Review 2008: Top 10 green IT stories

Green is good

Green computing has become a key priority for many IT managers - not just because of the ennvironmental benefits, but because energy-efficient IT cuts costs too. We look back at the top stories in 2008 from Computing.

Whitehall must push green IT

The government’s failure to include environmental factors in its technology spending criteria is weakening innovation and slowing progress towards carbon reduction targets, say experts.

With annual IT spending of £14bn, the public sector has significant market influence. But calls for green procurement guidelines have gone unheeded because they contradict the strict remit of Whitehall buying agency the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) to ensure value for money.

Government faces calls to target e-waste cowboys

The government is facing calls to step up to its responsibilities for policing e-waste laws.

Charity Computer Aid International has launched a campaign following the Environment Agency’s (EA’s) failure to make an investigation into the dumping of electronic waste in West Africa and China.

The EA, responsible for enforcing the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive, needs more resources to police the legislation, said the charity.

Unilever makes green progress

Consumer goods giant Unilever has started a European datacentre decommissioning programme affecting 5,000 servers, and will consolidate most of its transactions from separate territorial datacentres down to two primary locations.

The firm refused to detail the exact number of datacentres affected by the initiative or dates when the facilities would be discontinued, citing “employment-related” issues.

Understanding where to focus is a key green IT challenge, said Unilever’s Europe vice president of IT services Paulo de Sa.

DWP upgrade drives £1.5m savings

The Department of Work and Pensions’ (DWP) IT upgrade will save £1.5bn by the end of 2010.

Server consolidation and a refresh of all laptops and desktops will be major contributors to the cost savings, which will also deliver annual power savings of 50 GigaWatt hours.

Frank Tudor, director of supplier relationship and performance management at the DWP, said the IT refresh, which began in 2005, became increasingly about saving energy.

Government pushes for green

Government plans revealed last week to make the energy consumption of public sector IT carbon neutral within four years contain a useful get out of jail free card ­ and one that will almost certainly be needed.

Any emissions that are not reduced will be offset, though it is made clear that this will be a “last resort” and will only happen through a scheme accredited by the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

As Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, who launched the green IT strategy, said: “Turning off every one of Whitehall’s 500,000 computers at night would have the same effect as taking 40,000 cars off the road.”

Whitehall set to follow Defra's green IT blueprint

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has completed a green IT refresh that will become the template for all government departments.

The success of the Defra scheme ­ which covered some 10,000 civil servants ­ will be an indicator of how far the government’s overall green IT strategy can reduce the public sector’s carbon footprint.

Chris Chant ­ the ex-chief information officer (CIO) at Defra, who has now moved to be CIO of the Government Olympic Executive ­ believes the scheme should succeed.

Knowledge gap in green IT is hampering further adoption

Ignorance among UK IT managers and suppliers remains the key obstacle in the adoption of green IT practices.

In a survey carried out by the National Computing Centre (NCC) with 120 IT decision-makers, 18 per cent said they always evaluate the carbon footprint of any new IT systems they purchase, but nearly half said they still did not consider the environmental impact of IT equipment.

“The industry needs guidance to make more well-informed choices when it comes to choosing suppliers,” said a head of IT, who requested anonymity.

Accenture sees profit in green IT

Accenture is positioning itself to capture a new market created by the growing concern over the environmental footprint of enterprise IT.

The consultancy giant insists its green technology differs from the strategies launched by big hardware vendors, such as Dell, IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems, which offer greener products that meter the power use of systems.

Accenture’s services will study power use, attempt to quantify the benefits of changes and analyse side effects, and look at greener product procurement and disposal strategies, said Rockwell Bonecutter, green IT managing director at Accenture.

DHL goes green with e-billing service

International logistics company DHL is hoping to cut its carbon footprint by offering customers an e-billing service.

DHL plans to eliminate more than a third of the 18 million paper invoices it sends to European customers every year by 2010. The firm will do this by offering customers an e-billing option, whereby users login to an online portal to view and receive information about their invoices. As a result, the courier expects to save the equivalent of 2,400 trees and 600 tonnes of C02 a year.

Green issues baffling IT users

Enterprise IT users are being confused by vendor 'greenwash' as the industry changes its focus to environmentally friendly IT, according to a report by Gartner.

The talk of long-term and medium-term green IT products at conferences is leaving CIOs baffled about what is and is not available.

"The IT industry is saturated with green IT talk," said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner.

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