Having said that whatever one’s views on climate change*, being green is still good thing, what can we do in practice to reduce waste and power consumption?

It’s not easy being green

Print double-sided, use recycled paper and use secure-printing. Since switching to double-sided printing by default, we’ve saved roughly 25% on our paper costs. On one printer alone, we have avoided printing 38,000 sheets of A4 paper since it’s installation.

Our next printer project is to consolidate all of our printers down to two units (for resilience) and use token authorisation to release print jobs. This gets around confidentiality issues that would usually require departmental printers (e.g. in HR, Finance) and means that there should be very few documents left lying around on printers — it’s amazing how much gets printed and forgotten.

Virtualise. Virtualising our server room has reduced our direct power consumption in the server room by 25–30% and will have reduced the cooling costs by a similar amount** and would have been twice as good if not for managed systems that couldn’t be virtualised. This is a good for the bottom line, as well as fossil fuel reserves. Other benefits include reducing our server real-estate maintenance contracts, requiring less physical space and more versatile disaster recovery options.

To some degree the benefits are offset by the cost of software licenses and SAN infrastructure, but worst-case, you’ll probably see see a return on this investment within 18 months (often quicker). If you need convincing, Google it — in most cases, businesses will benefit from virtualisation if it’s done correctly.

Put services in the cloud. In the majority of cases, economies of scale will mean that for a given service there will be less waste with a cloud-based service.

Don’t use screensavers. Really. Please don’t. Blank your screens. Most screensavers do a fine job of not burning the task bar or dock into your screen, but they also do a fine job of running your CPU to the max. Ever touched a Macbook Pro after it’s been running an animated screensaver for any length of time? You can fry an egg on it:

heat = power consumption = cost/CO2 emissions

Do use Energy Star compliant systems and agressive power management. Energy Star compliance is commonplace these days, but power management can be a political issue. Users hate it when they have to wake up their computer and type in a password every time they make a coffee; they hate it even more when it happens when they’re running a presentation in a pitch and have stopped to talk through a slide for an extended length of time. At Banner, we use a GPO to reset power management policies to our defaults at login; if users need to reset the power management for a presentation, they can, but it will revert to the ‘greener’ settings the next time they log in. As compromises go, this works reasonably well.

Source from renewal energy suppliers. Most energy suppliers will offer at least a partly renewable energy supply. It may come at a slightly higher cost (in direct financial terms), but the long-term benefits are worth it.

Offset some carbon. There’s no avoiding using power from an energy supplier for the vast majority of businesses, so carbon offsetting should be a part of the green mix. We do this with the web server you’re reading this on through the CO2 Neutral Website project.

Utilise telepresence facilities where possible. In the recent past, telepresence was sometimes used grudgingly as an alternative to face-to-face meetings. Now, with the high-quality VC kit available, coupled with cheaper bandwidth, it’s a good alternative to travel. WPP have VC suites dotted around the globe and having recently been in a meeting encompassing something like 15 locations around the world, it worked extremely well.

Finally, remove the barriers; sounds obvious, but it makes a difference. Put up signage requesting that lights are switched off, develop an internal education programme, ensure recycling facilities are available (and labeled), implement a bike to work programme if you can, and lastly, keep up the pressure.

This is a far from complete list (I’ve skipped hardware recycling, green building construction and procurement criteria for example), so please comment if you think something should or shouldn’t be included here.

Tomorrow, in Part 3 (I’ll have to think of a snappy title for this one) I’ll report back on what I find at the Green IT Expo. Last year I found out about Climate Savers Computing. Check it out.

* I’m going to come clean now and say that although, in my view, ‘global warming’ seems to be an inadequate description for what is happening to the environment, I do subscribe to theory of climate change. I can’t comment on exactly how much of the change in the world’s climate is a natural process and how much is human-induced, but polluting the planet can’t help matters, surely?

