IT Emissions Flying High
IT Emissions Flying High
December 5, 2007: In the lead up to the UN conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, an environmental charity in the UK is claiming that carbon emissions from the IT sector are poised to overtake those from the aviation industry.
According to a new report from Global Action Plan, 10 percent of energy consumption in the UK goes to powering IT.
The GAP report claims that data storage requirements have increased by 48 percent over the last year, while in the same period airline passenger numbers have increased by three percent. While the cost of storage is coming right down, the world is still creating data at a phenomenal rate, much of which is stored in always-on live environments.
“Computers are seen as quite benign things sitting on your desk,” said GAP Director Trewin Restorick. “But, for instance, in our charity we have one server. That server has same carbon footprint as your average SUV doing 15 miles to the gallon. Yet, whereas the SUV is seen as a villain from the environmental perspective, the server is not.”
Titled "An Inefficient Truth", the report cuts a wide swathe in the media, accusing IT departments of being “incredibly slow” in reducing their carbon footprints. Restorick has not stopped there, however, also pointing the finger at companies such as Dell, IBM and HP of using environmentalism as a marketing tool, and governments for not doing enough to both independently monitor the green claims being made, and pushing projects (such as the much debated ID card) that will drastically increase the amount of data requiring energy-intensive storage.
“I've seen a lot of green froth and hype from a whole bunch of vendors which are pretty hard to substantiate,” said Restorick according to theregister.co.uk.
The study also found that while awareness of green issues is quite high, 86 percent of those surveyed did not know their department’s carbon footprint. A further two thirds are not responsible for paying their own energy bills, and more than half do not even see the bills they rack up.
The study also found that as 60 percent of those surveyed said they were using less than half their storage capacity, and 37 percent said they are storing data indefinitely, substantial amounts of electricity could be saved by more efficient data storage.
The organisation is calling for the government to eliminate its “softly-softly” approach to the IT industry, and has recommended the introduction of tax incentives for small and medium-sized businesses to reduce their carbon footprints.
Some commentators have noted that increasingly oppressive compliance and disaster recovery laws could also be contributing to the increasing use of hot standby systems and the energy drain this entails.
After all, the airlines don’t have backup planes on standby for every service on the off chance one will break down.
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