How to curb IT’s hunger for power

In the first of a two-part report on green IT, we examine how firms can cut energy use

The manufacturing process for the average PC requires two tonnes of raw materials and generates 25 tonnes of CO2, according to some estimates. Each PC in use generates a further tonne of CO2 every year, and then, after about three years, the machines and the 75 or so toxic components they contain are typically thrown out.

Concerns about this environmental impact are not new, but IT directors are now under more pressure than ever before to limit their department’s environmental footprint as green issues become a greater concern at board level.

Matthew Farrow, head of environment at the CBI, says that with energy prices rising, consumer interest in green issues growing and more regulations on the horizon, environmental considerations will become an increasingly important part of IT directors’ jobs. “This is not a fashion,” he adds. “There are no signs that the factors driving this trend are going to abate.”

IT is usually considered to be one of the most environmentally damaging departments, so IT directors face a major challenge to help firms demonstrate green credentials. However, those IT directors willing to tackle environmental problems are rapidly finding that as well as playing a key role in their firms’ corporate and social responsibility (CSR) initiatives they can also deliver financial benefits. “There is a new saying in America that ‘green is green’” says Joel Makower, founder of GreenBiz.com. “We’re seeing a growing realisation that there is money to be made from green business.”

This dual environmental and commercial benefit is nowhere more apparent than in the field of energy efficiency. According to David Vincent, technology director at The Carbon Trust, IT equipment typically accounts for about 15 percent of a firm’s overall energy costs, rising to over 30 percent for IT-intensive organisations. Therefore, IT directors can deliver major cost savings and environmental benefits by developing strategies to reduce energy consumed by their IT systems.

Experts agree that firms wanting to improve energy efficiency should expand the IT director’s duties to include responsibility for the IT department’s energy bills. “Currently, energy bills go to the facilities department, so you don’t really know the energy cost of IT,” explains Richard Barrington, head of public policy at Sun Microsystems. “Environmentally-aware IT directors should get hold of their energy budget, as then they can start to play suppliers off each other and include energy efficiency in specifications for new products.”

As well as encouraging IT directors to demand more energy-efficient hardware, seeing the energy bills encourages them to look at other ways to reduce use of electricity. One technique is to undertake a carbon audit to highlight where simple changes can improve efficiency, says Vincent. “Without a proper audit it is difficult to know which changes will be most beneficial,” he adds. “For example, one common problem in datacentres is that cooling and heating systems fight each other to set the ambient temperature.” The Carbon Trust estimates that companies can typically reduce IT energy consumption by 20 percent by carrying out an audit and making relatively simple changes.

Some types of software can also reduce a company’s energy footprint.

Virtualisation technologies in particular are cited as a way to make better use of computing power and so reduce the energy demands of datacentres. “Virtualisation aims to simplify the datacentre and drive up utilisation,” says Gary Fowle of Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “That means you are running the same tasks on fewer servers, using less electricity.”

Similarly, hosted and grid computing may help to lower electricity bills, according to Barrington. “Renting space on a grid gives you operational efficiencies compared to a datacentre that typically has only 15 percent utilisation rates,” he says. “Hosted software is also an energy-efficient model as you can deliver a software package to a multitude of users with a much smaller energy footprint.” These savings are amplified if firms use thin clients rather than PCs to access hosted applications.

Dual environmental and cost benefits are also evident in the emergence of new multifunction printers (MFPs). Tom Wagland, environmental manager at print specialist Ricoh, argues that MFPs including scanning, printing, copying and fax functionality typically use half the electricity of the four separate products, while mechanical improvements make it easier to carry out duplex (double-sided) printing.

New document management tools are also moving firms closer to the long-anticipated “paperless office”, says Ricoh’s Neil O’Donoghue. Print management systems that make users confirm at the printer that they want documents are reducing the production of unnecessary printouts, while content management systems that allow documents to be distributed online are also saving paper, says O’Donoghue.

But despite all these technical innovations one of the most effective ways to limit the energy footprint of IT kit is still to encourage users to reduce demand. Campaigns to turn off PCs have had notoriously mixed success, but experts are adamant that giving staff more information can improve behaviour.

“A monitor left on 24/7 can cost £45 a year in electricity,” says Vincent. “You can reduce that to £10 a year by turning it off [when not in use]. When people get those figures they tend to be surprised at the scale of the savings.”

Part two: Why green thinking pays off for IT departments