Perhaps as controversial as any topic can get. Today I'm talking about going 'green' with reference to the difficulty (or not) this idea presents within the IT industry.'Green' has become a bit of a buzz word since issues of climate change became widely publicly addressed during Thatcher's stint in office. Now we live in a world of sustainable energy sources, hydrogen power, receding icecaps and global warming. There is also a giant hole in the ozone layer. Treaties have also been signed by various countries in an effort to adhere to the planet's needs rather than our own and documentaries on television have shown that becoming completely eco-friendly is a battle in itself.
However the premise of this article is founded on a more specific question. What is the IT world doing to reduce its carbon footprint? After all, all computers run on electricity. The idea for this article came from a peep on the BBC technological website where i saw an article named 'Mixed results for green IT goals' which highlights the UK government's strategy for its in house IT to be carbon neutral by 2012. However, survey results have been announced which highlight the fact that the majority of the public sector do not know about the environmentally friendly targets the government have put in place with their greening strategy.
Amongst those who were aware of this fact, nearly one third said that they had not made any significant changes to their own ICT usage and had no plans to make such changes.
Poor collaboration
Trewin Restoric, the Global Action Plan director puts it down to 'poor collaboration' and sharing knowledge across the sector. He states that the most obvious route to knowledge sharing is for IT managers to liaise with those who pay for the energy which the equipment consumes. Then, perhaps discussions between the two would produce a more eco-friendly outcome.
"Government electricity usage is continuing to rise, and it is likely that one of the big reasons for this is the proliferation of computers, laptops, chargers, lobby televisions and the air conditioning in server rooms", Rebecca Willis, Sustainable Development Commission
Its clear to see that the UK government cannot get it quite right, so how are some of the big names in IT getting on with going green? A concise article from computerweekly.com sets out some of the issues involved.
According to the article, measuring the progress of these initiatives is not an easy thing to do as it is not as simple as a company simply providing an eco-friendly product. Obviously this plays a significant part of the overall solution and certain companies have got it down to a fine art; Fujitsu Siemens achieves the best ranking with 75% greenery. Ericsson is also high with 74% due to their work with evaluation of green practices during the manufacturing process of their goods and after those come Google, Hewlett-Packard and BT.
According to the other end of the spectrum, Lenovo, Nortel and Dell sat between the 20% - 30% benchmark. Perhaps the success of Fujitsu Siemens and HP are the fact that they broke away from governmental benchmarks of eco-friendliness and set up their own standards in areas they thought they could succeed in. HP now has their own environmental labeling system.
Delivering products which help the end user reduce their emissions is a great thing, however, companies who wish to be properly green have to look further back in their supply chain according to Simon Mingay, vice-president at Gartner. They need to begin looking at asking their suppliers the extent to which they audit their own supply chains along with their own manufacturing processes in terms of their environmental standards. Throwing this into the mix for a business is a potentially dangerous thing. To this end, companies need to decide what is more valuable to them, going green totally and having to potentially change a whole supply chain which may be costly or continuing to look at setting their own environmental standards.
Whilst writing this article I was reminded of an episode of Dragons Den, a business based programme, where budding entrepreneurs pitch for investment in their sometimes wacky companies. The following is a clip from this very programme where a representative from a little known company named VeryPC boasts his eco-friendly products and does get a little shot down by one of the Dragons.
Video: VeryPC on Dragon's DenWhat the pitcher fails to mention though is how his products would benefit a home user more then perhaps a business; despite this it's quite amusing to watch. Please comment with your thoughts and feelings, do you 'go green' or is green just not your color?
The human population has always been expanding; Humanities need for energy has always been expanding, Even if you do manage to achieve a global 50% decrease in energy usage by 2050 we would be right back at square one.
That’s why energy conservation is a flawed approach to climate change, The only approach the one which the EU and US are adopting is replacing our carbon producing energy sources with Nuclear and to a much lesser extent the "renewables" .
The problem is green propaganda distracts from this, and spreads a myth that energy conservation is a viable solution to climate change. We don’t need the help of the general public if you want to help stop climate change however, Vote agnst the greens 16% of earths energy comes from a carbon free source . Lets make that a start .
Id rather go gay than go green;
The other advantage to keeping your energy use low, especially in businesses, is MONEY. The more money a business saves on energy costs, the higher the profits. The less energy government uses, the more money they have to spend on health, education, roads etc.
