Green ICT Blog
Green IT is more than you think ...
Author Graeme Philipson
Sydney, 5 May 2009
To most people Green IT means the reduction or minimisation of the energy consumption of the IT function in the organisation, the office or the home.
By this definition, Green IT means things like replacing your old CRT monitor with a more energy-efficient LCD model, getting rid of screen savers and turning computers off overnight, replacing PCs with “thin clients”, or outsourcing the data centre. It can mean more efficient recycling of old computers, server virtualisation, or double-sided (“duplex”) printing to save paper.
I keep hearing the statistic that IT is responsible for about two percent of the world’s energy consumption. I can’t find the original source for this, and I feel it’s one of those urban myths that achieve credibility merely by being repeated so often. IT analysts Gartner are often given the credit for it, but even they took the data from elsewhere – it wasn’t primary research.
If the two percent figure is true, that would mean computers would be responsible for as much carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere as the airline industry, a noted and high profile polluter. I suspect the real figure for IT’s share of world energy consumption is much higher.
The Australian Computer Society estimated 18 months ago that computer usage by Australian businesses generated about 1.5% of the nation’s carbon emissions – and that excluded government usage, which would be close to that much again.
Recently The Times of London claimed that “performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle". Add up all the Google searches in the world – hundreds of millions every day – and you soon get into some serious numbers.
Google immediately disputed the claim, saying that its data centres are some of the most energy-efficient on earth. That may be so, but they are also some of the largest, and Google often deliberately builds them near large bodies of water so that they can be easily cooled.
The Times partially recanted, saying that it was referring to large and complex searches that may involve many smaller searches, but pointed out that such searches typically involve information held on multiple servers in multiple data centres, with the communications overheads significantly adding to the energy consumption.
Which brings us to an interesting point. People tend to talk of “Green IT”, not “Green ICT”. Throw communications into the equation – and it should be there because ICT is increasingly indistinguishable from IT – and that figure of two percent starts to look far too small.
Add in all the energy required to run all the communications systems in the world. In the UK alone, the largest carrier, BT, by its own admission until recently consumed 0.7% of all that country’s electricity consumption. It has since reduced that, and is now recognised as one of the greenest comms companies on the planet – but that’s one third of two percent just from one company. What do you reckon is Telstra’s carbon footprint?
Why might know a bit more when we start to get some decent figures out of the government’s NGERS scheme, but right now we can only be sure of the fact that ICT is an enormous consumer of energy, and that despite all the efforts being made to reduce IT’s (or ICT’s) energy consumption, the figure will get a lot bigger before it starts to get smaller.
Bob Hayward, former head of research in Asia Pacific for Gartner, and also formerly head of KPMG’s Green IT consultancy practice, calls it a “perfect storm”. On the one hand a number of factors are combining to make IT use more energy-intensive, and on the other hand the imperatives to reduce energy consumption are becoming stronger.
“The new breed of servers and storage devices are heavy, power-hungry and heat-generating”, says Hayward. “But power efficiencies are not keeping pace with performance efficiencies. We are returning to liquid cooling, which consumes a lot more power.
“At the same time electricity costs will probably rise by 50% to 100% by 2012. With reductions in hardware costs, the proportion of the IT budget consumed by energy consumption will soar over the next five years. In white collar firms, half of all emissions will come from the IT function.”
It is hard to argue with Hayward’s assumptions. The problem is, most IT departments have not even begun to measure their power consumption, let alone worked out a strategy for reducing it, or for weathering Hayward’s “perfect storm”.
Clearly, something has to give. When irresistible forces meet immovable objects something dramatic usually occurs. Green IT is not a peripheral issue – it is probably the single most important challenge the IT industry faces in the years ahead.
Add to that the potential IT has for helping the organisation reduce its energy consumption across the board, and the role IT will play in the measurement and monitoring process for systems like NGERS and CPRS, and you can see why the topic has become so hot so quickly.
I predict 2009 will be the year of Green IT.
