Glance the Green spectrum
Glance the Green spectrum
V V Narendra Kumar
K.Anil Kumar, K.Kiran Kumar
Abstract
In the last two years, green has become the most used term across industries. It's no longer a hype, rather it's real and happening. Today, green is not just about saving the environment, it is about significant cost savings as well. Energy-efficient products something that has caught tremendous momentum over the years have bought in substantial cost-savings in terms of power consumption and performance. So every organization with a focus on cost-savings has put in place a green strategy (our CIO survey seconds this opinion!). As we look at the year ahead, there are some key trends that will give more shape and form to green and make the grass look even greener. Of course, there will be a lot of green grazers upon it too.
Keywords: Green IT, Green IT Myths, smart 2020,green strategies
Myths in Green IT
Here are some examples of other green fallacies we often hear while out working with businesses:
Myth 1: "I should leave my computer on overnight so it can be updated"
Why it's so important to switch off your equipment at night, here are a few stats to ponder. On average an office wastes £6,000 each year by leaving equipment on during weekends and bank holidays. A computer left on overnight uses 1 kWh of electricity; if 1,000 people turned off their computers when they went home, they would save 180 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year. Just one tonne of carbon dioxide fills six double decker buses!
Myth 2: "To save energy, you should let your monitor go into screensaver mode when away from your desk"
You'd think with ‘saver' in its name that would be the case, but no, screensavers can actually use more energy than just leaving the screen on! This is especially true for older style CRT monitors, which use a lot more energy than the newer flat screen monitors.
Also, while the screen is on, it gives off heat, which is wasted energy. In an office with air conditioning, the more monitors that are left on, the more heat that is given off and the harder the air conditioning has to work to keep the temperature cool.
It's actually more energy efficient to turn off the monitor. And, while we are dispelling myths, switching a screen off doesn't damage its life.
Myth 3: "When you enjoy a cuppa, it's better for the environment to use a paper cup instead of a mug"
A ceramic mug still wins out, even after taking into account the manufacture of the mug and washing it up after every use. We often encourage employees to bring a mug to work to keep on their desks or ask their canteen to offer mugs instead of disposable cups. Some businesses even offer a discounted price on drinks if you bring you own receptacle.
Myth 4: "It's best to use paper made from Forest Stewardship Council accredited forests"
Using recycled paper is the best choice. Recycling to make paper uses half the energy required to make paper from virgin tree pulp. If we continue to grow trees for paper, rather than using recycled paper, we will have to find something else to do with all the used paper. Recycling would not be an option as no one would buy it, and incineration or landfill would release the carbon into the atmosphere.
Myth 5: "Switching fluorescent strip lights off and back on uses more energy than leaving them on continuously"
If you are leaving the room for more than a minute and a half it is better to switch the lights off and then switch them back on again, even though in the start up phase they use more energy than when they are running.
The biggest myth of all: "I'm just one person; I can't make any difference to something as global as climate change"
There is a common view that man-made emissions are too small in the grand scheme of things to cause climate change. It is true that in the annual carbon cycle only a small amount of emissions are caused by humans. But it is also the case that the other emissions are in natural balance, and it is our contribution which is the mess that the seas and the land can't mop up.
Someone who feels this way can often be resistant to making practical changes in behaviour, such as switching off computer monitors and limiting their paper use. Their reasoning is, it is too small an action to make a difference, so why bother?
Our response is to practically show how individuals can truly make a difference by demonstrating the scalability of everything. Paper is a powerful example. In a workplace of about 1,000 people, if everyone used two sheets less per day it would save a tree every week. And that's enough to make a difference.
Green IT- NASSACOM's perspective
The Global demand to become environmentally sustainable has intensified over the past few years. Increased Economic pressures, Energy costs, Customer awareness, and Regulations have pushed companies to reassess their (Green) Policies. But how does a company "Go Green" while keeping the Bottom-line thick Black? The right set of strategies can turn the green Challenge into a competitive advantage for the company.
Companies everywhere are feeling the pressure to "Go Green" and include the environmental sustainability into their business strategies. This imperative is reflected in consumers demanding more environment friendly products, environmental groups pushing for waste reduction, and legislators enacting/citing increasingly complex regulations. Even the investment banks and VC funds are taking into account potential charges for CO2 emissions when deciding whether to extend financial help to the companies that have large carbon footprints or the "Polluters".
In the current market situation most firms would hardly argue against the need to take a greener approach. A big chunk of the companies in the world are making the Environmental sustainability as the part of their Global Strategy and some of them going green to fulfill customers' requirements or increase customer confidence.
