Martin Veitch

There has been plenty of debate recently over IT, its impact on the environment and its record on efficiency or otherwise in consuming energy. While the discussion is certainly healthy, attempts to paint the technology industry as an arch-purveyor of evil gas-guzzlers are wide of the mark.

The credibility gap is understandable as there is a land-grab for green credentials at the moment. Part of the issue is internal to IT. Speaking at the Datacentre Energy Dynamics conference in London recently, Patrick Fogarty of engineering consultancy Norman Disney & Young had some blunt advice for those following the argument.

"We [in IT] are a collection of disparate interest groups [so] whenever you're listening to the [energy-efficiency] debate, make sure you have your bullshit filter well activated," he said.

As in an Agatha Christie whodunnit, the answer to who is to blame can sometimes be "all of them". All component owners are to some extent culpable, and singling out the chip maker, software author or any other element is a sign of the other kind of greenness – naivety.

The fact is that we are still on a sharp learning curve but clues as to how energy efficiency can be improved are appearing in the fuzzy distance.

First, we have some notion of the size of the problem after Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories discovered that servers and related infrastructure accounted for just 1.2 percent of US national electricity consumption in 2005. Although that figure was double the percentage for 2000, it still makes it obvious that datacentres are nowhere near being the power hogs that some had suspected.

Second, solutions are evolving. A datacentre designer called Future-Tech is repurposing facilities such as car parks and even cow sheds. A university is considering reusing heat generated by its datacentre to warm facilities. Another is attempting to back onto a hydroponics research centre. Green building design is rapidly evolving.

A recent study suggests that air from outside datacentres may have fewer harmful contaminants than was thought. And a recent Google survey of hard drives suggests that disks in mass storage facilities are less prone to failure caused by heat than had been assumed.

Also, measuring raw consumption does not take into consideration the way technology offsets its consumption. IT provides the power behind eBay, Amazon and a million other sites that reduce the need for retail facilities and travel.

More broadly, IT could be said to have a pretty good record in its relationship to society. It is the route to prosperity for many developing nations and the demand for computing skills is blind to gender, colour or creed.

The study of datacentre dynamics and their relation to energy efficiency remains in its infancy. It might be to the benefit of all if lips are kept buttoned and more time is spent on research than on indignant claims, half-truths and blame assignation.