Save the planet and the pennies

Environmentally friendly IT can reduce an organisation’s carbon footprint and reap business benefits. Martin Courtney reports

The environment is high on the list of many organisations’ concerns, and while the implementation of green IT systems is hardly a panacea, it can make a significant contribution to reducing your firm’s carbon footprint.

However, experts suggest that in many cases corporate posturing on environmentally-friendly IT is merely rhetoric, and lament the fact that few technology leaders have so far put their money where their mouths are.

Trewin Restorick, founder and director of Global Action Plan (GAP), an independent charity formed in 1993 dedicated to providing organisations with guidance on how to make environmental and financial savings, says the majority of UK businesses are still in thinking, rather than doing, mode.

“When we looked at it about six months ago, we were shocked at how little interest there was in reducing the IT carbon footprint, but that has changed recently,” he says.

“Even so, finding people who are actually doing stuff is still quite difficult ­ there are definitely people looking at it, but it is a long way from being mainstream.”

Euan Davis, principal analyst at Forrester Research, suggests that most organisations are still in the early days as far as green IT is concerned.

“However, the subject is extremely high on the agenda and is dominating a lot of discussions,” he says.

Research conducted by Siemens Financial Services last year backs up the the perspective and estimates that so far, only a quarter of UK firms have taken steps to even measure their carbon footprint, though two-fifths do have initiatives in place to reduce their emissions.

One thing that may be holding IT departments back is the lack of a clear strategy on how best to proceed. What is needed, say experts, is unequivocal, independent advice about the technologies and procedures that can be best used to reduce the environmental impact of computer, network and communications equipment.

GAP set up the Environmental IT Leadership Team (EILT) board in July 2007 to provide a forum for discussion. The EILT is wary that, currently, the only source of advice for companies looking to trim carbon emissions from IT comes from vendors with vested interests.

As a user the EILT, whose members include the British Medical Association, Sony, John Lewis, E.ON UK, the University of Cumbria and Lloyds TSB, aims to assess awareness of IT impact on the environment. The group also wants to cut through vendor technical and marketing jargon to offer practical advice on the course of action individual IT departments should take in addressing environmentalism.

If companies lack the knowledge to tackle green IT concerns, they certainly do not lack the impetus. The list of drivers for reducing the business carbon footprint is as long as it is broad.

Peer pressure plays as big a role here as anything else, says Restorick, who points to big corporations’ competitive posturing when it comes to adopting environmental IT policies.

A good example can be seen in retailer Marks & Spencer ­ when the company pledged last year to invest £200m in a wide ranging eco-plan that included reducing its IT footprint, the move forced a barrage of similar announcements from rival retailers keen to avoid unfavourable environmental comparisons.

Cost is another significant driver, more so as energy prices rise, but organisations are also having to face up to the possibility of a financially difficult period ahead.

“They have realised the benefits of saving money and being able to say good things about what it is doing for climate change,” says Restorick.

Demonstrating an ethical approach to the environment may also be the key to recruiting a new generation of graduates. Many businesses may struggle to take on high-quality people because potential recruits are concerned about the environment and are asking pointed questions about potential employers’ policies on the issue.

When professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) decided to research the future of people management in July last year, for example, it interviewed 2,739 new graduates from the UK, US and China to collate their views on what they expect from employers in the 21st century.

The study concluded that new graduates look for employers with strong environmental and social credentials ­and employees are expected to uphold corporate values and targets around the green agenda.

“Many organisations are keenly aware of how brands work in the minds of consumers, so we see companies such as Deloitte sponsoring game reserves rather than Formula One for instance,” says Forrester’s Davis. “It is also a way of attracting top talent and demonstrating an ethical stance, not just to customers and suppliers, but also to employees.”

And if the carrot fails to work, there is always the stick. The government has so far steered clear of nudging UK businesses into action through legislation or the imposition of industry guidelines, but that might change in the future.

The latest energy white paper from the Department for Business and Enterprise Regulatory Reform suggests the government cannot avoid enforcing more stringent rules at some point if it is to be sure of hitting EU emissions targets. Introducing laws on environmental policy that businesses must comply with is a possibility.

“They are talking about a cap on every single industry, with fines if so much tonnage of carbon is exceeded,” says Davis.

Even once an organisation accepts the requirement, or the ultimatum, to make its IT systems more environmentally friendly, the question of how best to approach the problem remains ­ and the EILT is engaged in research designed to answer that question.

While the need to make data centres greener by using servers and storage capacity more efficiently is well understood, for example, there is still some scope to define the best approach. Plus, organisations also need to examine the whole relationship between employees and IT, and look to change their behaviour regarding simple things such as turning off computers, monitors and printers when they are not in use.

