Gartner and the Environment

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Contents

MI Summary

Gartner documents

MI Summaries of the articles above

Gartner call on Green issues (20-Jul-07)

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that datacentres are running out of electrical power. Few clients are taking green considerations into account when planning their IT architecture. Retailers, financial services firms and consumer product companies are the industries most concerned about green issues. But most IT departments are not connecting their practices with their company's green aspirations.

Green issues are a fad, and many will fade away if an economic recession arrives, but climate change (a British obsession) is with us for the long term. While we lead on CO2, the Germans are ahead of us on waste and recycling. But while there is European consensus, the USA is politically divided on many green issues. The impact of IT on the environment can be divided into three categories: the Bad, the Good and the Structural. BT is advanced in its environmental philosophy and practices. The media is highly advanced in its environmental demands of business, government and society.

IT Firms in Green Initiatives Must Also Look At Themselves (June-07)

A number of vendors have joined to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, the aim is to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting aggressive targets for energy efficient computers and components. Gartner believe that this initiative will indeed help in reducing power consumption, but that improvements in power supply efficiency would have happened anyway. There is also a belief that the underlying reason for some vendors to support the initiative is that it gives the impression they are being proactive in tackling climate change, supporting such an initiative also distracts attention away from some of their existing environmental challenges.

This is indeed a positive step forward for the industry, but having said this it is important that enterprises question the vendors and service providers supporting it to find out what they themselves are doing to reduce energy consumption.

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

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.

Greenpeace Report a Wake-Up Call for the IT Industry (Feb 07)

In early 2007 Greenpeace published a report on “Cutting Edge Contamination – A Study of Environmental Pollution during the Manufacture of Electronic Products”. The report identified that the IT industry will face increased scrutiny on its environmental impact throughout the lifecycle of products and services as a result the IT industry need to be much more proactive in reducing their environmental footprint. The benefits of IT to the environment, society and the economy are substantial, but the industry needs to do a much better, and collaborative, job of communicating that fact and the achievements to date.

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