Green Gauge November 2007
From Lauraibm
Carbon Offsets
Full story: Carbon Offset ROI Not Certain Enough For Sun (12-Oct-07)
Sun Microsystems feels that money spent on carbon offsets would be more beneficial if it were spent on other measures of lowering CO2 emissions. Thus the corporation are concentrating on more direct GHG reduction activities as opposed to taking the easy option of proclaiming carbon neutrality through the purchase of carbon offsets.
Climate Change
Full story: Big Businesses "Failing to Tackle Climate Change" (9-Oct-07)
The second annual report from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) found that a mere 38% of the FTSE 350 companies that responded have put in place schemes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These findings have prompted leading environmental agencies, UK companies and cross party MPs to push for a call on the government to introduce a “common protocol” forcing companies to report their emissions in a consistent and comparable way.
Investors have a key role to play, it is their responsibility to emphasise to the market that carbon disclosure is vital, and to show companies that this will affect their investment decisions.
Combined Heat and Power
Company Processes
Customer Activity
Data Centre
Fuel Cells
Global Warming
Green Building
Green Computing
Full story: Going Green Tops Gartner's 2008 Trends List (11-Oct-07)
Gartner has recently revealed the top 10 trends and technologies it believes will be key to 2008, Green IT was amongst the list to be at the forefront of businesses’ strategies. Despite being a widely highlighted issue there are many companies who are yet to turn their intentions into action.
However, some companies are doing their bit, particularly the major IT vendors who are trying to take the lead on this issue to set an example to other businesses.
Full story: 11 Easy Ways to Turn Your PC Green (12-Oct-07)
PC Advisor has put together a guide to greener computing, following these steps could help companies become more environmentally friendly.
- 1. Selecting a power off schedule for your computer when not in use can save a great deal.
- 2. Switching off your computer in the evenings and at weekends can save about £27 per year, people should consider turning off their PC’s if they are going to be inactive for more than 16 minutes.
- 3. Physically unplugging your computer or switching it off at the wall can save additional power.
- 4. Look for the energy star logo when purchasing hardware.
- 5. Use a flat panel display
- 6. Ensure that your products comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive.
- 7. Go paper free
- 8. Do not travel unless it is really necessary
- 9. Dispose of old hardware responsibly, either donate to schools or developing countries or if this is not viable then recycle it.
- 10. Consider using solar power as a means for clean power.
Greenhouse Gases
Green Marketing
Full story: Green Marketing: Is it Worth the Hype?
Green is the latest trend and the majority of companies appear to be jumping on the green bandwagon and touting their green initiatives. The problem is that the more people who say they are green the less people will believe “in” green, thus there is a need for some sort of measurement system to quantify companies green claims.
Green Storage
Full story: Green Storage Shades Across the Atlantic: Survey (25-Sep-07)
A recent survey by Bridgehead Software has found that North American businesses are more worried about running out of power in the data centre, whereas, British companies appeared to be more concerned about the environment.
Bridgehead highlights how moving data from a spinning disk onto a non-rotating tape or optical disk will reduce electricity bills and could save upto 80% of primary storage. Storage problems have arisen partly in response to companies running scared about compliance, but it is also due to the fact that technolgy purchasing power isn't always in the IT department. For a real difference to be made an enterprise wide approach to archiving will need to be taken rather than a divisional approach where archiving is taking place for compliance and disaster recovery reasons only.
Full story: Fujitsu Debuts Highly Available "Green" Storage Systems for Price Sensitive Data Centres (16-Oct-07)
Fujitsu computers have entered the SME storage market with the ETERNUS (R) 2000 storage area network, the industry’s most eco-friendly storage solution. The model combines an efficient power design with MAID (Massive Arrays of Idle Disks) technology for reduced power consumption and costs and extended life of the disk drives. The ETERNUS 2000 SAN was designed to meet the top IT concerns of SMEs struggling with tight budgets, Fujitsu found these concerns to be upfront costs, power consumption, high availability and flexibility.
Full story: SNIA Green Storage Initiative Formed to Advance Energy Efficient Storage Networking Solutions (15-Oct-07)
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has announced the formation of the SNIA Green Storage Initiative dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in all networked storage technologies. The aims of the initiative are to help member companies design more energy efficient products, investigate specific technologies such as data de-duplication, thin provisioning and tape based archiving and also provide education that can help contribute to energy efficiency.
Green Washing
Individual Efforts
ISO 14000
Nuclear Power
Full story: UK Can't Afford Cold Feet Over Nuclear Power (15-Oct-07)
Nuclear Power has been a controversial issue for many years, but with the increase in effort to become green the question is being raised as to when Britain will reinstate its nuclear power programme. However, there have been complaints that the government are moving somewhat slowly in this area, and seeing as it takes approximately 10 years to build a new nuclear power plant this is not an area that the UK can afford to have cold feet over.
It has been highlighted that reviving a nuclear power programme does not mean stopping the search for economic renewable energy sources or efficient ways of producing it, such as the combined heat and power system.
Peak Oil
Politics
Printing
Full story: Office Workers Print 22 Pages Every Day (15-Oct-07)
It has been revealed that British offices create 120 billion print outs every year, with the average employee contributing 22 pages per day to this total, a large proportion of these pages are unnecessary waste. Nearly a quarter of office workers admitted to not giving much thought to printing documents. This reveals the carefree attitude that is held towards printing in the UK, with employees not giving enough thought to the financial and environmental impacts of printing unnecessarily.
