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The bottom line on green IT

When it comes to advancing the cause of green computing, IT leaders should focus on the economic argument for energy efficiency

Why bother with green IT? Put aside any doubts about the validity of climate-change science or moral rectitude and focus on the money.

The price of carbon (a shorthand way of saying emissions of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases) is not set, realistic or applied internationally - yet. But the price is only going one way: up. Even if all the climate science were proved to be wrong tomorrow and we could continue consuming fossil fuels, long-term energy prices would still rise, because the economic growth of developing nations is inextricably linked to growing energy demand.

"There is a coming energy crunch, so firms will have to reduce their energy consumption, not just switch to low-carbon fuels," says Mark Bailey, partner in the intellectual property, technology and commerce team at law firm Speechly Bircham.

And if IT is to help the organisation make the transition to an energy-saving enterprise, then IT operations is a good place to start.

Three issues are driving green IT: actual and anticipated energy price rises, regulation, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments.

Avoiding risk of exposure to future energy and carbon price increases is fundamental to the business case for low-carbon IT. The goal is to decouple an organisation's revenue or profit growth from growth in energy consumption by IT.

"There are few people doing anything in green IT that does not have a cost saving or cost avoidance attached to it," says Simon Mingay, vice president of research at industry advisory group Gartner. "If you don't pay attention to emissions from IT, there is an unspecified risk of exposure to carbon costs."

Electricity bill
Traditionally, the IT department does not pay for the energy it consumes: the facilities management (FM) function or similar usually picks up the tab. And IT managers have had it drummed into them that in the fast-moving business world, systems must be super-reliable and instantly available.

Consequently, systems are over-provisioned - Gartner estimates by an average of 100 per cent - and often left running full-bore, 24/7, regardless of use, to avoid shutdown and boot-up time lags.

The best thing that could happen to further the cause of green IT would be for IT heads to be responsible for their own power bill. Under-utilised systems - especially test environments and the like - would be powered down for economic reasons and the money saved diverted to more productive areas.

Organisations that outsource their IT will not be immune from this trend. As power becomes an increasingly large part of any computing facility's operating cost, expect service providers to be the first to factor it into their business models.

"You do this either to drive down the cost of IT or - if you are a service provider - to enable you to pass on an accurate bill to your customers," says Philip Petersen, chief executive of Adinfa, which develops power management software for datacentres. "In our experience, most service providers don't have a tight rein over power billing to customers."

Regulation
The regulatory driver for low-carbon IT comes in the form of the UK's Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency scheme. This was introduced by the Labour administration as an emissions trading or "cap-and-trade" mechanism for large energy consumers. Under the coalition government it is mutating into a straightforward carbon tax.

Politics aside, the main point here is that the primary regulation that will affect enterprise-scale IT users in the UK has lost any semblance of carrot and become a blunt financial stick. This puts it squarely into the realm of cost avoidance. Anything said about the advantages of adopting low-carbon IT to avoid rising energy costs applies to avoiding rising CRC levies.

Corporate social responsibility
For small and medium-sized businesses focused on maximising efficiency and reducing costs, CSR is not a driver for low-carbon computing. But it is important not to underestimate the power of reputation management, which aims to cash in on environmentally inclined consumers and investors, especially for larger organisations.

"There are many large enterprises that have made documented commitments to CSR policies, including energy consumption, and that is significant motivation," says John Tuccillo, president of the Green Grid consortium, which advocates energy efficiency in datacentres.

Those CSR policies may have been announced by companies in a surge of pre-recession environmental exuberance, but it is the chief executive's reputation that is on the line. While the financial director will be looking to IT to reduce the energy bill and CRC levy, the CEO may well turn to the IT department to help keep his promises.

The bottom line on green IT

When it comes to advancing the cause of green computing, IT leaders should focus on the economic argument for energy efficiency

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