I really don't think you have much of an understanding of this issue.
e.g electric cars , where does the power come from , fossil fuels. WE NEED MORE RENUIBAL ENERGY
e.g electric cars , where does the power come from , fossil fuels. WE NEED MORE RENUIBAL ENERGY
The energy used in electric cars only comes from fossil fuels if the source of their energy (for example a wall outlet in a home garage) is from fossil fuels, which (although most of the time is true) isn't always the case. Yes we need more renewable energy, but as it will take a very long time to implement due to limited efficiency and costs, there are advantages to reducing energy consumption in the mean time. I was also replying mainly to bob21's post.
The only people pushing for energy conservation are those who want to send mankind back to the stone age.
Last edited by bob21 on 05 Jul 2009 - 13:18
All the crap nuclear energy produces, where do you put it? In the ground? In a garbage bag? On the moon? You flush it in the toilet?
Nuclear centrals that work with fusion would be a much smarter choice. But they don't really exist yet... well, we're not ready to work with this in all over the world I mean.
By attempting to become more energy efficient we have a lot to gain and comparatively very little to lose. Doesn't it make sense to minimize pollution to the best of our ability, even if any observable benefits aren't immediately obvious? What harm can there be in making products and manufacturing processes more efficient?
You might also want to take a closer look at the previous posters hidden Anti-Human agenda considering he just advocated the murder of 3 billion people a few posts down. The truth hurts you can’t be on both sides of the fence claiming climate change is so serious it mandates rationing energy yet completely ignore a readily available carbon free source .
You are clearly not smart enough to be green, and I doubt that the gay community would welcome you with open arms either.
If you cannot see the advantages, both immediate and potential, of at energy conservation, regardless of how effective it may or may not be in combating climate change, then I pity you.
I agree, the amount of greenhouse gases and the holes in the ozone layer we are causing/have caused may have nothing to do with the increase in global warming being observed, but measures implemented in "going green" also have the side effect of saving money in the long term once they're in place.
And just to clarify, nuclear energy is slightly counter-productive as others have already said because you've got to find somewhere to lose the radioactive waste. Anywhere on Earth is (or should be) a no-no because any containers you decide to bury, one of them at least will inevitably leak, and that's before we get into what happens when things go wrong like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
On a side note, I doubt, much of this will be considered in the UK at least as the country is run by men in suits with mostly politics and law degrees, and no experience of the stuff they're talking about. Yes, I know there will be exceptions.
So...no one else gonna explain what a figure of speech is? Gotta love teh intarnets.
It's toadeater, did you really expect anything else?
Hey, genius, what do electric cars run on? What do electric heaters run on? What do electric stoves run on? How do you generate hydrogen?
So, how do you make electricity? With nuclear energy, which is safe, despite the oil company propaganda about it.
Thank you very much. Now take your coal and put it in your Christmas stocking.
So, how do you make electricity? With nuclear energy, which is safe, despite the oil company propaganda about it.
Thank you very much. Now take your coal and put it in your Christmas stocking.
Electric cars, heaters and stoves run on electricity which comes from a variety of sources. If you were in France, it would most likely be nuclear, if you are in the US, it would most likely be coal. Even if a nuclear plant could be regarded as 100% safe, there are still MANY more issues that have to be dealt with, none of which you are obviously aware of. If I am FOR energy conservation and renewable energy sources, then obviously I am not "for" coal or other fossil fuel energy sources. If nuclear energy produced 100% of electricity, it would be far more expensive, giving even more reason to conserve energy for the purpose of saving money. Go and eat some toads.
As long as it doesn't affect animals.
// Meaning it won't "effect" us. //
Yeah, when an obsolete, broken-down Soviet-era reactor explodes into the atmosphere. Something like that cannot happen with modern reactors. Why don't you look up how many nuclear plants there are in France. Have you heard of any nuclear accidents there recently? Have you heard of ANY nuclear accidents from a modern plant recently anywhere in the world?
Nuclear energy is safe, the fossil fuel companies are behind the anti-nuclear FUD.
Nuclear energy is safe, the fossil fuel companies are behind the anti-nuclear FUD.
I'm not sure if you are able to read, toadeater, however ccoltmanm's post has nothing to do with nuclear power whatsoever. I never said I was anti-nuclear. I merely stated the disadvantages. There are more nuclear plants in the US than in France. I am supportive of the building of a nuclear plant in the Australian state of South Australia (where I live), however I don't think it's the magical answer that some people think it is.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8131566.stm
I've never commented before on Neowin's dubious crediting policy, but someone should be ashamed over this one.