But it's one thing to embrace green and another thing entirely to practice it while growing revenues and profit margins. The right path forward is inherent in the company's business strategy- How a company leverages the various facets of its operations for competitive advantage. In order for a Green Business Strategy to be effective; it's essential to incorporate sustainable practices into both product lifecycle and Project and Process management.
In the past most of the companies used cradle to grave approach in product life cycle management, the company was not responsible after the product was sold but now the Green trend is cradle to cradle that is reuse and recycle the product. The idea behind this approach is simple the companies start at the conception of the product. They design, manufacture and deliver the product in the most energy efficient way and also device the ways and means to reuse or recycle these. Most applaud-able and recent example is Nokia, they have incentivised the customers to return the used mobile device back to company through its dealers to get the discount on the new device and to connect the ends Nokia designed a mobile device with recycled materials. These and energy efficient approaches like Green Infrastructure, buildings and Data centers are the inward looking approaches.
And there is no one who can doubt about the inward looking approaches, but the other part of looking outward is as important if not more. Looking outward is an approach to allow the customers save the energy and become Green by offering the energy efficient solutions. IT industry can play a very important role here. IT can help all other industries to measure, control and maintain the efficiently run (Green) business. This asks for a lot of research and domain expertise in the particular area; whether it is in designing of buildings or products, manufacturing or disposing or efficiently managing the flow of energy. IT companies can come out with solutions that will help their customers measure the carbon footprint of their assets, control and maintain the low carbon emissions.
In India and world over IT industry is thought to the one of the big polluters both directly and indirectly. While In US ICT equipments are responsible for more than 40% of the total energy consumption; in India IT industry accounts for indirectly polluting the country, as they account for more than 40% of travel. This analysis brings us to the set of solutions required in such different situations. While to address the situation like the one in US and most of the developed countries, there is a need to develop more energy efficient infrastructure and products; for the other type of situation like India and most developing nations it is important to have smart IT solutions.
These Smart solutions will range from smart logistics, smart infra to smart meetings. As the Smart 2020 report of the Climate group mentions the opportunities for the developing nations/economies like India the lie in IT solutions. While India can address her own problem of rising carbon footprint by developing and employing Smart IT solutions, India can also emerge as a leading provider of Green solutions to the world. May be this is an Indian answer to the recessionary world economy. Few of the Indian IT companies like WIPRO and Infosys has taken a lead in "Green IT Consulting"; this is the larvae of the beautiful butterflies, which is capable of bringing in the required surge in the IT industry.
Environmentally conscious companies view themselves as part of the greater community. They view stakeholders- Institutional Investors, environment groups, and NGOs, not as adversaries, but as partners critical for fulfilling Green Goals. Green companies also make a point of staying attuned to what future Business requirements and regulatory compliance issues are likely to be.
The greenest companies also know what green strategies other players in their value network are planning to employ. They aim to become an instrument of change and a role model in their industry. Regardless of whether a company is a small business or a fortune 500 giant, there are a number of ways to grow greener while improving revenues and profits. It's clear that the greenest companies yield an important source of competitive advantage and given the growing number of consumers who are putting their money, where there is environmental conscience; it is not long before Green becomes critical to staying in the game.
There is a need for all round involvement by the agencies like NASSCOM, TERI, CII besides government and focus on all the important facets of the Green print of Success i.e. look inward and become Green, Look outward and make everyone else Green and imbibe the Green culture in the society.
NASSCOM's Green IT initiative takes care of involving all the stake holders and move around the following three vectors:
- Make IT industry Green
- Make Green happen through IT
- Make Green warriors
"Pancha" Sutras for the Smart -2020 way to Green IT:
• Standardise: Develop protocols to enable smart systems to interact
• Monitor: Make energy and carbon missions visible
• Account: Link monitoring to accountability and organisational decision making
• Rethink: Optimise for energy efficiency and find alternatives to high carbon growth
• Transform: Implement low carbon infrastructure solutions across all sectors at scale.
Standardise
Ensure that the standards organisations working in the ICT industry bring climate change
considerations into their existing work. Energy consumption should be an important component of all ICT technical standards. Ensure standardisation of measurement methods across the whole life of products and services to understand emissions from raw material extraction, through manufacturing, in use and from final disposal.
Monitor
Use ICT technologies to monitor energy consumption of ICT products and networks and
feed the information back into technology optimisation. Ensure that the monitoring is
consistent throughout companies. Monitoring devices and tools for power management should be required as standard. Remote monitoring and control of systems should be applied wherever appropriate.
Account
Make energy and emissions transparent all along the supply chain by reporting and labelling. Use this information to optimise products and services in each innovation cycle. Incorporate the cost of carbon into current decision making processes to future proof the cost of manufacturing and operating new products and services, in preparation for having an enforced cost of carbon in the future.
