Review 2007: Green computing
Computing's review of the year looks back at the top stories about IT and the environment
The environment became a big issue for IT managers in 2007
Green issues have leaped to the forefront of IT directors' priorities in 2007. We look back at the stories about green IT strategy that made the news this year.
Click on the headlines to read the full story.
January
Energy wasted over festive period
Up to two million PCs were left on between Christmas and the New Year break, creating unnecessary energy costs amounting to £3.1m.
The research, commissioned by vendor 1E in partnership with The National Energy Foundation (NEF), showed that At least 1.7 million PCs are habitually left on every night and over the weekend, causing businesses to incur an annual electricity bill of £115m.
Dell launches carbon neutral initiative
Michael Dell has announced a global carbon-neutral initiative that will see the firm plant trees for customers to offset the carbon impact of electricity required to power their systems.
Dell is partnering with The Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund.org, non-profit organisations that will use the funds to plant trees in sustainably managed forests, absorbing carbon dioxide released in the atmosphere from generated electricity.
More than £1bn a year is wasted across UK government and industry through inefficient business printing, according to an economic impact study released by OKI Printing Solutions.
The findings reveal that a staggering £16.7bn is spent annually in the UK on printing which is equivalent to the GDP of Cuba. The scale of waste is so great that leading economists believe it is hampering business growth, reducing productivity and damaging the UK's economy.
Among the worst offenders for wasting resources through printing are the education and public administration sectors, which lose around £225m a year through excessive outsourcing and poor internal print management. This figure represents almost a quarter of the £1bn chancellor Gordon Brown hopes to raise through recent increases in air travel taxes.
February
Recycling could compromise security
Compliance with international recycling standards, such as ISO 14000, could leave businesses wide open to hackers and fraud attempts.
David Macken, managing director of System Associates, a provider of e-Government security services, has warned that confidential information is not being safeguarded.
'Individuals are being encouraged to recycle their paper at work, yet not enough thought is being given to confidential information,' he said. 'One visit from a tenacious hacker to the office recycling bins can often provide enough information for them to get straight to the heart of confidential information.'
Vista upgrades trigger surge of e-waste
The long-awaited launch of Microsoft Vista late last year is expected to result in a surge of obsolete PCs market as companies go ahead with deferred desktop systems upgrades.
Analysts are predicting that as many as 10 million computers could be discarded over the next two years in the UK alone, posing a problem for businesses looking to meet recycling regulations such as the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive that comes into force in July.
Green Grid gets off the blocks
The Green Grid, a non-profit global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centres and business computing ecosystems, has announced the completion of its formation, and is calling for members.
The alliance says energy efficiency in the data centre is the most significant issue facing technology providers and their customers today.
This situation is due to exponential increases in power and cooling costs over the past few years, but also because customer demand for concentrated computing is outpacing the availability of clean reliable power in many places around the world.
March
Nationwide Building Society is implementing technology to replace printed statements to reduce the environmental impact of its business.
The system, from document technology vendor Macro 4, will offer Nationwide credit card customers the option to receive their account information online.
The building society estimates that if all customers take up the offer, 40 million sheets of paper will be saved in one year.
Supercomputer aims to cut energy costs
A green supercomputer has been launched today which has been designed to deliver higher computational performance using 10 times less power.
The supercomputer, known as Maxwell and built by the University of Edinburgh, uses Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) as an alternative to conventional microprocessors for real world industrial applications.
The Fhpca (FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance) has spent the past two years and £3.6m, including funding from Scottish Enterprise, developing Maxwell.
April
Lenovo tops Greenpeace rankings
Chinese PC maker Lenovo is the greenest electronics manufacturer, while Apple is the least envioronmentally friendly, according to Greenpeace's recycling and toxic content ranking.
Lenovo displaces Nokia from the lead position it has enjoyed since the rankings began last year. Sony (in third place) and LG Electronics (twelth) received penalty points for pushing for rules that make users responsible for recycling.
Go to Lloyds TSB’s new Financial Markets building at 10 Gresham Street in London, and you will not find a single fax machine.
