As a company, possibly the largest component of our carbon footprint is in energy use. Even though we don’t have air-conditioning, the computers we use consume energy.

We’ve been running GreenPower long before it was fashionable to reduce this footprint. In keeping with the “Reduce, Renew, Offset” philosophy, we also use energy efficient computers wherever possible. Many staff use energy efficient laptops iMacs and our file server is a Mac Mini - basically a laptop in a cute desktop package.

So we’re glad to see the IT industry as a whole starting to make significant moves to improve energy efficiency in the computers that now are essential in running much of Australia’s, and the world’s, economies.

Big guns making waves

Over the past few months I’ve seen a dramatic increase in reportage of IT departments “going green”. In most cases this is a reference to energy efficiency, which is estimated to cost business billions of dollars.

Google is definitely stealing a lot of headlines - not only looking at how to conserve energy, but also seeking ways to green their operations more generally.

(Google are yet to turn black as some suggest. Mind you, the energy efficiency claims made around the “Blackle” concept have been shown to be somewhat overstated.)

Sun Microsystems is also winning customers with their energy efficient processor, the UltraSPARC T1. They are also part of the WWF supported Climate Savers initiative which includes IT heavyweights Microsoft, HP, and chip manufacturers AMD and Intel to name just a few (Google also appear on the Climate Savers list, holding a spot on the board of the initiative).

The initiative “brings together industry, consumers and conservation organizations to significantly increase the energy efficiency of computers and servers.” It’s focusing on the source of the problem - the computers themselves - which provides benefits to all customers, which is great to see.

The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) is also helping institutional buyers making greener choices. The industry-initiated voluntary standard includes “23 required criteria covering hazardous materials, recycling, and power consumption”.

Business Week reports that consumers’ fixation on initial purchase cost prompts manufacturers to include cheaper and less efficient components that increase the cost of the systems over their lifetime.

Thankfully it seems that a shift in focus on total cost of ownership is underway in IT departments around the world, which will reap significant benefits in time.

Enlightened self interest

What’s driving all this activity? It appears “enlightened self interest” is the key. Saving energy saves money - even more so as electricity prices rise and the cost of the carbon economy begins to weigh on businesses. According to Greener Computing [via Joel Makower]:

“Simply activating the power-save features on a fleet of corporate desktops — which in Google’s case could be as high as 12,000 computers for its employees worldwide — can save 50 or 60 percent of the energy wasted when computers are left on, and idle, for 16 hours a day.”

Employee retention is another. A Sun study, published by Inc.com [via Smart Company] found that “73% of workers want to work for businesses that are environmentally-friendly”. The trend extends to Australia. The same Smart Company round up mentions a newspoll that found:

“84% of employees want to work in an environmentally friendly office. And it is not just the Gen-Ys who want the change. While 81% of 18-24 year olds want to work in a green office, so do 86% of 35-49s.”

The Sun study also showed what many a building manager knows - that the bad habits of employees also cause a lot of wasted energy, with “only 52% say they turn lights off when they leave a room at the office, and 34% report they turn off their computers at the end of the day”. This is in stark contrast to their habits at home, where individuals tend to take more responsibility.

(To be fair, the persistent myth that a computer uses more energy to startup than being left on and previous reliability problems with turning computers - often propogated by ill-informed IT department staff - may have something to do with this.

Hosting

Much of Digital Eskimo’s business is building websites for our clients, hosted on servers that, of course, also consume electricity. We’ve long wanted to provide a “green” option for our clients - offsetting the emissions from the servers we use. We’ve been in discussions with two hosting companies we use to try to make this a reality, so far without success. But green options are increasingly coming to market.

The recent Web Directions South (WDS) conference pointed out that Pair Networks offsets their energy use - though you wouldn’t know this from their website.

The WDS post also points us to W3Green which provides additional information on how you can calculate the amount of electricity used by your website so that you can offset it. We’ll certainly be looking into that further and mentioning it to our preferred hosting companies.

Treehugger reports that Ilisys, a Western Australia-based hosting provider, is now carbon neutral. (Treehugger have also done a roundup of how different hosts are going green.) And California-based AISO claims to be a “100% solar energy host” - probably a good thing given California’s history of rolling blackouts and high electricity costs.

An energy efficient future

All of this activity is very promising, providing IT departments and individuals with more and more options for reducing their carbon footprint. Whilst there is still much to be done, these initiatives combined with European Union legislation such as RoHS Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), are having far reaching effects on the global market for IT and electronics benefiting us all.