Green IT

Managing your carbon footprint

• Publisher: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781780171357
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Information Technology
• Index: Computer Science

New legislation, rising energy costs and increasing demand for green credentials have moved sustainable IT up the business agenda. Yet the term 'green IT' still means a variety of things to a variety of people – whether that's sustainably managing and procuring IT assets, ethically recycling hardware or using IT to enable carbon footprint reduction. This ebook looks at these different aspects and offers advice on how to incorporate sustainable practices in business strategy.

1 GREEN IT AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY

Green IT is recognised as a means to deliver on most environmental and social commitments. However, unless it is fully integrated in business practices to become business as usual, it risks becoming another corporate and political buzzword. Martin Jackson, CEO of BWC, explains why organisations should be placing green IT at the heart of business strategy.

The IT industry appears to be at odds with itself. On the one hand, it is embracing commercial opportunities to develop green technology and IT enablers that help to cut down carbon emissions to meet country commitments. On the other hand, it has not yet pushed hard enough to ensure that green IT strategies and concepts are integrated into business strategies.

The strategic thinking that allows for any discussion to move from an IT forum to a boardroom level is still in its early days and the signs are that most businesses are failing to grasp what green IT brings to the table for the long term.

Discussions must take place at boardroom level where green IT is recognised as a long-term business enabler – a means to benchmark and keep the operations running at optimum level while reducing carbon emissions and realising ongoing savings.

WHY GREEN IT?

Most economies today are largely service-based and heavily dependent on information and communication technologies. This reliance has emerged as IT has made running operations easier, faster and more efficient.

Consequently, while the IT industry’s own carbon emissions are relatively low – accounting for around two per cent globally – the industry can indirectly help drive down a larger percentage of carbon emissions. According to a report by the Carbon Trust office equipment is the fastest growing energy user in the business world, consuming 15 per cent of the total electricity used in offices. This will most likely rise to 30 per cent by the year 2020. In addition, there is an ever increasing demand on energy diverted to meet the fast spreading needs of the information-rich society with its ubiquitous use of media, the internet, computerisation and servers.

Furthermore, IT companies are already adopting sustainability practices, formulating standards and policies, and putting pilot programmes in place. Many firms believe they can pass on this experience to benefit other industries, businesses and societies.

Therefore, as IT looks at its own responsibility to reduce its share of carbon emissions through ‘greener products’, it also is in a strong position to contribute enormously to the overall global drive by providing the technological solutions needed to reduce emissions across all industries and form a solid and real foundation for future low-carbon businesses and societies.

IT can empower energy users and create completely new business opportunities. In time, industrial and commercial processes would be optimised, energy production should have turned green based on renewable energy, and consumption in general should have been transformed to a more sustainable path. Such a world is the ideal green IT strategy in practice – a process much wider than just the application of technology. Indeed, it becomes a culture change that transforms businesses and societies.

THE UK INDUSTRY PULSE ON GREEN IT AND CARBON EMISSIONS

The UK Government is signed up to an 80 per cent reduction in the amount of CO2 being used by 2050. By September 2010, the most energy-consuming organisations had to register with the UK Department of Energy’s CRC energy efficiency scheme. Since 2011, the biggest consumers have been listed in an annual league and charged £12 for each tonne of carbon emissions they produce. From 2013, the number of ‘licences to pollute’ is capped and they are auctioned off rather than sold at £12. At the beginning of 2011, the Carbon Trust Standard had 500 holders or 18 per cent of businesses in the UK that were actually committed to reducing carbon emissions.

Understandably, most of UK plc are dragging its feet. According to a paper on energy efficiency by the Carbon Trust Advisory (CTA), finance directors undervalue the financial returns from investments in energy efficiency by more than half. And yet, the CTA easily demonstrates how energy efficiency projects deliver an average return on investment of 48 per cent – some four times the minimum level demanded by most senior finance officers.

Furthermore business investments in energy efficiency pay back within three years on average, satisfying the investment requirements of eight out of ten finance directors. So, if the business case stacks up, what is still holding back finance directors from signing off energy efficiency projects?

The picture is similar across the rest of the UK business landscape. Despite the push and commitments by government and business communities to sign up to environmental initiatives, there is an understandable concern that today’s tough climate could make the green agenda for these business sectors a casualty of the economic downturn. The reality is that for such companies, the move towards a greener approach is primarily driven by cost savings.

THE ARGUMENT FOR GREENING THE COMPANY

The business community is faced with strong economic measures to drive down carbon emissions. Coupled with the same argument are the reductions in ensuing costs and improvements in efficiency. Underlying the argument is the green IT approach.

It appears that while these economic initiatives ‘control’ the impact on society, as do other measures such as carbon offsetting and neutrality, on their own they are not enough to solve long-term challenges on sustainability and ongoing optimisation. What is missing is the joined-up thinking for a truly green strategy that is all-encompassing: the integration of green goals and initiatives in the enterprise-wide strategy. Indeed, what is missing is the commitment to benchmark progress and efficiency on an ongoing basis and work towards sustainability. And this is precisely what a green IT strategy can facilitate.

GREEN IT STRATEGY

A green IT strategy is more about changing an organisation’s culture than about changing technology or business processes. The greening of an organisation through IT is an evolving, sustainable process. Its largest potential impact lies in the fact that IT has the ability to improve efficiency in areas as diverse as electricity transmission, supply chain management, building information systems and business processes in general.