The firm decided to implement multifunctional devices (MFDs) to serve as printers, copiers and fax machines.
The strategy has paid off, meeting with overwhelming employee approval as it helps the bank to reduce energy, paper and toner costs.
Lloyds TSB worked with building architects to ensure an employee is never more than eight metres from one of the two MFDs on each floor.
May
Tesco uses technology to improve fleet’s green credentials
Supermarket giant Tesco has upgraded its transport management software to improve cost effectiveness and environmental performance of its delivery fleet.
Tesco has one of the largest freight distribution networks in the UK and has tracked its vehicles since 1999 to plan driver shifts, allocate work , monitor vehicles and produce management reports from collected data.
It was able to increase the number of products delivered per litre of fuel by eight per cent, saving over 54,000 deliveries a year.
Industry must clean up its act
Technology accounts for two per cent of all carbon emissions, putting the industry on a par with the aviation sector, says analyst Gartner.
But experts say IT also has more potential for speedy improvement than industries such as transport and manufacturing.
The two per cent figure includes both computer usage and the energy used to design, manufacture and distribute products.
An industry-led forum has been created to help UK businesses reduce the environmental impact of their technology infrastructures.
The IT industry is responsible for creating two per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, putting it on a par with the aviation sector, according to figures from analyst Gartner.
The Green Technology Initiative is intended to provide education and inspiration to IT directors looking to improve their green credentials.
Green IT is still a business decision
The vast majority of large companies have yet to build green IT requirements into how they buy and use technology, according to analyst Forrester Research.
While 85 per cent of IT professionals believe environmental factors are important in planning IT operations, just a quarter have written green criteria into their company’s purchasing processes.
IBM yesterday announced it is investing $1bn (£0.5m) a year to increase energy efficiency within its own IT departments and those of its clients.
'Project Big Green,' will target corporate data centres and includes a new global 'green team' of more than 850 energy efficiency architects from across IBM.
The plan includes new products and services for IBM and its clients to reduce data center energy consumption by an average of 42 per cent.
BA puts green IT at the top of its agenda
British Airways (BA) is placing environmental policies and practices at the heart of its strategy this year, and has given its backing to our Green Computing campaign.
The airline industry is regularly criticised for its contribution to carbon emissions, and earlier this year the government doubled the amount of passenger duty people pay when taking flights from the UK.
But BA’s chief information officer Paul Coby says the firm is very conscious of its environmental responsibilities and IT is central to improving its practices.
Government backs smart meter plan
The government is considering plans that would require energy suppliers to install smart meters in all but the smallest businesses within five years.
Smart metering provides more accurate, real-time tracking of electricity consumption, giving customers greater insight into, and control over, usage.
The technology is being tested in homes by providers including Centrica and EDF, but government backing for nationwide business rollout is part of plans to change the relationship between suppliers and customers.
June
IT directors are ignoring green issues
Almost one in four IT directors say green issues are of little or no importance to them.
Managing environmental constraints such as energy consumption or inefficiencies around the cooling of datacentres are not on the agenda in commercial firms, according to a survey of 100 heads of department by PMP Research for Computacenter Services.
More than 6 out of 10 IT directors in the banking sector said they have no intention of reducing processing power in response to environmental concerns. But the public sector is starting to address the problem: 48 per cent have taken steps to curb their energy use.
Government launches green taskforce
The government has set up a taskforce to reduce the carbon footprint of IT by addressing the production and efficiency of computer hardware.
The public-private 'Green Shift' taskforce will be led by Manchester City Council and will oversee the piloting of a 'green PC' service in which individual machines use 98 per cent less energy than standard PCs.
The service works by using thin-client technology, hosting applications on data centres, which will be more energy efficient than PCs. It will also aim to use 75 per cent fewer resources in the production of PCs.
Businesses full of hot air on green IT issues
Nearly 70 per cent of UK businesses have no target to reduce their carbon footprint, despite 90 per cent saying that tackling the environmental efficiency of IT systems is core to an overall green strategy, according to research by the Green Technology Initiative.
