Do You Have Data Center Energy-Efficiency or Green IT Accomplishments to Showcase?

If so, the Uptime Institute encourages you to apply for the Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards. The Institute grants these awards to data center owners, operators and vendors for projects, ideas and products that significantly improve energy productivity and resource use in IT, data centers and beyond. Learn more

So how did they perform? Our customers and the CRC League Table

Here at 1E, we’ve been looking at the newly published 2010-2011 CRC Performance League Table. We wanted to see how organizations are getting on with CRC reporting, but more importantly, with reducing their carbon footprints. We’re pleased to say that we work with 93 of the top [...]

Ensuring shutdown of PCs is still the easiest energy reduction procedure

At Banking Tech.com, there’s an interesting article up about how the “little things add up” when applied to Green IT. To a few, Green IT still seems like an unobtainable but noteworthy objective, but its really not as hard to obtain as it sounds. It’s the little things in [...]

Plant trees while you surf - Ecosia - The green search engine

Great idea, 80% of revenue generated via sponsored advertising is donated to the WWF forest conservation programme. I can't help but think if it were powered by Google rather than Bing and Yahoo the donated revenue would be double what it is today (£107,825K). Come on Google, get involved!

10 Greentech Predictions for 2011

Yep, it’s that time of year again: get ready for the flurry of end-of-the-year market prediction posts. While last year, I laid out what I thought would be the 5 Biggest Hurdles for Greentech in 2010, this year Jeff St. John makes 9 predictions (plus 1 that I add in) about what the greentech sector will look like in 2011. Read more....

The IT sector has reduced equipment emissions by 32m tonnes worldwide since 2007

A recent study has concluded that the IT sector has reduced annual CO₂ emissions associated with IT equipment by more than 32 million metric tons worldwide since 2007.

The report, which is here, was conducted by Natural Logic to assess the progress of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s (CSCI). The organisation was set up in 2007 and is led by CSC, Dell, Google Inc., HP, Intel, Microsoft and the World Wildlife Fund, but now has a total of 645 members. It’s aim is to reduce the environmental impact of IT equipment through energy efficiency, with a goal of reducing annual CO₂ emissions from the IT sector by 54 million metric tons by June 2011.

The research shows that annual CO₂ emissions from IT equipment have decreased by 32 million to 36 million metric tons worldwide since 2007 and is on target to achieve the CSCI’s reduction goal by the end of its 2010 fiscal year in June 2011. The report puts the success down to the CSCI’s efforts to promote the adoption of power management, new IT efficiency standards and the use of higher-efficiency computing equipment.

The CSCI has said that in the future it will expand its focus to include commercial and home networking equipment, helped by new board members Cisco, Emerson Network Power and Juniper Networks. The organisation will set new energy efficiency criteria for networking technologies and network devices will be included in the organisation’s environmental targets, with the goal of reducing annual CO2 emissions by an additional 38 million metric tons by 2015.

There’s an interesting comment in the conclusion that in fact the use of PC power management has been much lower than the organisation estimated when it set its goals; “CSCI’s original estimate was based on an assumption that the use of power management features on desktops and notebooks would be in the range of 90% by the end of the 2010 program year, but the latest research shows it is only around 10% (22% at the most)”. So it looks like there will be a particular effort by these companies to push power management in the coming months.

© The Green IT Review (www.thegreenitreport.com)

“Power IT Down Day” scheduled for Friday, August 27th, 2010 – How 1E takes a good idea even further

Promoted by partners such as Intel, HP, and Citrix, “Power IT Down Day” is scheduled for Friday, August 27^th, 2010. Per the web site, powering your computer down for a single day can help save tens of thousands of costly kilowatt hours.

Powering down a computer for a single day is a great way to promote a concept that is clearly important, and it’s an ongoing, worldwide issue that 1E (Green IT solutions provider) addresses in a more complete manner. The data 1E discovered in their 2009 PC Energy Report is staggering: “... if all the world’s 1 billion PC’s were powered down for just one night – it would save enough energy to light up New York City’s Empire State Building – inside and out – for more than 30 years.” 1E has pioneered the technology to make IT more efficient by providing tools to “power down” every day of the year instead of just one. Consider the significant impact that can be realized by implementing the “power down” concept all year long! Read more about these solution here; NightWatchman, NightWatchman Server Edition, and WakeUp.

