Intellect takes on climate change

Trade body Intellect has launched a new report; High Tech: Low Carbon, as part of a new push by the body to really help make a difference to climate change. It follows the recent announcement of a new group Intellect has set up, which will concentrate its focus purely in this area.

Intellect director general John Higgins said, “It should be clear that the technology sector is embracing the challenge of energy efficiency and is producing better, faster, lighter devices that use less and less energy as the result of a continuous process of intensive research and development.”

The new leadership group is made up of ten leading technology companies that will give strategic input on the Intellect’s green agenda, these include Accenture, Dell, Deloitte, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Memset, Microsoft and Sharp.

Graham Palmer, Group chairman and Intel country manager, said “ Companies like ours are leading the way in terms of innovation in sustainability meeting the continued demand for performance improvement, while making products and manufacturing processes ever more efficient.”

Palmer said Intellect should use its experience to help the industry understand green problems and help them find solutions. “To do that through Intellect will have a greater community impact than to try and do that alone,” Palmer added.

The group’s first project was to draft the report that has been announced and is now available to the public.

The report discusses the energy use of products and services and gives guidance on how the sector can best address the demand with an environmentally friendly approach.

The new green group supports carbon accounting and will also help other sectors reduce their carbon emissions. Outlined in its report are 26 different technologies that can be applied by different sectors of the economy to help them reduce their carbon output. The technologies are not only in the ICT sphere, but also include fields such as engineering and biotechnology.

The group has stated its desire to work faster to reduce emissions than the Government’s emission reduction targets set for 2050. In the ICT sector alone, the energy output is two per cent of the World’s emissions, and this is predicted to increase five-fold by 2050, according to the report.

Intellect also announced that it is working with the University of Warwick to develop a mechanism that will help quantify ICT-related emissions, as well as separately building a web-based tool that will allow users to compare the value of green products. The body has also created “Who Cares Wins”; a programme that will help members improve their environmental agenda but at no cost to their standing in the market.