How IT can be used more effectively to reduce employee travel is one aspect to be considered, says Restorick. “A lot of companies have seen videoconferencing as the answer,” he says. “But the kit just sits there and is hardly ever used, and if it is used it is used badly ­ there needs to be much more examination in that area.”

PwC has taken a lead in educating its employees on how to make best use of technology for environmental gain, including the use of communications systems to reduce travel and incentives that encourage workers to keep documents as soft, rather than hard, copies to save print resources.

The PwC human resources department also attempts to generate virtual social networks across the business and client database to minimise unnecessary travel.

Yet while most organisations have seen hardware as the main target for reducing carbon emissions, it is worth considering that software might be forcing the hardware to expend more power and cooling resources than might otherwise be necessary.

Users have long complained of bloatware, software that contains far more features and complexity than daily use requirements demand in most working environments. And it may be that over-engineering in both operating systems and applications is having an insidious effect on cost efficiency by placing more demand on the system and power resources of the underlying hardware.

“There is definitely a feeling that software is getting a bit sloppy ­ the PC takes ages to boot up which diminishes the user’s willingness to turn it off. Is software responsible for PCs using more electricity, and is it forcing organisations to upgrade their machines more often than they would like?” says Restorick.

Davis says just turning off desktop PCs at night is pretty ineffectual at saving large amounts of electricity anyway, but investing in switched power blocks that turn off multiple items simultaneously may reap dividends.

A better method might be to replace the electricity-guzzling desktop computer completely.

“Thin client computing uses much less power than a PC and we are starting to hear conversations about that,” says Davis. “Government departments are considering large-scale investments in thin clients to reduce their power footprint for instance, and there is a lot of activity from vendors.”

In a report from analyst Gartner last year, research vice president Neil Rickard highlighted the network as a big contributor to any organisation’s carbon footprint and defined a number of practical steps to reducing that contribution.

“Unlike client computing, where significant footprint reduction can arise from simply turning off devices when they are not in use, the network needs to be always on regardless of its use,” says Rickard. “As organisations cannot turn their network off to reduce their environmental footprint, they must take simple steps to reduce it.”

Rickard warned against the dangers of overly complex network design and urged network managers to consider consolidating large numbers of legacy switches, routers, hubs and other devices with a smaller amount of more modern equipment.

Nor should organisations simply give their networks a once over when it comes to analysing their environmental impact; considering the carbon footprint of the equipment they maintain should be an ongoing strategy.

Five tips for more environmentally friendly IT

Increase server and storage use in datacentres
The latest servers and storage arrays pack the same amount of processing performance and disk capacity into smaller systems that usually use less electricity than older equipment.

Print fewer documents
Saves on electricity as well as paper, though similar results can be achieved by printing on both sides of the paper or using recycled paper. Laser printers also produce slightly toxic fumes into the atmosphere, which can be minimised by using inkjet printers that also use less electricity.

Install energy-efficient desktop computers and monitors
CRT monitors usually use more electricity than LCD screens and desktop computers more than thin clients. Use a client-computing model that sees applications hosted on a central server which are accessed by lower-power desktop systems.

Enforce power management
Whether through some method of centralised IT management or simply by encouraging good practice among employees, make sure workers apply standby features to monitors and computers, shut systems down completely at night and at weekends, and unplug chargers whenever not in use.

Teleworking
Using IT to work from home may stop employees polluting the atmosphere with petrol, but though it transfers the cost from the employer to the employee, it does not necessarily decrease overall electricity consumption. Teleconferencing systems can save air fuel and petrol burned during unnecessary travel to meetings between colleagues and business partners.

What the experts say about green initiatives

In the EU there is a top down approach, where the board says it needs to be greener and wonders what IT can do about it, whereas in the US it is a struggle to get enough power in the first place. That is starting to happen in the EU as well, though – as utility companies such as EDF announce big price rises it becomes imperative for organisations to reduce power consumption.
Euan Davis, principal analyst, Forrester Research

When we look at any new system, there is a strong environmental filter we have to apply. It is entirely self-imposed and tied to wider pronouncements from Richard Branson and the Virgin Group, which is experimenting with things such as trains running on bio-fuel. Everything is being looked at, from waste disposal to double-sided printing. We are trying to make our business less damaging to the climate.
Simon Burridge, managing director, Virgin Games

We see broad statements of intent from governments, such as the climate change bill and the EU’s pledge to reduce its carbon footprint by 20 per cent by the year 2020, but there is no explicit legislation pressuring individual companies. On the one hand the government is saying it wants to cut emissions, and on the other that companies have to store data forever.
Trewin Restorick, founder and director, Global Action Plan

As well as making power efficiency one of the new product selection criteria, power efficiency can become a factor in decisions regarding the replacement of ageing network equipment. In the longer term, Gartner expects to see the evolution of new more energy-efficient networking technologies such as energy-efficient Ethernet.
Neil Rickard, research vice president, Gartner