Are you Ready for Mandatory Carbon Footprinting?

Phil Wilcock from 1E writes: A new survey finds that only 25% of businesses here in the UK are measuring their Carbon Footprints. While that may not set alarm bells ringing in most other parts of the world, here in the UK it's a little more serious as it's only six weeks before the deadline for the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, a cap-and-trade program for large private and public organizations that are not covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. This means organizations such as Universities, supermarkets and city councils.

The CRC will apply to around 5,000 large organizations that use more than 6,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually. The UK's Environment Agency said last week that just 1,229 organizations had signed up to meet the Sept. 30 deadline. Those that take early action through various certifications, such as the Carbon Trust Standard, can earn a higher ranking on the CRC league table, which will eventually be made public so that poorer performing companies can be 'named and shamed'.

According to the report, most companies are now resigned to the fact that Carbon Footprinting (and paying for the emission of excess carbon) is going to become law sooner rather than later.

“The debate about whether or not carbon footprinting and payment will become mandatory for business appears to be over as far as finance heads are concerned," Harry Morrison, general manager of the Carbon Trust Standard Co., which conducted the survey, said in a statement. "Yet only a minority have taken action so far and these early movers have a clear advantage. Building carbon management into the DNA of the business now not only ensures preparedness for future compliance requirements but also brings immediate cost and efficiency benefits and competitive edge."

In another interesting report, it seems that even those companies that are recording sustainability stats aren't doing it so efficiently.

In a recent a US survey by iReuse Companies were polled to find out which sustainability metrics were being tracked, which were most important and how data was being managed. Responses came from a variety of people within these companies, but overall one of the main conclusions is that while managing and reporting electricity use is seen as critical, the systems used to record such data are usually quite basic. The report finds that Excel-based systems are most often used, but many are looking for solutions that are easier to use and more sophisticated in the interpretation of the data.

Luckily for them, both NightWatchman and NightWatchman Server Edition have sophisticated reporting engines which can be used to feed into a company-wide sustainability report. Here at 1E we believe that Carbon Management is just as important as financial management and should be firmly embedded in your company at all levels. With more and more legislation coming down the road in order to force companies to account for their energy use, now is the time to be looking to both report on and reduce your Carbon Footprint. With 1E's current Energy Management software and great free resources such as the Carbon Management Center from GreenBiz.com to get you started, help is at hand.

Use 30% less ink with Century Gothic Font

The University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, has changed its default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic. It seems that Century Gothic uses 30% less ink than Arial, the most commonly used default font. Ink costs the university around $10,000 a gallon, with toner cartridges and drums not far behind, and accounts for 60% of the cost of the printed page, so it’s potentially a significant saving across a university campus.

In this case changing the default option is an effective way of nudging people towards greener behaviour. There’s no force involved - the University made it clear that users can change back to a different default font if you wish. The university is also encourage everyone to switch to Century Gothic as their default font in Entourage for Macintosh, Word, and Excel.

If you want to go even further, there are specially designed green fonts. With Ecofont, for example, users can work with their usual font but for printing use its ink-saving variant. The green font has additional holes to reduce ink use with, apparently, no impact on legibility. Ecofont claims that its font is even more economical than Century Gothic. Preton has a solution that deletes unnecessary pixels from all aspects of a print job as well as providing the capability to eliminate unneeded text or graphics from print jobs and providing analysis of print usage and savings.

So there’s a lot that can be done to reduce the environmental impact, and cost, of printing – the above are just a few examples of what’s on the market. Read more on Green Printing at The Green IT Review

New white paper: Tools to assist with the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme

Commencing April 2010 the CRC energy efficiency scheme is a cap and trade scheme for public and private sector organisations consuming more than 6000mwh of electricity a year. Compliance carries an administrative and financial burden; this burden can be reduced with the use of intelligent tools such as PC and Server power management. Download here.