The frightening outcomes of an unpredictable climate were brought home to me this year when I travelled to Colorado. Living in the UK (which often feels like the wettest place on the planet), it was quite unnerving to find that every local resident we spoke to was concerned about one thing — lack of snowfall. Not only was the local economy under threat (for obvious reasons), but there was genuine and serious concern for the cities (Denver among them) whose water supplies rely on the meltwater.

So, taking off my IT hat for a moment, don’t we have a moral obligation as people to prevent unnecessary waste? Melting glaciers and dwindling fossil fuel reserves scare me and if the predictions are correct, I’m deeply worried for the next generation. Waiting until it’s too late just to see what happens can’t be an option.

** Our UPS used to run at just under 90% utilisation, now it’s just over 60%.

This got me thinking about the subject of ‘green IT’ and more broadly, ‘green business’ and the backdrop against which we make decisions and formulate policy.

What follows are some thoughts on the current state of affairs (Part 1), some practical tips on ‘greening up’ your business (Part 2) and finally a review of the Expo in Part 3.

Is the climate change debate over?

You’d be forgiven for thinking (in the UK at least) that the verdict is in because the consensus in the scientific community overwhelmingly favours the theory of human-induced climate change.

Proponents of the theory describe skeptics in terms of the psychology of denial (see The Psychology of Climate Change Denial on Wired.com) and my impression is that organisations promoting skepticism over either the science or policies on climate change are seen to be backed by Big Oil or have a vested political interest in denying the affects of CO2 emissions on the environment. Worldchanging claims the debate is over.

However, in spite of the ‘incontrovertible’ evidence supporting the theory of human-induced climate change, the debate is still happening and it’s highly polarised.

The ‘money flood’

On the flip-side there is opposition to the theory ranging from skepticism to outright, vehement denial, with organisations like the Global Warming Policy Foundation at one end of the spectrum and Climate Change Dispatch at the other.

Climategate happened — further muddying the waters —  and the halo around climate-change research began to tarnish. This was followed the recent resignation of Hal Lewis from the American Physical Society.

In his letter, Mr Lewis tells us that “the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs”.

He goes on to describe the “global warming scam”,  which, he says “is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. “. Strong, unequivocal words.

Chicken coop data centres

Against this backdrop of highly politicised debate, businesses (for good reason) have hedged their bets and technology has marched on regardless.

In recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of virtualisation/cloud computing, extremely efficient mobile CPUs, chicken-coop data centres, better power management in the OS, better awareness and education around ‘green’ issues and a great deal of attention being paid by large enterprises through corporate responsibility programmes.

Technological innovation, public opinion and corporate policy have all coalesced in such a way as to effectively render the is-it– or isn’t-it-our-fault debate debate almost irrelevant to the average IT manager.

I’d go a step further and argue that for IT departments, the debate is indeed over, and it’s time to act, not talk. Not matter which side of the fence you come down on (or even if you’re sitting on it), there are good (if less noble) reasons to go green.

5 Reasons to ignore the debate and ‘green up’ your business anyway

Reason 1. Power costs money. The benefits of reducing waste and saving power are self-evident — it’s simple economics. For example, a significant proportion of the cost of owning and running a server over its lifetime is the cost of the power needed to run and cool it. The Uptime Institute puts the figure at around 10% of the total cost on annualised basis. What’s more, power costs are often not on an IT manager’s radar because power doesn’t usually fall under the purview of IT.

Reason 2. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. ‘Nuff said.

Reason 3. It’s good business. A corporate responsibility programme which addresses ‘green issues’ is good business because it does good. Public perception matters, and visible action matters even more.

Reason 4. You need to win business. You will probably never see another RFP that doesn’t make some reference to green credentials. In many cases, getting a piece of business will be contingent (albeit in a small way) on being able to demonstrate that you take the environment seriously. This way, the organisation who owns the RFP can point to its own green credentials — see reason 3.

Reason 5. You may not have a choice. There may well be legal or organisational requirements that require your co-operation, and penalties that apply if you don’t.

* Update *

In part 2, out tomorrow now, I’ve got some practical advice for making your business a greener place.

