of data centres. The Code aims to achieve this by improving understanding of energy demand within the data centre, raising awareness, and recommending energy efficient best practice and targets. It is a voluntary initiative aimed to bring interested stakeholders together, including the coordination of other similar activities by manufacturers, vendors, consultants and utilities. Parties signing up will be expected to follow the intent of this Code of Conduct and abide by a set of agreed commitments.

It can be downloaded here.

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Thursday

Jun192008