Accenture working on calculator to track servers' embedded carbon

Global management and IT consultancy Accenture has revealed it is working on a new service that would allow IT chiefs to calculate the full carbon footprint of their purchasing and infrastructure decisions.

The company currently offers customers a Green Calculator service that allows firms to measure the energy use and carbon footprint of their datacentre as well as model how changes in server layout and configurations will impact energy consumption. But it is now working to expand the calculator to measure the carbon footprint of the entire lifecycle of IT products, including emissions associated with their assembly and disposal.

Speaking to BusinessGreen, Accenture CTO Don Rippert said that the company was aiming to deliver an expanded version of the calculator, including information on the emissions associated with the manufacture, acquisition and disposal of some of the most popular IT products, by the late summer.

He admitted that getting access to such detailed cradle-to-grave information was proving challenging, commenting that "sometimes I wonder if the vendors themselves know the full carbon footprint, and they do have to go back and talk to their contractors and sub contractors".

But he argued that such carbon footprinting data was becoming more widely available. "The vendors are being asked for this data by customers so they are working on it," he said.

Rippert said the new calculator would be regularly updated when new products would come out. He added that it could be used by IT chiefs to work out not just the most energy efficient configuration for servers but which server purchases will result in the lowest lifetime running costs and carbon emissions.

"There are a lot of carbon calculators out there now, but the aim of this one is to provide managers with specific and actionable data," Rippert said. "We wa nt to be able to show them how specific actions impact the KWh you are using. "