New Year New Leaf

The British Computer Society's Young Professional Group held their first green IT event on January 28 at Southampton Street. 'New Year New Leaf' was an opportunity for YPG members to hear from expert speakers from the government, public and private sectors.

Watch video highlights of the event

The aim of the evening was to address the top issues surrounding green IT with presentations from the speakers followed by a question and answer session. This event was put on as a result of requests from YPG members for events on hot topics in addition to the soft skills event series currently running, namely skill centres.
The experts

Our five expert speakers brought with them a wealth of knowledge from vastly different backgrounds. Firstly we heard from Adam Clamp who has been working in IT for the last 15 years. In 2007 he founded 'The Green IT Company' and has since been offering environmentally sound IT solutions to his clients.


Adam is a keen environmentalist and advocate of sustainable computing, and in his presentation he addressed the issues surrounding environmentally focused IT and the need for consumer influence to drive change in the IT sector.

Adam demonstrated the need for change in the form of the facts and statistics of today's consumer society and asked that we all think about the necessity (or otherwise) of purchasing new equipment, the life cycle of producing that equipment and the waste which is produced in doing so, including the disposal. Adam feels behavioural change is a key aspect of Greener computing.

Our research expert Euan Davis, from Forrester, specialises in sourcing, off-shoring and multi sourcing and is now recognized as the green IT expert for Europe by Forrester. Euan discussed what has been happening in green IT throughout 2008 and how he believes it will evolve over the coming years.

He touched on the effects the recession is having on green IT and how companies are focusing their minds on the basics 'cost'. Euan believes the revival of green IT strategising will occur when legislation is put into place by government.

Euan also talked about his recent research into carbon transformation, which includes analysing a business's value chain as well as its outsourcing value chain. Euan believes that vendors, businesses and government need to work together to bring about change.

Five expert speakers Speaking to us about Government initiatives was Bob Crooks, head of business relationship management for DEFRA. Bob is leading the green ICT programme for DEFRA and its executive agencies, which are seeking to reduce DEFRA's IT carbon footprint by evolving their working practices.

Bob described how they are looking to make better use of their equipment and to extend its life where possible. Other areas DEFRA are focusing on are energy and travel reduction with schemes such as 'Access anytime, anywhere' for more flexible working for staff wanting to work from home and to reduce the need to travel to meetings.

Bob outlined the future target as carbon neutrality for all ICT across all estates by 2012 including all outsourced IT. Bob is also directly involved in the development of PAS 2050, the publically available specification (PAS) for the measurement of the embodied greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of products and services across their life cycle.

He has also recently launched the BCS Green IT Specialist Group, which is set to be a leading focus group for the BCS Membership including the implementation of best practice and guidelines.

Yosuke Von Heyden shared with us the successes of the implementation of green strategies within Transport for London (TfL). Yosuke joined TfL on their information management graduate scheme after graduating from King's College London and Imperial College London. He has since moved into a strategy role specialising in green IT.

Yosuke described how the successful reduction of carbon emissions has been achieved at TfL by responsible and ethical procurement, waste reduction, power consumption monitoring through the installation of thin client technology, and data centre virtualisation and consolidation.

They are looking to reduce their overall energy consumption by 53 per cent by 2010. Yosuke believes this will be achieved by addressing three key areas: the overall carbon foot; equipment lifecycle; and behavioural change.

Our final speaker was hardware specialist James Petrini. James graduated from Oxford Brookes University 1992 with an engineering degree. He has since worked for The Environment Agency and for Sun Microsystems UK as an IT engineer. James is currently director of Greenshift Limited, a Sun Microsystems Partner specialising in ultra thin clients.