Initially green IT focuses on making the company’s own IT greener by improving end-user working practices, creating an energy-efficient office environment and reducing energy consumption. Monitoring of utilities’ consumption, driving down energy, equipment and data centre costs are all quick wins that can be attributed to IT audits and assessments. The challenge, however, lies in convincing management of the need for regular auditing and benchmarking of their operations. In order to sustain these savings and efficiencies, they must integrate green IT into their business-as-usual and include green key performance indicators (KPIs) in the overall business KPIs.

As the company matures in its green IT strategy, IT becomes the enabler to ‘green’ the company across the other business functions such as compliance, procurement, the supply chain, travel, acquisition, packaging, deliveries and disposals.

Deploying a green IT strategy starts to change behaviours across stakeholder groups: employees, suppliers and partners. Ultimately it enhances the organisation’s competitive position, giving it a distinct competitive advantage. What is vital is that any policies introduced are strategic and meet the overall sustainability objectives of the organisation.

THE MISSING PIECE

The IT industry must align the green IT strategy with the organisation’s overall sustainability and business strategies; and it must then integrate sustainability objectives across the entire operations using IT-enabled business processes. A successful green IT strategy will change behaviours, delivering far more than the original business case.

If left only with economic measures and stand-alone IT projects, the green IT business case will never truly stack up. Implementing piecemeal or stand-alone projects will not stand the test of time and will certainly not add up to meet financial expectations.

The challenge facing the IT industry is to move the discussion into the boardroom and introduce the concept of green IT as an enabler for long-term efficiency, sustain-ability and revenue generation. Only then can the industry successfully work in tandem with the business community to deliver on carbon emissions targets and sustainability through the universal adoption of green IT strategies.

2 CLOUD COMPUTING, BPM AND GOING GREEN

To go ‘green’ requires changes to how people work, interact and use technology. Ian Gotts, CEO and founder of Nimbus, argues there are business and environmental benefits to business process management (BPM) and cloud computing.

Having spent the past year in San Francisco establishing our US office, it is pretty difficult to miss the ‘greening’ trend. Northern California is the green heartland. Everything and anything is recycled. There is a rising consciousness driven by companies wishing to be seen to be green, for example oil companies transforming themselves into energy companies and car companies pushing more efficient electric and hybrid cars. IT companies are touting their green cloud credentials. Governments, not wanting to be outdone, are spending millions printing and distributing booklets telling people how to save the planet… Surely not printing and distributing them would help save trees and transport costs?

CYNICAL GREEN

How much of this green activity really makes a difference? Is it just a cynical marketing ploy for companies clearing their conscience?

It is kids, with their beautifully innocent view of right and wrong, who make you think. Walking along the edge of the bay recently with our two children, aged 9 and 12, we noticed one of the houses had very prominent solar panels. The discussion got onto saving the planet and how businesses consume natural resources and electricity.

And then the discussion got onto my company, Nimbus. ‘So daddy, if we are all meant to be saving the planet, what does your company do to help?’ It got me thinking – far beyond recycling and turning lights off. What do we do, what more could companies do and what stops them?

SHOW ME THE GREEN

The issue is that building a business case for green is difficult: planet versus profits. Short-term tactical often wins over long-term strategic. Does it have to be that way? Clearly some initiatives cost money and the tangible benefits are difficult to quantify. Equally, there are changes that can give a return in hours, days or weeks.

What is true is that virtually every change requires some change in business operations. People need to work differently, interact with each other and use technology differently. And that means it needs to be communicated clearly to those affected. This is why a consistent, company-wide business process management (BPM) platform is a cornerstone to a green strategy.

COMMITTED GREEN

There are lots of changes that companies can implement that make both financial and environmental sense. At Nimbus for instance, we’ve invested in web-conferencing and a VoIP phone system, to enable staff to work from wherever is best for them. This has been helped massively by implementing a social media/micro-blogging platform. Even early sceptics now see the benefits of increased collaboration. We also use web-conferencing far more and fly less than we ever did. The knock-on effect of reduced expenses is a welcome by-product, plus less wear and tear on our staff. In fact, now we are getting so good at web-conferencing, we are more effective in some cases than in face-to-face meetings.

It’s not just technology where companies can make a difference. In the UK, for instance, a government-sponsored Cycle to Work Scheme gives employees a tax break on buying a new bike, while companies fund the cost of the bike over 12 months. In addition to participating in the scheme, our office installed showers and now the courtyard is full of bikes.

Our IT is cloud-based – covering sales, marketing, operations, HR, procurement, asset management and finance operations. That means we’re not running on-premise software on our own servers. Recently we participated in a study to evaluate the environmental impact of cloud computing. I was staggered by the results. Over ninety (91) per cent of computing power is saved by using a cloud solution. And that’s because a multi-tenant cloud model enables thousands of businesses to be consolidated onto far fewer servers in the cloud.

But it’s far more than just being green. The cloud approach gives a level of business continuity and resilience to our systems that would be unaffordable. Our ability to scale rapidly to the increasing demand we are seeing is far easier. We can now open up new offices in new cities and countries far faster and more cost effectively. No longer are we limited by the time to install and configure servers and systems. There is a strong business case for the green cloud.

BIG GREEN

By far the largest impact companies can have is when they start to apply BPM analysis techniques to drive out waste, identify risk and look at how technology can help them change to be more effective. This may be driven by a green agenda, but it is surely a key part of corporate strategy. And ther...