The sheen appears to have fallen
away from Green IT in Australia, judging by the findings of the latest Fujitsu
ICT Sustainability Benchmark. The overall index, covering seven countries,
declined from 56.4 to 54.3 in the last 12 months, while the index for Australia
fell to 52.8, putting it below the average for Canada, the UK and the US. Meanwhile,
a small army of nearly 100 students descended on 78 companies, cities and
universities in the US to hunt for efficiency projects. Participating in the
Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps program, they found ample
opportunities: US$650 million worth. That’s nearly double the savings
identified in 2010.

A faulty green drive

Charis Palmer in Technology
Spectator/Climate Spectator (20 September 2011):

The sheen appears to have fallen
away from Green IT in Australia, judging by the findings of the latest Fujitsu
ICT Sustainability Benchmark.

The overall index, measured
across seven countries, declined from 56.4 to 54.3 in the last 12 months, while
the index for Australia fell to 52.8, putting it below the average for Canada,
the UK and the US.

It’s a case of out of sight, out
of mind, with less than one per cent of ICT departments surveyed in Australia
responsible for ICT’s power consumption.

More than half the respondents
had no understanding of how much power ICT consumes, with only one in seven ICT
divisions across the entire survey including the cost of ICT’s power
consumption in their departmental budgets.

Fujitsu says many organisations
appear to have reached a plateau with ICT sustainability, having already
tackled the “low hanging fruit” such as PC power management and telecommuting.
In some cases Green IT may have been viewed as a project – once the box was
ticked the organisation moved on to other things.

So what’s driving this so-called
“green fatigue”?

One culprit is likely to be cloud
computing, which continues to be hyped, pushing Green IT down the list of
priorities. Cloud computing is also being used as an example by the broader ICT
industry as an example of how it can become more sustainable.

But a recent report from
Greenpeace found if the internet was a country it would rank 5th for the amount
of electricity usage, just below Japan and above Russia.

The huge banks of servers
required to support cloud computing are consuming 2 per cent of global energy
demand, often powered with coal. Research from Gartner has also found data
centre emissions in the US are increasing faster than other carbon emissions.

Ovum analyst Rhonda Ascierto
recently argued for cloud computing to truly be ‘green’ it must make greater
use of renewables. She says some providers are researching novel ways to
accomplish this, but in the meantime, cloud service providers should be more
transparent about their ‘green’ data centre claims in order to build customer
confidence in them.

Ascierto also points out cloud
computing may spur new demand for IT services, and as prices for cloud services
fall, IT demand may grow, regardless of the global economy’s health. And it
remains to be seen whether advances in energy efficiency in data centres will
outweigh the effect of these growing demands.

In the meantime, it’s inevitable
that corporate Australia will have to take another look at ICT power use as
part of the broader move to price carbon.

While any carbon tax is only
likely to impact the big end of town, the Sustainability Index shows it’s the
manufacturing sector that is currently falling behind, with the lowest score
across the eight industry sectors measured.

Source: www.climatespectator.com.au

2011 Climate Corps Fellows Show
How Energy Efficiency Can Pay Off

By Tilde Herrera In GreenBiz.com
(21 September 2011):

Think energy efficiency is
boring? Think again. A group of graduate students just gave us 650 million
reasons to believe otherwise.

A small army of nearly 100 MBA
and MPA students descended on 78 companies, cities and universities this summer
to hunt for efficiency projects that would save energy and money. The students,
participating in the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps program, found
ample opportunities: $650 million worth. That’s nearly double the savings
identified in 2010.

Now in its fourth year, the
program that gives graduate students a crash course in real-life corporate
energy management shows no sign of slowing. The number of fellows and host
organizations continues to swell with each class, and even expanded this year
to include cities and universities.

“What that demonstrates is
the power of a good idea, the effectiveness of this model and the impact you
can have by building the case for energy efficiency,” said Victoria Mills,
managing director of EDF’s Corporate Partnerships program.

The numbers speak for themselves:
The lighting, computer equipment and HVAC projects identified by Climate Corps
fellows would save 600 million kilowatt hours of electricity and avoid 440,000
metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

I spoke to Mills about the latest
results released today. She told me the program will likely expand again next
year, and is already recruiting for 2012.

“The focus will continue to
be on building the business case for energy efficiency, helping organizations
find quick wins, and low- or no-cost investments that deliver big benefits in
energy savings and carbon reductions,” she said.

But Climate Corps fellows are
also digging deeper to look at impacting organizational practices that make
energy efficiency stick, Mills said, such as helping their host organizations
create dedicated funds for energy efficiency investments or establish
accountability in the company for energy efficiency savings.

One of her biggest surprises:
“We continue to see such big benefits, even with our repeat host
companies.”

She told me some first-year host
companies admitted they were unsure about even participating because they
thought they had done everything, but came to realize they were just scratching
the surface.

While the potential savings
figure is brag-worthy, it’s practically meaningless if the host organizations
leave those opportunities sitting on the table. That’s not the case here.

“The thing I’m most excited
about is the implementation rate and the fact that when we go back and check
with companies after the fellowships are over on what projects they’re moving
forward with, we’re seeing an 86 percent implementation rate for projects
either complete or underway,” Mills said. “It’s huge to be able to
catalyze that kind investment in energy efficiency.”

Tilde Herrera is an editor at
GreenBiz Group.

Source: www.greenbiz.com