Green Gauge August 2007

From Lauraibm

Compiled and summarised by Gavin Wilson and Laura Fredericks.

Contents

The Green Imperative

Europe leads the way in quest for environmentally sustainable IT (3-Jul-07)

By the end of next year, forecasts Gartner, 50% of medium-sized and large IT organisations in Europe will declare a green imperative, as a result of financial, legislative, risk-related and environmental pressures. But less than 20% of organisations outside Europe will do the same. By the end of 2008, green criteria will be among the top six buying criteria of more than 40% of European IT organisations. Climate change is much more visible and non-divisive an issue in Europe because of the high-profile actions taken by many governments. But in the US, although the trend is clear, the environment remains a polarising issue.

The greening of AsiaPac IT (9-Aug-07)

IT organisations in Asia-Pacific are not expected to make significant progress in becoming green unless there is broad, enterprise-wide commitment, says Hydrasight. By the end of 2008, more than 10% of large AP organisations – primarily consumer-facing and high-profile corporations and some governments – will announce their intent to go green. Companies will include environmental clauses in their supplier contracts, but Hydrasight does not expect strict enforcement of these policies.

How to counter greenwash: measure what matters—and make it visible (24-Jul-07)

The UK government are taking steps to discourage greenwashing, that is, the spending of more money or time on advertising one's being green than on actually being green. Defra have announced that they will work with BSI British Standards to co-sponsor the development of a publicly available specification. This will be a standard method for measuring the greenhouse gas emissions in products and services; the intention is that this is the first step in moving towards an internationally agreed standard for measuring emissions.

Carbon Offsets

MPs Support Carbon Offset Schemes (22-Jul-07)

Despite some carbon offset schemes being ‘less than robust’, the parliamentary environmental audit committee says that people should be encouraged to use schemes that offset their carbon emissions. The MPs expressed disappointment at the ‘unsatisfactory’ efforts made by airlines to help passengers offset emissions. The MPs’ report also highlighted a forestry-based scheme sponsored by a popular music group called Coldplay: 40% of the plantation died because of a lack of water, reducing the scheme’s capacity to absorb CO2. The UK government intends to introduce a code of practice by the end of 2007, and schemes meeting the code’s requirements will be allowed to display a quality mark.

BT tough on emission cuts (7-Aug-07)

BT’s head of climate change described the purchasing of offsets instead of cutting emissions oneself as an attempt to get off scot-free – something that BT will not promote. BT claims to have saved tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2 by using videoconferencing.

Donna Young, the head of climate change at BT, believes that every company needs to start taking environmental responsibility by reducing their carbon emissions. To help in reducing their emissions BT has started a program to encourage their 160,000 employees to reduce their own carbon emissions both at home and at work. To help in engaging employees and the community BT used climate change road shows and carbon busters clubs.

Look Beyond Google's Plan to Become Carbon Neutral (June-07)

Gartner has criticised Google’s announcement that it will be carbon neutral by the end of 2007 because the plan depends heavily on carbon offsets, a concept that lacks credibility. Furthermore, Google does not disclose its energy consumption or its carbon footprint.

Google has announced its plan to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007, to achieve this they will maximise efficiency, use renewable resources and purchase offsets for the remaining emissions. In reality to become carbon neutral Google will have to rely heavily on carbon offsets, this lacks credibility and it is hard to ensure that every ton of carbon dioxide emitted will be permanently removed through an offset program. Google states that offsetting will only be temporary, but Gartner believe that to achieve carbon neutrality Google will have to purchase offsets for many years to come, this is due to the company having more servers than any other, leading to a substantial carbon footprint.

It is vital to ensure that carbon neutrality achieved via offsets is not weighted highly in environmental purchase criteria, what is more impressive and far harder to achieve is a corporation taking direct steps to reduce their carbon dioxide footprint.