Recycling
Full story: Tech recycling rubbished as "stupid" (15-Oct-07)
A representative at the UK government’s Envirowise project believes that recycling should not be a top concern within a company’s eco-agenda. There is a belief that instead companies should either reuse or donate obsolete IT equipment to developing countries. It is vital to ensure that if technology is being donated to developing countries it is in full working order, if this is not the case the problem of disposal is just being offset to other places in the world.
Renewables
Software
The Green Imperative
Full story: Groups Join to Back Emissions Trading Scheme (22-Oct-07)
Greenpeace, Environmental Defence Society, Ecologic Foundation, WWF New Zealand and ECO have joined forces to respond to recent business criticisms of the Government’s emissions trading scheme. The coalition also seeks to strengthen the proposal to guarantee real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Full story: EU Launches Program to Help SMEs be Greener (10-Oct-07)
The EU has developed a program to help SMEs to become more environmentally friendly. To ensure that the targets set for greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy and energy efficiency are met it is vital for all European companies to be on board.
Full story: San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed Unveils "Green Vision"
The Mayor of San Jose has recently unveiled a Green Vision calling for a 50% reduction in per capita energy use and a switch to 100% renewable energy sources. He is also calling for a number of other green initiatives including the construction or retrofit of 50 million square feet of green building space and all city owned buildings to be on solar power by 2022.
Full story: I am Green and IT'll do Fine (16-Oct-07)
A problem for many companies wanting to green their IT is that they simply do not know where to start. To gain the most value there is a need to incorporate the whole of the business strategy when planning green projects and work from the top down. The move to green comes as companies begin to understand the extent of the environmental impact of their IT; which is responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions.
Fujitsu’s whitepaper has set out a 5 step plan to help companies successfully move to green:
- 1. Ensure the project covers the full business and has support at the highest executive level.
- 2. Understand the scope of the greening of the company
- 3. Measure IT assets
- 4. Develop strategies, e.g. recycling, reduce power consumption, optimising infrastructure.
- 5. Implementation and tracking benefits.
Full story: Everything's Gone Green... (Oct-07)
Companies are increasingly trying to develop green technologies that are more energy efficient; however, their motivation to do so is not simply about saving the planet, but rather the fact that going green is likely to save money through lower power consumption.
In addition to high tech companies going green, it appears that there are signs of consumers also seeing this as a crucial issue. A recent report from Ipsos suggests that the majority of respondents would buy consumer products from companies that demonstrate their environmentally sensitive credentials, such as having an Energy Star label, or discarding of products in an environmentally friendly manner.
Full story: European Cities Tackling Climate Change (14-Oct-07)
The city of Vaxjo in Sweden made a decision in 1996 to wean itself off fossil fuels, and since 1993 the programs introduced into the city have allowed a 30% cut in CO2 emissions. Vaxjo is amongst a number of European cities who are taking action themselves rather than simply waiting for national or international measures to curb global warming.
The city achieved a vast majority of emission cuts at the heating and power plant level where oil was replaced with wood chips as a main source of fuel. The city has also invested in energy efficiency by introducing measures such as energy efficient light bulbs to building a residential area from wood which requires less energy to produce than steel and concrete. The cities efforts are being used as an example of “best practices” around the world.
Full story: America's Greenest States (17-Oct-07)
American states were ranked in six equally weighted categories; carbon footprint, air quality, water quality, hazardous waste management, policy initiatives and energy consumption, combined these determined the top 10 green states. Coming out on top were Vermont, Oregon and Washington all of whom have low carbon dioxide emissions per capita, strong policies to promote energy efficiency, high air quality and lots of buildings with U.S. Green Building Council’s benchmark certification.
It came as quite a surprise that California didn’t make it into the top 10, despite the fact that they routinely set the bar for environmental policy.
Full story: Outsourcing Addresses "Green" IT Issues (8-Oct-07)
Technology outsourcing is currently employed by approximately 50% of businesses; IDC suggests that outsourcing provides companies facing rising energy bills with a number of benefits. It cuts costs because suppliers have access to more efficient data centre technology and can leverage economies of sale across a large number of clients, this can deliver energy savings of up to 40% in the data centre. It also reduces risk by speeding up compliance with incoming regulations and it eliminates the problem of confusion over what constitutes as being green.
Vendor Efforts
Full story: Dell Offers SMEs Tips for Greening IT Practices (15-Oct-07)
Dell believes that all businesses should evaluate their operating processes and incorporate practical environmental measures. They have complied a list of tips for SMEs considering to introduce green IT practices, including double sided printing, virtual working practices, power efficient products and recycling or donating end of life equipment.
Full story: The Environment, Sun and the Sun (16-Oct-07)
Sun is a pioneer in taking an environmentally responsible approach to its business. The corporation are finding growth (a concept critical to business success) in environmentally concerned organisations such as Betfair and Strato.
Sun demonstrates environmental awareness by moving to all metal construction allowing for maximum recyclability, this also allows for the avoidance of plastics which are made from hard to recycle hydrocarbons.
The company feel that it is time for CIOs and their board members to consider how IT can help companies meet their wider environmental obligations, rather than simply thinking about virtualisation and data centre optimisation as the big environmental improvement opportunities.
Full story: HP Researchers Working on "Greener" Data Centre (27-Oct-07)
As data centres continue to grow, bringing new challenges, they are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. HPs Systems Technology Software Division (STSD) lab have developed an innovative software tool to help companies get a macro view of their data centres. This should enable the corporation to gauge the use of their resources, automate management and recreate different situations to find problems. At present this tool is being used internally, but is felt by HP that this is the computer company’s answer to a “green data centre”.