One of the overriding factors in 'going green ' in IT is the will of those at the top, and at present it doesn't seem to be that strong. Greenpeace 'name and shame' the best and worst of IT producers in their Guide to Greener Electronics which has been running quarterly since August 2006. Unsuprisingly, those at the bottom of the list seem to be doing very little to improve their rating. What that seems to suggest is that without tougher global regulation for companies, there is at present very little to make them change their behaviour. The production costs keep going down, their profits keep going up so why change? The overriding duty of directors in the UK is to the shareholders, meaning the focus is squarely on the bottom line.
I think you also need to draw a clearer distinction between the different parts of the chain. IT producing is very different from implementing green IT in a business/government office, which is what the Government have been doing. The reason for their failure is more due to a lack of prominence of the strategy, combined with an ever-reducing budget for IT. This type of situation is one that all 'consumers' of IT equipment will be struggling with. IT companies, on the other hand sit further back in this chain, and (due to the lack of any real incentives), don't seem to be in a hurry to go that green as they've got a captive market already.
However, I think we'll start to see that change as more people look at auditing their IT. People are starting to twig that it's not that good for the planet chucking out a load of computers every 2 years and replacing them so that people can check their e-mail faster. What computer firms could make a killing doing is providing an audit service which calculates CO2, hazordous chemicals and then supplying them with affordable yet more environmentally friendly, targeted IT. That way, IT companies still manage to turn a profit, and companies can reduce their overheads and Carbon Footprint. I'm sure there are loads of other ideas but that's just my food for thought...
People are willing to put up with the risk of poor health, but usually only change their lifestyle after a major event like a heart attack. Small, fuel efficient cars were available in the US since the 70's... Chrysler made it's 1st comeback with their Rabbit clone. People chose to drive SUVs, despite all around higher costs -- when Chevy sold a Toyota people wouldn't buy it, because it was too small.
Want to increase IT recycling, or reduce it's contributions to landfills? Figure out how to save companies time, &/or make them money.
Since I dont, I dont care like I said.
I don't plan to have any children in my future and I obviously really dont care about the others' children.
I mean why do we really care about the future? It doesnt effect us directly. Let the future deal with it.
I dont also mean that throw bottles in the street but research into "Going green in th IT world" I believe is less important than world hunger or/and cancer.
Again imagine if those that were killed because of cancer/hunger/more important issues/etc could help your kids' green problem.
Hunger is alot more important than this green ****. Hunger can kill you in about a week. This green issue can kill your (possible) kids (or your kids' kids) in hundreds of years.
What is more important?
You'll see, after the next world war, the polution of the earth will decrease.
All it takes is 2... Adam/Eve, Cain/Able, Romeo/Juliet, Hitler/most everyone else...
Taking more of a punitive approach might be attractive if your focus is on stirring up, distracting the masses -- look, the Greeks used the Colosseum and got away with it, and political groups / politicians / governments have been using the same approach ever since. But it only works short term, since those pesky masses of people making up the general population can't be counted on to stay, well, ignorant. In fact, the only reason for using a big stick, absent any carrots, is the relative ease of use -- something figured out by every schoolyard bully since before schoolyards began. It's the exact same reason behind keeping you distracted -- it's far, far easier to point a finger, demonizing an *alleged* cause, rather than doing the science and other hard work to actually come up with a solution that's in everybody's interest. Most telling perhaps, it can seem the shortest route to power, however short lived.
Regarding *Going Green* with IT & PCs etc, instead of something meaningful, the boss can pull a marketing stunt, for example using goats [which are not without impact or emissions] instead of clean lawn equipment or better yet, forgoing the acres of manicured lawn. The boss can OK the investment in better data center facility design (check out APC's parent for example), or make unreasonable demands that will never be accomplished. The boss can OK LED monitors, or not. Same goes for upgrading PCs, to take advantage of the extensive advancements in power saving tech. Eliminating wall warts, or at least turning them off (cheap & simple enough using non-surge protecting power strips) I suspect would save more in summer (when heat's a factor) than replacing the few remaining incandescents with toxic, exploding fluorescent bulbs [where are LEDs?] [and yes, the bases for those familiar swirl, fluorescent bulbs get hot, & can explode -- it sounded like a small firecracker]. If the boss is serious about efficiency & *Greenness*, modify or have PC cases designed to disperse the hot air they put out -- when it's concentrated at their desk, users crank down the thermostat a notch.
At any rate, at the end of the day and all that... if any sort of Utopia was/is ever possible, issuing mandates will never, ever achieve it. Physics states it nicely: For any action there's an equal & opposing reaction. People, like creeks & rivers, flow in the path of least resistance. You can demand a pond or lake drain itself uphill all you want. It all makes for excellent theater, if you favor the absurd, but please remember that only sadists gain by making people miserable, & it's guaranteed their pleasure is only fleeting.
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