Customer Activity

Green IT team starts work (26-Jul-07)

Lloyds TSB, John Lewis, Sony, the BMA, E.ON and others have formed a UK environmental forum which deliberately excludes IT vendors. “Many suppliers are making claims about being green, but it’s hard for them to assess who is telling the truth,” said one of the directors who set up EITLT, the environmental IT leadership team. The first piece of research to be completed will be an estimate of the energy used by IT kit in the UK; an event will publish the findings in the House of Commons in two months’ time. EITLT estimates that IT accounts for 2% to 3% of all energy consumption in the UK.

London 2012 embraces web 2.0 and green IT (1-Aug-07)

Work on IT infrastructure won’t start until after the Beijing games, but organisers will set out to make London 2012 the most environmentally friendly Olympic Games ever. With around 10,000 PCs, 1,000 servers and two data centres, planners recognise the contribution that green IT initiatives can make, but main IT supplier Atos Origin won’t identify specific actions until next year.

Data Centre

Business disruption from power failures up 350% (30-Apr-07)

According to SunGard, power failures accounted for just 7% of IT disruptions in the UK in 2005, leaping to 26% in 2006. The UK boss of SunGard said: “With IT kit drawing more power than ever before, it is imperative that businesses plan for possible interruptions to their power supply.”

Full story: EPA Urges Data Centres to Cut Power (6-Aug-07)

At current rates, US data centres will double power consumption over the next four years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But if more efficient use were made of servers, this upward trend could be slowed or even reversed. In 2006, America's servers consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours, representing a cost of about $4.5bn and 1.5% of total electricity consumption in the USA. In a “best practice” scenario described by the EPA, in which data centres are aggressively consolidated and direct liquid cooling applied to servers and storage, there could be a decline in the energy curve down to a level of 45 billion kilowatt-hours. The EPA wants to investigate an Energy Star rating system for servers, but IT vendors are likely to be ambivalent about this.

Full story: Self-sustaining data centers almost a reality (6-Aug-07)

As part of an ongoing effort to make IT more green, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are said to be in the midst of researching and testing self-sustained data centres that need no cooling equipment.

HP offers 3-D thermal mapping for data centres (25-Jul-07)

HP is expanding its IT operations services business, by offering 3-D thermal mapping tools that detect and manage data centre hotspots. HP Thermal Zone Mapping displays a three-dimensional model of the data centre which identifies the flow of hot and cold air. This allows customers to locate potential trouble spots and arrange air conditioning for better efficiency. The addition of thermal modelling follows HP's Dynamic Smart Cooling' (DSC) service unveiled last year. DSC uses temperature monitors attached to server racks which can alter the air conditioning aimed at the unit when necessary. HP claims that customers can reduce data centre cooling energy costs by up to 45% by using the two services together. Pricing for the services starts at around $10,000 for a check-up. A top-tier implementation which includes 3-D thermal mapping runs at an average of about $100,000.

Individual Efforts

Sun Study Shows Being Green Stops at Work (6-Aug-07)

A poll of US employees reveals that 58% said they turn off home PCs when not using them, but only 34% did so when in the workplace. Strangely 73% said it was important to them that their employer is environmentally responsible.

Why WFH isn't always so green (4-Jul-07)

The electricity used by home PCs doubled between 2000 and 2005, according to the Energy Saving Trust. Consumption is forecast to grow a further 30% between 2006 and 2020 as users install higher-spec (and therefore more energy-intensive) machines. Home-working is often touted as a way of cutting CO2 emissions, but employees should take steps to reduce their power consumption. The difference between an energy-efficient PC with a ‘sleep’ mode and a PC left on 24x7 can be more than £100 per year in electricity. In 2005, 9% of the domestic electricity bill was due to PCs and their peripherals; by 2020, computers and other gadgets will account for 45% of electricity used in the home.