Graeme Philipson © Connection Research
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Sydney, 5 May 2009
To most people Green IT means the reduction or minimisation of the energy consumption of the IT function in the organisation, the office or the home.
By this definition, Green IT means things like replacing your old CRT monitor with a more energy-efficient LCD model, getting rid of screen savers and turning computers off overnight, replacing PCs with “thin clients”, or outsourcing the data centre. It can mean more efficient recycling of old computers, server virtualisation, or double-sided (“duplex”) printing to save paper.
I keep hearing the statistic that IT is responsible for about two percent of the world’s energy consumption. I can’t find the original source for this, and I feel it’s one of those urban myths that achieve credibility merely by being repeated so often. IT analysts Gartner are often given the credit for it, but even they took the data from elsewhere – it wasn’t primary research.
If the two percent figure is true, that would mean computers would be responsible for as much carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere as the airline industry, a noted and high profile polluter. I suspect the real figure for IT’s share of world energy consumption is much higher.
The Australian Computer Society estimated 18 months ago that computer usage by Australian businesses generated about 1.5% of the nation’s carbon emissions – and that excluded government usage, which would be close to that much again.
Recently The Times of London claimed that “performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle". Add up all the Google searches in the world – hundreds of millions every day – and you soon get into some serious numbers.
Google immediately disputed the claim, saying that its data centres are some of the most energy-efficient on earth. That may be so, but they are also some of the largest, and Google often deliberately builds them near large bodies of water so that they can be easily cooled.
The Times partially recanted, saying that it was referring to large and complex searches that may involve many smaller searches, but pointed out that such searches typically involve information held on multiple servers in multiple data centres, with the communications overheads significantly adding to the energy consumption.
Which brings us to an interesting point. People tend to talk of “Green IT”, not “Green ICT”. Throw communications into the equation – and it should be there because ICT is increasingly indistinguishable from IT – and that figure of two percent starts to look far too small.
Add in all the energy required to run all the communications systems in the world. In the UK alone, the largest carrier, BT, by its own admission until recently consumed 0.7% of all that country’s electricity consumption. It has since reduced that, and is now recognised as one of the greenest comms companies on the planet – but that’s one third of two percent just from one company. What do you reckon is Telstra’s carbon footprint?
Why might know a bit more when we start to get some decent figures out of the government’s NGERS scheme, but right now we can only be sure of the fact that ICT is an enormous consumer of energy, and that despite all the efforts being made to reduce IT’s (or ICT’s) energy consumption, the figure will get a lot bigger before it starts to get smaller.
Bob Hayward, former head of research in Asia Pacific for Gartner, and also formerly head of KPMG’s Green IT consultancy practice, calls it a “perfect storm”. On the one hand a number of factors are combining to make IT use more energy-intensive, and on the other hand the imperatives to reduce energy consumption are becoming stronger.
“The new breed of servers and storage devices are heavy, power-hungry and heat-generating”, says Hayward. “But power efficiencies are not keeping pace with performance efficiencies. We are returning to liquid cooling, which consumes a lot more power.
“At the same time electricity costs will probably rise by 50% to 100% by 2012. With reductions in hardware costs, the proportion of the IT budget consumed by energy consumption will soar over the next five years. In white collar firms, half of all emissions will come from the IT function.”
It is hard to argue with Hayward’s assumptions. The problem is, most IT departments have not even begun to measure their power consumption, let alone worked out a strategy for reducing it, or for weathering Hayward’s “perfect storm”.
Clearly, something has to give. When irresistible forces meet immovable objects something dramatic usually occurs. Green IT is not a peripheral issue – it is probably the single most important challenge the IT industry faces in the years ahead.
Add to that the potential IT has for helping the organisation reduce its energy consumption across the board, and the role IT will play in the measurement and monitoring process for systems like NGERS and CPRS, and you can see why the topic has become so hot so quickly.
I predict 2009 will be the year of Green IT.
Graeme Philipson © Connection Research
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