There is a difference between green IT and sustainable IT. Green IT focuses on reducing energy usage and cost. Sustainable IT has a broader mission. It is also green but includes socially responsible efforts such as recycling IT technologies and reducing e-waste. Some pundits see the cloud as a way to improve green and sustainable IT.
Here are some successes I found in the article "From green to gold: Sustainable IT efforts can drive opportunity" posted by the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (ASU). The authors Haluk Demirkan of ASU and Robert R. Harmon of Portland State University noted in their article that:
In 2008, IBM used server consolidation to cut energy use companywide by 6.1%. KPMG slashed half a million kilowatt hours for 2009 energy purchases [saving, at $.11/kilowatt hour, more than $55,000] by switching to IT products that met efficiency standards. SunGard Financial Systems launched a virtualization and consolidation effort to cut data center electricity use by 1.5 megawatt hours [saving more than $165,000] and reduce greenhouse gas emissions of more than 1,000 metric tons annually.
I have posted many blogs in the past years at nojitter.com on energy conservation, power consumption, cooling costs and green IT including:
* The IP Phone Power Bill Can Be High
* Cisco's Energy Management Solution
* Data Center Density, Maxed Out?
* Green ICT Questions
* Your 2010 IPT Energy Plan
These blogs are meant to stimulate IT professionals to pay attention to managing their energy use--energy use that can be reduced in order to help their budgets.
The ASU article went on to discuss the financial aspects of IT and green efforts. The article cited IT spending at $3.6 trillion during 2011 according to Gartner Inc. Gartner forecast $391 billion on hardware and $465 billion on telecom equipment. Neither of these Gartner forecasts includes the cost of operating the data centers. The ASU article reported that U.S. and European energy costs exceeded $10 billion.
An interesting prediction by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is that by 2012 the operating cost of data center equipment over its lifetime will probably exceed the capital investment cost. A second DoE prediction is that by 2020, the data centers in the U.S. will have a carbon footprint greater than the national airline industry.
The sustainable goal includes reducing the production and treatment of e-waste. With the rapid evolution of computing devices, many enterprises have decided to lease rather than buy the equipment, especially servers. The lessor now has the headache for e-waste recycling and disposal, a cost savings for the enterprise.
One of the dumbest forms of e-waste is the cell phone charger. Since they are not standardized, nearly 50 million chargers are disposed of every year. These are unlikely to be disposed of properly.
I have found enterprises that have warehoused old computers that are not used, at their own cost. Other enterprises pay to have the computers recycled. Improperly disposing of a PC and monitor can generate considerable fines. One state has up to a $10,000 fine for each special metal found in a computer and monitor. There are eight such metals, producing a fine of $80,000 for improperly disposing of ONE computer. Only about 15% of electronic devices of all kinds are recycled in the U.S. This is pushing governments to take recycling seriously. The European Parliament has set the recycling target for 2016 at 85% of e-waste.
Even though IT departments are planning and implementing green IT, sustainable IT is growing in importance. The ASU article presents these comments:
* Sustainability has become a megatrend that will impact how companies develop and peddle their offerings.
* IT departments already have started responding to the trend with green IT, but now must evolve to address sustainable IT.
* Green IT has focused on cost cutting. Sustainable IT will focus also on societal concerns, giving IT departments a way to support corporate branding and produce solutions companies can offer customers. [It is also great for the annual report to shareholders]
* Sustainable IT solutions that IT departments produce will likely be based on software-as-a-service [cloud based solutions].