Peak Oil

Peak oil: what's ahead? (7-Aug-07)

Future oil production could be lower than some have forecast. Where countries experience a decline in production, social unrest could lead to pipeline attacks. Food will become more expensive as oil shortages kick in, because considerable oil is used in growing, processing and transporting food to market. Globalisation is likely to decline. Inflation may result, as money chases fewer goods. Jobs likely to see growth include: manual labour, scientists, engineers, small businesses, recycling, food production, energy-related, energy efficiency in the home.

Recycling

HP meets 1B pound recycling goal (13-Jul-07)

Having met its goal six months early to recycle 1 billion pounds (lbs) of electronics, HP said it has set a new target to recycle another billion pounds by the end of 2010. For those concerned that the materials recovered are being reused in HP computers, HP said that plastics and metals retrieved from recycled products have been used to make a range of new products, including car parts, clothes hangers, plastic toys, fence posts, serving trays and roof tiles.

Don't recycle your computer—reuse it instead (9-Aug-07)

New WEEE regulations prompted HP and Dell to report progress on their recycling of computer parts. But two university professors have shown it would be much more efficient (20 times) to re-use each PC instead of breaking it up for its recyclable materials. They discovered that the manufacture of a PC needs 1.7 tonnes of materials, including more than 10 times the PC’s weight in fossil fuels. 75% of a PC’s consumption of fossil fuels has happened before the PC is ever switched on! Michael Dell himself pointed that most of the 125 million PCs discarded each year are as powerful as the $100 laptop being proposed by the One Laptop Per Child project for schoolchildren in the developing world. Another organisation, Computer Aid, faces a severe shortage of donated PCs to meet increasing demand for refurbished PCs from developing countries. Each of the 90,000 PCs already donated is likely to enjoy a second-user life of another three years on a school desk in Africa.

Renewable

BT extends green procurement (23-Jan-07)

BT has renewed the ‘largest green energy contract in the world’. It extended its three-year contract with npower and British Gas which contains the clause that it will receive one terawatt-hour of renewable energy. This means BT will reduce CO2 emissions equivalent to the output of 300, 000 houses, BT said.

Software

Is 'green' software possible? (21-Jul-07)

Unlike hardware vendors, ISVs can’t build greener products by using alternative materials. But Microsoft has made green efforts, for example by creating tools that help the US government track emissions. But Microsoft came in for much criticism from the Green Party for the lack of green credentials in Vista. Others have criticised the software industry for producing ‘bloatware’ – functions which consume machine cycles and thus energy, without providing anything the user wants. Open source code (e.g. Puppy Linux) and softcopy reference manuals are two green approaches.

Council Turns Off PCs to Save Costs, Environment (9-Aug-07)

Peterborough City Council expects to save £50,000 and reduce its CO2 emissions by one ton per year, as a result of installing software from 1E that offers automated shut-down of PCs in the evenings and weekends. The council calculates that currently 30% of PCs are left on, costing £60 per machine per annum.