As an aside, if you haven’t made up your mind, why not go over to woodfortrees.org and have a play with some of the raw data; it provides an excellent lesson in how statistics can be manipulated.

In a survey of 124 IT buyers in North America and Europe, they found good news in that 85% said green factors are important. However only 25% had written green criteria into purchases and only 15% were aware of vendors’ green initiatives.

Forrester senior vice president Christopher Mines said:

We heard two reasons why green matters: efficiency and corporate responsibility. Most IT decision-makers told us that a green purchase would only happen in the context of cost reduction. These are hard-headed, ROI-driven business decisions.

Now of course we have to be careful because this a pretty tiny sample size spread across markets which have quite differing attitudes to anything green. But if we take it as representative should we still agree that actually it’s all down to cost?

If this was true then we could expect that all IT purchases (green or not) would go to the cheapest vendor. This of course is not the case. There are a range of factors that come into play. And, as the survey shows, it is still the case that most vendors have not made customers sufficiently aware of the green options or the wider benefits.

There are often efficiency benefits to green products. Traditional PCs for example use shed-loads of power – and power isn’t cheap. They also generate loads of heat which then requires air conditioning to correct (more power). Many are massively over-spec’d for their users (bigger processors, more heat, more power, more cost).

A single PC left on all day is responsible for about 1,500 lbs of CO2. Greener alternatives use less power and generate less heat (saving around £50/$100 per computer per year). They create less carbon to start with and offset what little there is. And they are comparable on price. That’s before we get to the corporate responsibility part of the equation.

Pretty compelling. Now if only the message could be communicated effectively (call us if you need some help).

Basically this all means that the hard-headed, ROI-driven business decision often is a green one (and that there is a huge opportunity in the market).

It’s customary at this time of year to make predictions for the 12 months ahead. Of course, this is largely an exercise in ensuring you look pretty stupid at the end of the year. (It’s almost as if, simply by predicting the future, you can guarantee that it won’t come to pass.) So with that in mind, and not wanting to pass up the opportunity of looking stupid, here are mine:

• I’ll start on safe ground. Disenchantment with the Windows OS (its cost, security problems, new licensing issues etc) will continue a pace. Vista won’t live up to the Longhorn vision seen here (I love the “Coming October 2003″ line). Of course, loads of people will still buy it and it will a boon for PC and memory upgrade vendors.
• As a result, PCs and laptops preloaded just with Linux (and a shed-load of open source apps) will begin to take off, probably with a new brand / sub-brand beginning to make a name for themselves by specialising in this area.
• HD DVD will win the format war. Yes it’s early days but I think Blu-ray will suffer from Sony’s proprietary/lock in tendencies despite being technically superior (funny how every article about this brings up the spectre of Betamax).
• The Google brand image will wobble as it struggles to live up to the “don’t be evil” promise all while trying to utterly dominate the market. (As an aside, while people point to this mantra as something highly aspirational, I can’t help thinking that not being evil is the very least a brand can promise.) The Google OS and Google Office however will take off big time (see the Windows prediction above).
• Social search (eg Wink and StumbleUpon) will become ever more appealing to many people who already trust their networks more than any old school search engine.
• Clean tech will be huge with the largest area being energy production. The big money will go into large national-scale projects but micro generation will become a growing political issue in a “let’s stick it to those blackmailing us over oil” kind of way.
• Last but not least, I will get my running time down to a regular 9min mile pace (yeah right).

Check back in a year for a good laugh at my expense. In the meantime, have a wonderful 2007.

It’s a book that emphasises the dire situation the world finds itself in but is then both inspirational and practical in charting a path forward. From the introduction:

If we face an unprecedented planetary crisis, we also find ourselves in a moment of innovation unlike any that has come before… Humanity’s fate rests on the outcome of the race between problem solvers and the problems themselves. The world is getting better – we just have to make sure it gets better faster than it gets worse.

Technology, of course, is not the only solution (despite the head in the sand assertion by some that it is). But it is a part of the solution as is helping and cajoling people, organisations and governments to change their behaviours. Communications professionals have a key role to play, as I put in an earlier post, this is the kind of task we’re well equipped to take on.

