A greener future

Taking steps: The Eden Project has implemented a number of practices to encourage more environmental thinking

The benefits of going green have been well documented, so it is perhaps surprising that so few organisations appear to have taken comprehensive measures to reduce the carbon emissions produced by their IT equipment.

One reason may be that green IT skills remain informal. For the moment, responsibility for ensuring that computer equipment is environmentally-friendly is simply another aspect of procurement and management that falls on the shoulders of IT staff.

Many organisations have also not yet implemented specific green IT policies or carbon emission reduction targets which would merit the appointment of specialist environmental computing staff.

The National Computing Centre (NCC) canvassed a number of its members about their attitudes to green computing during a conference on the subject in October last year. Of those who took part in the survey, only 32 per cent said their organisation had published a corporate environmental strategy, with another 33 per cent saying they were in the planning stage.

“Clearly it is the start of the journey for many organisations ­ – they understand they have to do something, but by and large have not formulated a policy yet,” said NCC group marketing manager Mike Dean. “There is definitely more interest in green IT; not a flood but more than a trickle.”

Ben Cartland is an associate at Acre Resources, a specialist recruitment consultancy focused on the environment, corporate social responsibility, sustainability and climate change sectors, and which supplies personnel to large corporates, consultancies and non-government organisations.

“Our clients tend not to have anybody in-house focused solely on green IT, but they do have people who are broadly environmentally-focused. In many cases, it is outsourced to third-party developers or collaborative organisations,” he says.

Dean, meanwhile, says it is the IT director who tends to take responsibility for green IT, rather than a specialist sustainability director, or somebody outside the IT function. “Organisations trust their own IT guys to come up with environmental directives,” he says.

“I have not come across NCC members who have appointed somebody in the IT department specifically to handle green IT policies, but in large organisations such as HSBC and The Co-operative Group, people are assigned roles that govern how IT can implement corporate green IT policies.”

But Tim Turquand, consultant at business and IT strategy consultancy Morse, says organisations can find it hard to train staff in the requisite skills, especially as there is no standard yet. “The IT guys that tend to have a personal interest in reducing the company carbon emissions are following a general trend in their lives ­ – they tend to be the ones driving carbon-friendly cars and so on,” he says.

Demand for specific green computing skills remains low, but Acre’s Cartland says the consultancy is seeing increased demand for programmers and web developers able to create and integrate carbon calculators into software. There is also a heightened interest in consultants and sustainability managers who can provide advice across the business, including IT.

“What we see coming to the fore in the past year or so, is opportunities based around new and upcoming companies coming to market with new software that will help organisations track and monitor their carbon emissions. The idea of being able to align company activities all the way down the IT chain and assess the carbon impact is very interesting,” he says.

On the hardware side, Acre has also noticed more environmental focus for manufacturers who want to make sure their equipment is Energy Star-compliant. “In most organisations that manufacture hardware, there will be somebody from an environmental background who is managing and auditing the whole thing, and making sure that management systems are ISO 14001 and ISO 9000 compliant,” says Cartland.

Another reason many organisations are not yet setting targets specifically around green computing stems from being unaware how much money they are wasting by running non energy-efficient equipment, says Turquand. “Most are not aware what the problem is actually costing them – ­ it is difficult to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent if you do not know what those emissions are now. The problem is linking the green agenda specifically to green computing,” he says.

NCC research suggests only 12 per cent of IT professionals said they had implemented environmental auditing activities, while 26 per cent say they would consider doing so. The majority of organisations are, therefore, still not taking active steps to evaluate their IT carbon footprint.

Turquand has some practical advice for IT professionals looking to implement green computing practices for the first time.

“Knowing what equipment you have is the first problem, and you would be surprised how many of Morse’s clients are not 100 per cent sure where their assets are located or what they are doing,” he says. “There are often servers in datacentre racks sitting idle from projects which are months gone by, which nobody has powered down or turned off. In some cases, they are buying new equipment when older kit can still be used for the purpose.”

Companies should also identify which items of equipment represent the biggest drain on power, which are about to reach the end of their service life, and which datacentre technologies need to be recycled or redistributed.

Such factors are significant, because the biggest potential barrier to the adoption of green IT practices is a lack of knowledge in the organisation about how to act in an environmentally sensitive manner. Eighteen per cent of IT professionals surveyed by the NCC said they always evaluated the carbon footprint of any new IT systems they purchase, although 44 per cent said they did not consider the environmentally-friendly nature of IT equipment.

“Many do not know the real state of their IT power consumption, which makes it difficult for them to improve it. It is not always the people in IT who see the energy bills, for example, but usually those in facilities management. If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it,” says Dean.

It is not just IT professionals that remain to be convinced or informed, however. Evidence suggests many office workers remain unconcerned about environmental issues, leaving IT professionals to do their best to raise people’s attitudes to green computing practice.

A survey of 1,000 office workers, commissioned by printer and copier manufacturer Canon UK, found that only 40 per cent believe protecting the environment during office hours is their responsibility, with 30 per cent and 16 per cent feeling green considerations should be down to management or government respectively.

“Forcing behavioural change is quite a tough one, because people are used to leaving PCs switched on and phones plugged in, and print emails and other documents they may not have to. A culture of waste is hard to turn around sometimes,” says Dean.

What may change such apathy, and force more organisations to define specific green IT roles, are proposed carbon reduction rules that relate specifically to computer equipment.

The UK government has already launched the framework for sustainable operations on government estate, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions from all of its offices by 12.5 per cent in 2011, compared with 1999 levels.

The government is expected to announce a further strategy in the near future that sets targets for sustainable IT within public sector departments. And Morse’s Turquand is certain the government will have to introduce wider targets for green IT, perhaps as early as 2010.

“If you think back to other green directives, such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, it was so late and misunderstood because it had changed so many times that the government cannot afford to risk the same impact. It will need to deliver clearer and firmer. I am pretty sure the government will,” he says.

Should such targets materialise, IT professionals will be well placed to drive the green agenda in many organisations.

Next week: Computing’s Definitive Guide analyses the key issues for IT managers aiming to comply with green regulations

The top five green IT practices

Turning off equipment
Encouraging users to simply turn off computers, monitors, printers and other IT equipment at night, rather than leave them on standby. Unplugging mobile phone and handheld PC chargers can also yield significant energy savings.

Recycling
Repurposing older systems, rather than buying new equipment, can help minimise wastage – as can buying hardware that includes recyclable components and packaging.

Printing fewer documents
Recent research from Canon UK suggests almost 120 million pages are printed unnecessarily in UK offices every working day. Reducing the paper mountain saves paper, electricity and potentially polluting ink and toner. Other strategies – such as duplex printing, solid ink printers and black and white documents – can also improve your environmental credentials.

Datacentres and virtualisation
Datacentres remain the biggest computer power drain for most organisations, but often contain servers that are either unused or underused. Consolidating server numbers using virtualisation
technology installed on lower power systems can help reduce carbon emissions by minimising electricity and cooling requirements.

Remote working and teleconferencing
Staff may use the same amount of power when they work from remote locations, but cutting out unnecessary journeys at least saves on fuel.