The survey suggests that businesses are paying lip service to green issues but failing to take action.
Technology to help HSBC go green
HSBC will invest $90m (£44.9m) over five years in a global environmental efficiency programme (Geep), which will take on board emerging technology to help reduce its impact on the environment.
The Geep programme centres on the bank’s aim to develop a sustainable business and is a direct internal investment in activities that help create environmental efficiencies throughout the organisation.
Key to its aim is embracing new technology, including renewable energy technology, footprint management and innovation.
July
Global banking giant HSBC has for the first time revealed details of its ambitious green IT strategy.
The bank is launching trials of new technology, benchmarking data centre energy consumption and reviewing the environmental credentials of its suppliers.
HSBC environmental adviser Francis Sullivan says the firm’s IT plan shows that energy efficiency initiatives are an investment rather than a cost.
The inaugural meeting of the UK’s first green technology user group took place last week in London.
The Environmental IT Leadership Team (EILT), led by environmental charity Global Action Plan and sponsored by IT company Logicalis, aims to clarify what green IT means and develop reliable information guides for organisations in the public and private sector.
The group will initially question political, industry, technology and expert witnesses and publish research later this year on best practice green IT strategies. Organisations that have already signed up include the British Medical Association, Sony, John Lewis, E.ON UK, the University of Cumbria and Lloyds TSB.
August
Calculator to add up best green purchases
UK businesses wanting to buy green IT equipment and reduce the environmental impact of their technology can now use a system created in the US and adapted for the UK market.
The US-based Green Electronics Council is making its Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (Epeat) – which identifies green high-performance PCs and monitors – available to UK companies.
The Epeat system uses a number of environmental standards, including the European Union’s Waste and Electronic Equipment (Weee) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (Rohs) directives to determine if products meet green criteria.
IBM server project to cut carbon
IBM’s environmentally-friendly plan to cut data centre power consumption will help set an example for other firms, say experts.
The company says that as part of Project Big Green it will consolidate 3,900 servers onto 30 mainframes, reducing electricity use by 80 per cent and saving an estimated $250m (£123m) over five years.
Citi to build green data centre
US banking giant Citi is spending €170m (£115.6m) on a new green data centre in Frankfurt, Germany.
The installation is due to be completed in March 2008, and will provide IT services for Citi's operations in Europe.
The new centre will save 25 per cent on electricity consumption compared with existing data facilities, cutting 16,000 megawatt hours a year. And up to 11,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide will escape into the atmosphere than from a convential data centre of the same size, said Citi.
September
Technology will play a crucial role in helping achieve the EU goal of reducing energy consumption by 20 per cent by 2020, according to a study released today.
IT is already making a difference, says John Laitner, who wrote the report for educational body the Association for Educational Assessment, Europe.
Government CIOs must lead on green IT
Government chief information officers (CIOs) must take a leadership position on green IT as the issue becomes increasingly politically sensitive, according to analyst Gartner.
The firm has predicted today that by 2010, environment-related issues will be among the top five IT management concerns for more than 50 per cent of state and local government organisations in North America, Europe and Australia.
Conservation charity WWF cut the energy consumption of its UK server environment by more than 50 per cent by implementing virtualisation technology.
Using software from VMware, WWF moved from 13 servers to four, reducing the electricity needed to power the hardware as well as the amount of air conditioning required to cool it. In environmental terms, this equates to 12,600 fewer tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, not to mention the associated cost savings.
Case study: Betfair goes green
Betfair improved the energy efficiency of its IT after concerns over the supply of sufficient electricity to support the rapid growth of its data centre.
The online gaming firm receives more than four billion page impressions per week on its web site, and reaches more than 22,000 transactions per second during a big horse race.
But the power required to support such high-performance systems placed a heavy demand on energy, says Betfair service quality director John Hegarty.
The company operates 60 Solaris-based databases, which previously ran on individual servers spread across 40 equipment racks. Using virtualisation technology, this was reduced to 16 racks - leading to an 84 per cent power saving.
October
Data centres account for a quarter of IT carbon
Data centres account for 23 per cent of IT sector carbon emissions, according to figures from analyst Gartner.