Glossary

Glossary

  • carbon dioxide equivalent, (CO2e) n. a measure applied to other greenhouse gases, measuring their global warming potential expressed in terms of the mass of CO2 that would produce the same effect.
  • carbon footprint n. the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, emitted over the life-cycle of a product or service. Businesses tend to include the CO2 emitted during their activities, but exclude full life-cycle effects such as the construction and eventual demolition of the office buildings they use.
  • carbon neutrality n. the state in which an organisation's or individual's net carbon emissions are zero, achieved through a combination of carbon offsetting and/or using renewable energy. (NB There is no universally accepted definition of carbon neutral.)
  • carbon offsetting n. the act of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. A well-known example is the planting of trees to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from personal air travel. The benefit of this is that trees absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, so a growing forest will reduce atmospheric CO2 levels. (NB There is no universally accepted definition of carbon offsetting.)
  • carbon trading n. the control of CO2 emissions through economic incentives. A central authority—usually a government or supra-national agency—sets a limit on the amount of pollutant each company or country can emit. Companies that pollute beyond their allowances must buy credits from those who pollute less than their allowances—or face heavy penalties.
  • climate change n. the variation in the Earth's climate over time. These changes can be caused by processes internal to the Earth, external forces (e.g. variations in sunlight intensity) or, more recently, human activities. In recent usage, the term may refer only to changes in modern climate, including the rise in average surface temperature known as global warming. In some cases, the term is also used with a presumption of human causation.
  • combined heat and power (CHP) n. the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat. Conventional power plants emit the heat created as a by-product of electricity generation into the environment through cooling towers, as flue gas, or by other means. CHP captures the by-product heat for domestic or industrial heating purposes, either very close to the plant, or—especially in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe—for distribution through pipes to heat local housing.
  • environmental management accounting n. the identification, collection, estimation, analysis, internal reporting, and use of materials and energy flow information, environmental cost information, and other cost information for both conventional and environmental decision-making within an organization.
  • environmental sustainability n. the characteristic of a process that can be continued indefinitely without permanent damage to the environment; the assessment that a project's outputs can be produced without permanent and unacceptable impact on the natural environment. (See also sustainable development.)
  • global warming n. the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades, and its projected continuation.
  • greenhouse effect n. the process by which the atmosphere captures and recycles energy emitted by the Earth's surface. The name comes from an analogy with the warming of air inside a greenhouse compared to the air outside the greenhouse.
  • greenhouse gases n. the components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Some greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, while others result from human activities such as burning of fossil fuels such as coal. Greenhouse gases include water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.
  • green politics n. a political ideology which places a high importance on ecological and environmentalist goals, and on achieving these goals through broad-based, grassroots, participatory democracy and a consensus decision-making.
  • greenwashing n. the behaviour of companies in putting a positive green image on environmentally unsound activities.
  • hydropower n. the energy captured from moving water for some useful purpose.
  • nuclear power n. electrical energy generated using the heat produced by an atomic reaction.
  • peak oil n. the point at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached. After this timeframe, the rate of production will, by definition, enter terminal decline. According to the Hubbert model, production will follow a roughly symmetrical bell-shaped curve. Some observers believe that because of the high dependence of most modern industrial transport, agricultural and industrial systems on inexpensive oil, the decline and possible resulting severe price increases will have negative implications for the global economy.
  • renewable energy n. energy derived from resources that are regenerative or for all practical purposes cannot be depleted. For this reason, renewable energy sources are fundamentally different from fossil fuels, and do not produce as many greenhouse gases and other pollutants as fossil fuel combustion.
  • solar power n. a source of energy that uses radiation emitted by the Sun. It is a renewable energy source that has been used in many traditional technologies for centuries. It is also in widespread use where other power supplies are absent, such as in remote locations and in space.
  • sustainable development n. development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. (See also environmental sustainability.)
  • tidal power n. a form of hydro-power that exploits the rise and fall in sea levels due to the tides, or the movement of water caused by the tidal flow. Because the tidal forces are caused by interaction between the gravity of the Earth, Moon and Sun, tidal power is essentially inexhaustible and classified as a renewable energy source.
  • wave power n. the energy of ocean surface waves and the capture of that energy to do useful work - including electricity generation, desalination, and the pumping of water (into reservoirs). Wave power is a form of renewable energy. Wave power is distinct from the diurnal flux of tidal power and the steady gyre of ocean currents. Wave power generation is not a widely employed technology, and no commercial wave farm has yet been established.
  • WEEE n. the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive aims to minimise the impact of electrical and electronic goods on the environment, by increasing re-use and recycling and reducing the amount of WEEE going to landfill. It seeks to achieve this by making producers responsible for financing the collection, treatment, and recovery of waste electrical equipment, and by obliging distributors to allow consumers to return their waste equipment free of charge.
  • wind power n. the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, usually electricity, using wind turbines.
  • zero carbon a. having zero net emissions of CO2. (See also carbon neutral.)
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