For IT green is the new black
For IT green is the new black
Climate change presents a crossroad for the Information technology industry. One road follows the present route while the other is paved with opportunity.
When former US Vice President Al Gore addressed a Silicon Valley conference in February this year, he didn’t berate the ICT industry representatives for IT’s reputation as extensive carbon emitters. Instead, he asked his audience to see the opportunity in environmental sustainability.
“It’s abundantly obvious that clean tech, green tech ventures will be a new pathway that attracts a lot more energy and time and investment,” he said. “This is an exciting time for Silicon Valley.”
Speaking to an audience of 1,500 with a speech entitled ‘Thinking Green: An Economic Strategy for the 21st Century,” Gore delivered his presentation just as the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its 4th Assessment Report and dire warning on the state of global warming. The UN found a 90 percent chance that humans are to blame for Global Warming. Given the buzz of a data centre, the continuous heating and cooling of hardware and the power consumption of PCs, we can safely assume IT has played an integral role in the Earth’s current situation.
But while Gartner and Ovum believe the IT industry needs to clean up its act, Gore points to the realm of opportunity available for the sector to not only contribute to the Earth cooling effort, but harness its potential. “Technology is the key to giving us enough leverage to change the pattern that is now causing the climate crisis,” he said.
Good business sense
According to Mick Cansfield, telcoms strategy practice leader for Ovum addressing climate change makes good business sense for the ICT sector.
“On revenue, telcos can certainly push ICT, desk to desk video conferencing etc, as a means to reduce the need for transport driven by fossil fuels,” says Cansfield. Addressing alternatives to air travel is also a chance to tackle the 25 percent of all carbon emitted.
But the opportunities for ICT extend much further then this. There’s a whole new slate and business platform for ICT to base their manufactured hardware and software. It’s a platform that uses less power, recognises recyclable components as a necessity and appreciates the overall lifecycle and sustainability of a product, rather then just its immediate profit.
A new platform
At IBM, they’ve taken this one step further and developed a specifically green IT software portfolio. They’re marketing it as an opportunity to take the pressure of CIOs and IT managers as companies are asked to review their power utilisation.
Glenn Wightwick, director of IBM’s Research and Development Labs says the issue of energy consumption becomes especially obvious when organisations have many computing resources operating in data centres. “What we found is that data centres have a finite capacity. There is a finite floor space, finite power available, finite consumption,” he says. “But computers are getting faster and faster, requiring more energy. You could always figure out that we were going to get to this point in the future,” he says.
It’s this finite capacity that’s opening itself up to a whole new market for vendors to approach. “When you realise you have to purchase a whole new data centre, that’s when you start to take notice,” says Wightwick.
The opportunity or disaster facing the industry could well be compared to the oil crisis of the 1970s. “Cars were highly inefficient in their designs, so manufacturers came together,” says Wightwick. “It was a combination of that, that led to things being more efficient.”
The carbon neutral option
Carbon neutrality is one of the realistic options facing businesses of all sizes and industries to contribute to efforts addressing climate change. For IT based organisations, it’s a chance to set a unique example, build stakeholder engagement in social responsibility and buy into a whole new world of marketing potential.
Under the Federal Government’s Greenhouse Friendly initiative, Renewtek has been listed as the first IT company to go ‘carbon neutral.’ The certification means Renewtek has reduced their carbon emissions to zero, with programs implemented to reduce energy consumption and others undertaken to offset what can not be eliminated.
The premise and name of ‘Renewtek’ already fits with the healthy paradigm of sustainability. The IT consultancy works in renewing technology, developing legacy applications and finding ways to avoid dropping technology simply because it is no longer ‘hot.’ “A lot of companies jump into building things from scratch,” says Fergus Porter managing director of Renewtek. “We’ve seen a lot of CEOs and CIOs fall into the trap of trying to transform their entire tools set.
Carbon neutrality is an artistry, an investigative effort that takes a fine toothed comb to every aspect of business, exposes it, then asks it to find alternate options. “They come in and look at every process, every piece of paper, all travel, all electricity used, everything,” says Porter.
After this investigation, Renewtek can now estimate that each employee emits 2.7 tonnes of carbon emissions. The goal is to reduce that figure to under two and offset what they can’t turn green.
Porter admits he was surprised by just how thorough the assessment was, he likened it to a science where real facts and figures prove just how and where changes can be made. “It’s quite involved; we had never done anything like this before. It was almost like getting an audit from the tax office.”
At the offices of Sustainability Victoria, the organisation wanted to practice what it preached. By bringing in an independent consultant, they set out to undertake their own investigations on IT’s contribution to their energy use so they could then implement some changes.
Patrick O’Brien, Manager of ICT Facilities at Sustainability Victoria admits he was surprised by the results. “We started with an audit of our existing platform and that bought to life the fact that ICT accounted for 75 percent of our energy use. That’s not just in the server room, that includes computers, faxes, printers etc,” he says. “But the server room accounted for about 60 percent of that total figure.
Green is the new black
There’s no need to beat around the bush, green is the new black and the commitment to carbon neutrality will look good to potential and existing customers. It can’t hurt to take such efforts to the marketing department to reap rewards that travel further then the atmosphere.
“I’ll admit, there is a definite interest in the environment, it’s a hot topic,” says Porter.
It’s also the perfect opportunity to push loyalty and commitment within the organisation. “We find that staff have really embraced the program and are really proud of what the company has done,” says Porter.
When it comes to the employee talent pool, Cansfield believes if the trend continues and future generations become more environmentally aware than their present day counterparts, educated recruits might only take their goods to companies they view as ‘responsible.’ “Soon, if a company isn’t environmentally sound, they are going to find it difficult to recruit bright, young talent,” he says.
For Matt Mulligan, director of product development at web hosting service Ilisys, their move to carbon neutrality is one they can take to their customers and stakeholders. “There has been an emotional response from our customers. It’s something people really feel good about and does have some marketing potential,” he says. “We’ve collected quite a bit of information on what small businesses can do and we’ll be distributing this to our customers.”
The Australian Greenhouse Office points to recent research as suggesting that greenhouse issues are quickly becoming a key factor in consumer attitudes and purchasing decisions. The Greenhouse Friendly initiative says carbon neutrality can provide a ‘leverage point’ for engaging customers and differentiating your goods.
Overall, Ovum believes addressing environmental concerns could soon become as important to the ICT industry as technological innovation and revenue generation. “In short, the environment is becoming a strategic issue and no longer a marginal issue,” says Cansfield.
Best of all, addressing environmental concerns in an organisation can bring the power back to the people, especially those who might perceive the effort to have failed at the political level. If organisations take the initiative to make their own effort, it doesn’t matter what decisions are made by Governments, the Earth is better off.
Speaking at the Fujitsu Innovate 2007 event, corporate strategist and philosopher Dr Richard Hames says the characteristics of the paradigm we are heading into, are very different to the world that currently surrounds us. “It’s easy to get lost in the mire of doom and gloom and easy to forget what we’ve already done,” he says. “One of the key drivers is technology.”
“We have to take responsibility for the fact that we have created the world that we’ve got. Companies that understand that have a future,” he said.