And overall, technology represents two per cent of global CO2. Data centres account for such a large proportion of emissions for three reasons.
A lack of floor space and a failure to adopt higher density servers means greater cooling costs. And ever-increasing power consumption uses more energy.
Technology outsourcing is set to rise if business is landed with the financial burden of compliance with environmental regulations.
Shifting the responsibility for energy costs to the IT department can already consume the entire annual IT budget, according to a report from analyst IDC published this week.
Currently around 13 per cent of companies’ datacentre spending goes on electricity. But that is expected to increase to 20 per cent over the next 12 months.
Small businesses need help to go green
Less than one in ten small technology companies assess their CO2 emissions, according to the Carbon Trust.
Ninety-four per cent of survey respondents said they do not track their carbon footprint, citing lack of expertise as the key barrier.
But small and medium enterprises (SMEs) do have a signficant environmental impact, according to Carbon Trust chief operating officer Michael Rea.
Green juggernaut is reshaping IT landscape
The green agenda is starting to have a real effect on organisations’ IT spending decisions.
Ninety-five per cent of companies want more environmentally-friendly computer systems, according to a survey conducted by the Green Technology Initiative last week.
And 53 per cent of respondents to a global Ipsos Mori poll said they were more likely to purchase services from a company with a good environmental reputation.
Google launches green calculator
Google is launching a carbon calculator to help people keep track of their CO2 emissions through a personalised home page.
The service will also provide a range of related information and services including individual action plans and relevant news feeds. And all data will be collated into the search engine's UK Carbon Footprint map.
The calculator was built in partnership with the Energy Saving Trust and the RSA. It also draws on the government's Act on CO2 calculator for its data, calculations and approved methodologies.
November
Conservation charity WWF has started a search to identify companies using technology to cut their carbon footprint.
The initiative will be part of a report, to be published in May 2008, that will show how IT can contribute to one billion tonnes of CO2 reductions.
The focus of the green movement has been on replacing coal with renewable sources, but greater intelligence about energy use is also required, said WWF global policy adviser Dennis Pamlin.
There has never been a better time to go green
Following the recent Stern report, WEEE legislation, rising energy costs, fluctuating copper prices and the UN’s IPCC report on climate change, environmental concerns are beginning to influence business strategies.
Company boards and network managers are increasingly keen to promote a green approach, particularly if this leads to greater efficiency and improved performance. Developments in network architecture design and the technologies used can minimise the long-term costs to business and to the planet.
There is a range of incentives for companies to become greener, both from an IT viewpoint and a broader organisational perspective.
December
IT departments not measuring energy use
Almost nine out of ten (86 per cent) IT departments do not measure their carbon footprint and less than 20 per cent even see their energy bills, according to green researchers.
And the growth in CO2 emissions from the sector is being exacerbated by regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley that require high levels of data to be stored for compliance reasons.
Office technology accounts for more emissions than previously calculated, according to Trewin Restorick, director of Global Action Plan, the charity that carried out the research.
Green froth confuses customers
Over-marketing from suppliers keen to promote their green credentials is hindering IT departments’ environmentally-friendly policies, says a survey.
Only one per cent of professionals considers suppliers’ green puff to be excellent, and 60 per cent say it is poor or confusing, according to research from charity Global Action Plan.
Tesco aims to halve the carbon footprint of its IT department within the next five years, alongside wider plans to use technology to reduce its overall environmental impact.
The retailer’s green scheme ¬started this autumn ¬ not only measures the impact of the department, it is also developing technology to help reduce the group’s total footprint.
Plans include advanced scheduling software to make best use of the haulage fleet, video conferencing to reduce travel, and building management systems for high-energy equipment, such as fridges.
Manchester Council helps the city to go green
Manchester City Council’s IT scheme for helping residents monitor and reduce carbon emissions will launch formally in the new year.
Technology provided by the council will link to energy management systems providing a real-time carbon footprint of a building, helping households realise the financial as well as the environmental benefits of reducing energy use.
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