Everyone is starting to realise that everything we do needs scrutiny for its impact on planet Earth. And ‘everyone' includes governments, companies, IT users and - not least - CIOs.
The bad news first. Manufacturing a PC requires about the same amount of resource (fossil fuels, chemicals, water) as manufacturing a small car. The good news is that IT can help both reduce carbon emissions and safeguard finite resources. Big changes in IT - from data centre consolidation to thin-client devices - can have a considerable impact on carbon reductions. Equally, many small contributions can have as much impact as a few large ones - eg reducing the need for many short journeys can save the emission of thousands of tonnes of C02.
And let's not forget that IT use accounts for only two per cent of global emissions- and has an important part to play in reducing the other 98 per cent. Technologies such as collaboration and videoconferencing can reduce travel; and radio frequency identification (RFID) can be used to track assets such as containers for reuse. Of course, to reduce energy and resource consumption, IT needs to be controlled; IT is not just part of the problem, rather it is part of the solution as well.
To make sustainable IT a reality, we must assess not only the technology itself but also the efficiency of end-to end-business processes involving IT, and how to change people's behaviour through the entire lifecycle - technology component manufacture, use, disposal and recycling. We can identify three pillars that support sustainable IT: technology, process and behaviour. Let's see what each has to offer.
Pillar 1: Technology
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Initiatives that can make the biggest savings in carbon reduction fall into two main groups: controlling IT to make it environmentally efficient; and applying IT to reduce emissions and preserve resources.
Controlling IT includes datacentre consolidation, rationalisation, virtualisation, cooling etc; desktop power control and use of thin-client devices; controlling print output; and using components that are energy-efficient. One area of increasing interest is the location of data centres. Sites powered at least in part by renewable energy sources are already being used to great effect. The Google Mountain View Data Centres are powered in part by a solar "forest"; while the HP manufacturing plant in Ireland exploits wind farms.
Applying IT includes using videoconferencing and collaboration to reduce travel; GPS and location-aware systems to pinpoint problems that need a follow-up visit e.g. potholes in a road, to prevent unnecessary journeys; and RFID tagging to track items for re-use.
‘IT is a relatively small part of the carbon emissions problem but will be a huge part of the solution' - The Green IT Report
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