The book is 600 or so pages which, as I was reading through, made me think: that’s a lot of dead tree. In the back, however, is a breakdown of how they’ve kept the damage to a minimum. Here’s one of the labels:

They have also purchased wind power credits equivalent to the amount of electricity used to produce the book. I wonder what would happen if all printed material had to carry the same declaration.

As I say, it’s a great book which should be on everyone’s bookshelf. You can buy yours here.

A company called Nanosolar seem to have cracked a way to, in effect, “print” solar cells, reducing the cost and offering a more versatile alternative to traditional panels.

Grist has an interesting article, Transforming the automobile about the future of the car and some of the options available and another on how the media is changing its approach to climate change reporting.

Treehugger features a new solar powered phone from DoCoMo as well as a link to The Waste Book, a directory of recycling businesses.

Sources: Inc.com, Corporate Knights, Grist, Treehugger

To me, it looks a bit like a Lotus Elise – which is no bad thing (the site has some nice eye candy on it). It has a 250 mile range which counters one of the real limitations of previous electric cars. The only problem is that it’s left hand drive… oh, and comes in at about $100k… and it’s sold out anyway. But if it wasn’t for all that…

Here’s some video taken at the launch:

So if you see Santa…

From Treehugger:

The currently unnamed business unit will focus on ideas that will directly benefit the environment, develop them, market them and implement them.

Read the rest here.

(BTW, if anyone involved on this at IBM would like some help from a really good creative agency I know, click here to get in touch.)

…the Cleantech Venture Network® forecasts that cleantech venture capital investment opportunities for major institutional investors globally through 2009 are estimated at $17 billion, with $10 billion in North America, $5 billion in Europe and $2 billion for the rest of the world.

Although, all these kinds of forecasts must be taken with a pinch of salt, Cleantech Venture Network has previously shown that in Q3 2006 alone $933 million was invested in clean tech – so the figures don’t appear too far fetched. The current release goes on to claim that this investment could deliver 500,000 new jobs and $85 billion in related economic growth.

As the Stern report in the UK has shown, purely on a pragmatic, economic level the costs of inactivity are far more serious than those of getting to grips with the problem. I guess ultimately it will be these hard dollar factors that will determine whether the will and commitment can be mustered by industry. While this may be sad for those of a more altruistic bent, this one is surely a case of whatever gets the result.

Source: Triple Pundit

• a 2˚C rise in temperature could mean 4 billion people suffering water shortages
• it would mean 40% of species facing extinction
• it could lead to a further 200 million people going hungry
• if we don’t do something very serious, very soon (ie now) climate change could shrink global economies by 20%

And this is just the beginning.

The catalogue of doomsday predictions goes on and on (and is nothing new). In some ways this is part of the problem – while it’s paramount to convey the urgency of the situation but at the same time many people feel overwhelmed. There’s a learned helplessness creeping in. Vox pop surveys routinely return comments to the effect of “What does it matter whether I recycle, it’s just a drop in the ocean…”

There are, of course, no easy answers. An effective response must be holistic and global. One part (although certainly not the whole) is technology. “Clean technology” offers increasing options to mitigate some of the problems and potentially eliminate others. And with the pace of change, it has to be one of the most exciting areas in technology at this moment.

It also provides some of the most challenging tasks for marketers. All too often marketing and communications are characterised as the ‘fluffy’ end of business that spins empty promises and half truths for a fast buck. Well, here is the chance to bury that accusation once and for all.

Clean tech adoption is about changing behaviour (whether at consumer, business or government level). This is what talented marketing professionals do best. All too often the language of climate change is the language of academic or political debate (of the worst kind). It quickly descends into hair-splitting and plausible deniability. What a great way to disengage people.

What’s needed is a language of hope and possibility. One that counters helplessness and offers a vision for the future that brings the issue alive, stirs people into action and, yes, creates profitable businesses for the clean tech industry.

To me, this sounds like the kind of thing many in our industry were born to do.