Rethink
The sector needs to continue to rethink and research radical innovation across high emission devices and services. The information above will enable the sector to optimise its own operations and product development for energy reductions.
Transform
Systematically follow best practice for rollout of new products. Transform the ICT sector to an exemplar of low carbon technology. Source low carbon power wherever possible and in particular support the use of renewable energy. ICT companies can also use their own products to demonstrate where dematerialization is possible. As the internet becomes more integrated within developed and emerging economies, substitution of activities such as transport will become easier.
Green IT-2010 Focus
The year ahead also promises greater focus from CIOs in making sure that their IT is more green complaint. According to experts, CIOs in 2010 will focus on creating green solutions and concepts for IT systems. For instance, in the realm of PC management alone companies can save a good deal of electricity by activating the sleep settings on idle monitors and in PCs. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that this action can save up to $75 per computer in annual power costs. From one management console, IT staff can use commercial software to control the power management features in networked computers. Emphasis will be placed on replacing power-hungry cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors with more efficient LED monitors.
Yet another key trend is telecommuting, which is expected to become more practical in 2010, with more affordable remote collaboration solutions with workflow as well as videoconferencing capabilities. Organizations in the coming year are expected to encourage secure telecommuting by implementing VPN based solutions. This will facilitate companies to perform training, sales presentations, project collaboration, and other group activities by using videoconferencing, which obviously reduces travel time and expenses as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Experts say that by presenting a sales pitch with a customer as an online conference, one executive not flying from New York to London can save 2,690 pounds of carbon dioxide from jet fuel, according to one estimate.
IT procurement will also go eco-friendly as green actually starts at the time of purchases. CIOs would increasingly choose Electronic Products Environmental Assessment (EPEAT) registered products. In 2010, multi-functionality would also become dominant, as a result companies would purchase IT products that perform several functions instead of one. They are easier to manage costs less, and use less power than multiple single-purpose devices.
As we look at the above trends which experts believe will find mainstream adoption, they appear to be just a few among the many innovative concepts that keep emerging. Be it in terms of softwares that man your power consumption or innovative air conditioning solutions; green is something that is fast becoming a much seen reality in terms of technologies available. What many foresee will happen in the year ahead is the emergence of a green ecosystem which is more usable, practical and far easier to deploy. Moreover, with green passing the hype curve, it is now a default part of electronics and not a feature with an added cost. In many ways 2010 is expected to act as a spring board to many green technologies that will pave the way in creating a more sustainable planet.
The lifetime energy cost of a new server is about to overtake the cost of the hardware itself. Whether it's Equipment Recycling, Server Consolidation or Advanced Data Center Cooling Options, most companies are now engaging in some sort of green practices.
Greenest companies in India
A survey conducted by BT- AC Nielsen ORG-MARG, ranked Oil and Natural Gas Company (ONGC) the greenest company followed by Reliance Industries. Overall, the oil and petroleum sector was considered the greenest sector in India. BPCL, Castrol India and HPCL are other companies in this sector that were rated green companies in the survey. The private sector companies were in a majority (13 out of 20) in the list of Top 20 greenest companies in India.
India's software companies are also considered green companies. IT companies are allowed to set up their offices within the city limits. This is because they do not harm the environment. Johnson and Johnson Ltd., Chillibreeze, IBM, LG Electronics, PNB, Tata Motors and Hero Honda Motors are some of the other green companies in India.
Concluding Remarks
Green IT is not simply about being "environmentally friendly", it is about creating sustainable IT infrastructure and reducing IT costs through smarter investment and careful management. The business benefits of Green IT extend beyond good citizenship to saving real dollars. Use the Green IT Research listed below to help you achieve green goals, such as:
- Reduce Data Center Cooling Requirements
- Reduce IT-driven Energy Consumption
- Select Environmentally Friendly Equipment with Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
- Discover Energy Efficiency Metrics for IT
- Develop a Green IT Action Plan
References:
1) The Future is Green-DataQuest-Shrikanth, G-Friday, March 26, 2010
2) The climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in 2009-smart 2020 Report
3) Green IT initiatives- catalyzing sustainable environment-NASSACOM article-8th April, 2010.
4) Smart & Young is the Way to Care for our Climate-Tuesday, June 22, 2010-DataQuest
5) Green IT for Dummies-By David Tebbutt,Martin Atherton, and Tony Lock-Wiley Edition
6) Various blogs on Green IT
* Faculty,informatics, Alluri Institute of Management Sciences,Hunter Road Hanamkonda-506001.A.P
About the Author
V V Narendra Kumar
MS(Software Systems),M.Tech(IT),DIM,[PhD]
Assoc.Professor,Informatics
Alluri Institute of Management Sciences,
Warangal,A.P.,India
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