During James' presentation he discussed the main benefits of Sun Microsystem's ultra thin clients: the manageability; the environmental benefits; security; and value of the product. James also offered an insight into different solutions available and how they could fit into a particular organisation's setup to help reduce energy consumption.
The Q & A session

After hearing from the speakers the floor was opened up for questions. We had some interesting discussion around third sector organisations, advice for small to medium sized businesses on how they can begin to reduce their impact, and what individuals can do within an organisation to help reduce their overall impact on the environment.
Networking

The post-event networking was well attended and all the speakers were available to answer questions. The atmosphere was jolly and everyone enjoyed themselves. In the future the YPG are looking to aid the networking sessions by providing additional information to attendees about one another, for instance job titles and / or organisations. This will help to maximise the networking time by enabling them to seek out the people they would most like to talk to.
To conclude

Feedback from the members and speakers was excellent. The general feeling from members was that they had gained a great insight to the developing field of green IT. It has also been good to learn that not only have people gained an insight into green IT but they also feel it has influenced their thoughts and decision making since the event, especially when it comes to daily working practices.

The event highlights will be available soon on YPG.tv on the YPG pages, along with some of the speakers' slides. Look out for more exciting cutting edge events in the future brought to you by the YPG.
Want to get involved?

You can start by coming along to a YPG event, whether it's in your local area or at the London offices. We've also got a presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, so get in touch.

Watch video highlights of the event

February 2009

Green IT: keeping it simple

So what is green IT? Is it replacing equipment with the latest and greatest in low energy devices? Is it high-tech gadgetry to display how many trees you've saved each time power management kicks in on your PC?

Is it recycling redundant equipment responsibly? Is it switching equipment off at the plug to make huge energy savings? Well yes, it's all of that, but also much more. Michelle Hazelton explains on why don't need to be an expert to start making a difference.

Recently I've been researching green IT for The Ethical Property Company. The research process was often challenging, occasionally frustrating but always extremely interesting. I discovered that amidst all the hype, a lot of organisations have yet to implement any really positive changes.

Quite possibly the subject has simply overwhelmed the majority into doing nothing. However, I have adopted an approach whereby positive changes can be implemented with little cost and modest effort.

I conducted an audit of the company's IT equipment and energy consumption, the general practices adopted for purchasing and recycling, and peoples' general understanding of green IT. From this I was able to establish my starting point.

The monitoring process was conducted over a number of weeks in order to gain an understanding of both the time periods when energy consumption was highest, and how much was actually consumed in those periods.

My research revealed that 60 per cent of the building's energy is consumed when the building is mostly unoccupied, namely overnight and at weekends. PC power consumption can be split into three categories: off, idle and load. Typically, however, a PC and monitor that have been switched off still draw on average 20 watts of power.

That's like leaving a lamp on every night and every weekend all the time. Multiply this by the number of workstations in an average building and it is apparent that a significant amount of energy is being wasted when the building in mostly unoccupied. The simple solution to this problem is to encourage people to switch off equipment at the plug before they leave the office.

Tackling the issues surrounding product life-cycle analysis has been rather more complicated. I have contacted numerous organisations and bodies including the Carbon Trust to gain knowledge and understanding of how to calculate the embedded carbon foot print of IT devices but unfortunately my searches and correspondence have returned nothing.

Information is available in the form of an eco declaration for products but translating this into something useful is both timely and complex. To be truly green, through IT, we will need to take into account all aspects of the processes involved with manufacturing and shipping. Component manufacturers are going to have to be better prepared in future to provide us with this information, or else risk losing business.

My advice to people who are just starting to implement green IT changes is to not get bogged down by the hype surrounding the issues. You can easily get started by spending a little time investigating current energy consumption, recycling and purchasing practices.

Take meter readings at the start and end of the working day, this is an effective way of identifying how much energy is being used when the office is unoccupied. This will enable you to identify equipment which can be switched off.

Review your current recycling policies against the WEEE directive. Rather than throw equipment out, pass it down the company ranks. Purchasing can be improved by spending a little time looking into energy efficiency, and evaluate the product's environmental criteria according to the IEEE standards.

Positive change in the form of lower power consumption and reduced carbon emission will quickly result from even minor changes in working practice, and will be more than evident in much reduced energy bills.

In the next six to twelve months we will begin to see the emergence of green IT guidelines and best practices from bodies including BCS. This will enable companies and individuals to refine their strategies and bring them in line with the latest research. In the meantime there is still plenty that can be done to improve our IT practices.

First Published October 2008