You cannot measure energy consumption unless one is clear
about precisely what one is measuring. On one level all IT is
"green" because, it saves energy in another form,writes
Dai Davis, Partner at law firmBrooke
North.
Consider, for example, that instead of using your car to drive
to a bank to move money between bank accounts, instead you can
interact with the bank electronically. No matter how much
electricity is used to power the bank's computers or your computer
at home, you are saving energy compared with the car journey.
So, computers can be said to be environmentally friendly on one
level, because they enable home working in a way which has not been
possible hitherto.
Most green computing strategies consider efficiency of hardware.
It is extremely rare to consider coding efficiencies. Yet if IT
software were written from an efficiency perspective, that could
also save considerable amounts of processing power.
Computers use considerable amounts of energy and mineral wealth
in their manufacture. They require ten times their weight of
irreplaceable resources in their manufacture. Further, for each
kilogramme of computer produced, some 22kg of chemical and 1,500kg
of water is needed.
Regretfully, many computers become obsolete in short periods of
time. If use can be made of computers afterwards, for example, by
"donating" them to charity projects around the world, a significant
green saving can be made. In addition, there is packaging waste to
take into account. Other factors include the location of the
manufacturing site and how far the workers need to travel to reach
that site.
Environmental and legislative drivers
It is important to understand why you are trying to be seen to
be "green". It may be that you have an altruistic driver. More
likely, it is through some external requirement to be seen to be
green perhaps by your shareholders, customers or other
stakeholders. Volvo, for example, is very keen on being seen to be
green. One way it ensures that it is green is by requiring its own
suppliers to be green. Many companies produce an annual
environmental report for their shareholders and therefore need to
find value to include in that report each year.
There are also statutory drivers. However, these are haphazard
to say the least. The so-called WEEE Directive, for example, is
targeted at producers of waste. Other legislation such as the
Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) is likewise
directed at manufacturers.
Perhaps the most well-known legislative driver is that of carbon
trading but that only applies to 12,000 emission sources from
energy intensive processes such as power generation. It is not a
holistic scheme by any means. In some circumstances, corporate
statements may be required.
An example of how this has been done is included in Section 85
of the Climate Change Act 2008. Most of this Act imposes
obligations on future governments. However, since no Parliament can
bind a future Parliament, its future importance must be regarded
as, at best, debateable. Similarly, the legislation does not
actually impose any new obligations on companies about reporting
their greenhouse gas emissions.
However, Section 85 does allow the Secretary of State should he
so choose, to make regulations requiring companies to include
information about greenhouse gas emissions within their annual
report. If this is not done by 6 April 2012, the Secretary of State
must explain to Parliament why no such regulations have been
made.
Service provision in green computing
Having determined "why" you are going green and what you are
aiming to achieve, you can next consider how you are going to
measure your "greenness". Most people start from power consumption.
Indeed, power consumption is important since it has been estimated
that up to 2% of power in the United States is used to power
computers; some 1% of power worldwide.
As has already been stated, however, most power consumption
strategies have been aimed at maximising the efficiency of the
hardware rather than looking at the underlying software code. Most
importantly, if waste heat can be minimised then that is seen as
reducing the environmental unfriendliness of computers. However,
that is only a small part of the day to day waste produced from
computing.
Other aspects include where, for example, the data centre which
hosts the computer servers is located in the first place. There are
a number of competing factors in this regard:-
• It is not likely that the data centre will be next to the
power source such as a hydro-electric dam, since staff are unlikely
to be located nearby. Power loss through transmission from the
generation source to the data centre is a significant factor. A
further problem is that if staff need to travel to the location of
the data centre that is, in itself, energy inefficient.
• Conversely, if the data centre is in a population centre, this
will reduce the need for travel time by staff. This will,
therefore, be seen as being environmentally friendly. However, most
businesses do not measure greenness based upon the travel incurred
by staff commuting to and from work.
• Further, there are competing security issues regarding data
centres in population centres. On the one hand if the data centre
is in a population centre, the data centre is more visible, which
may enhance security, and security employees will be easier to find
and employ. Conversely, more people may be aware of the location of
the data centre. Furthermore, there are more burglaries in
population centres than outside of population centres. Usually it
is perceived as better to put data centres away from population
centres from a security perspective.
• One undoubted advantage of having a data centre in a
population centre is that it is possible to utilise the waste heat
in combined power and heat schemes. However, in practice, this is
very rarely done.
Effective contract terms
Once you know what attributes one is measuring from a "green"
perspective it is possible to measure those attributes in a
contract. For example, if the only thing that is of concern is the
actual raw power used in a data centre, this is relatively easy to
measure. Once one starts including the location of the data centre,
one would need also to consider matters such as transmission power
losses and the efficiency or otherwise of employees travelling to
the data centre. This then makes any efficiency measure much harder
to calculate and therefore harder to reflect in any contract.
If all that is of concern in a contract is carbon neutrality,
this is merely a cost issue. Any amount of carbon off-setting can
be undertaken by a contracting party merely by "buying" the
relevant carbon off-set.
It is important to ensure that one looks at total lifecycle
issues. For example, a contract may require that a supplier
supplies only energy efficient computers. These usually have
hardware arrangements that make them efficient. If a supplier in an
outsourcing arrangement is required to supply such computers, it is
also important to look at what will happen when those personal
computers are to be replaced. In particular, what will happen to
the old computers? Are they going to be disposed of? If so, this
will introduce an energy inefficiency. It may be that the business
wants to ensure that the outsource service provider "recycles"
those computers, perhaps by giving them to a Third World
charity.
The next issue in any contract is to consider what damages will
be payable if the supplier does not reach the "green" computing
targets included in the contract. In the context of English law,
damages are meant to be a method (only) for compensating a party
for the loss that party has suffered. In the context of such
"green" obligations that loss may be unclear.
Furthermore, any attempt to quantify those damages in advance
would need to be done with care. If the payer of the damages later
challenges the amount payable, the payer may be able successfully
to argue that they are not, in fact, payable. This, at least, will
be the case where the damages are not a genuine pre-estimate of the
likely loss. The clause that requires those damages to be paid
would then be regarded, in English law, as a penalty clause (and
unenforceable) rather than a liquidated damages clause.
Data security
Undoubtedly one of the most important reasons for the continued
inefficiency of computer systems has to do with IT security. Most
IT systems could be made much more efficient if a greater
utilisation of individual computer processors and computer servers
was made. However, in many circumstances IT departments are
reluctant to do so for good security reasons. Why, for example,
would an IT department wish to dispose of a server in order to save
a modest amount of electricity a year, where by doing so it would
reduce the IT security of a business? It is a truism that most
servers in data centres are operated at much less than at their
peak capacity.
Consider by way of example, a company which has a personnel
management information system. Most companies will, quite properly,
keep this personnel system separate from the rest of their
corporate information systems. This is because most members of
staff need to have access to the corporate information systems.
Only the personnel managers and senior management employees of the
company will need access to the personnel system.
Indeed, it is a legal requirement to keep such systems separate,
or at least to consider the separate security implications of a
personnel system with a view to having separate access controls.
This is a result of the current UK legislation on data protection,
the Data Protection Act 1998. A company would be well advised,
given the lack of legislative drivers for green computing, to
consider the consequences carefully before combining the general
information system and the personnel system of the company. Keeping
these systems on separate servers where this already takes place is
a sensible (and economic) security precaution.
Conclusion
Green IT is, at least at the moment, difficult to define, let
alone achieve. However, there may be some simple yet important
steps that can be taken which are similar to those which can be
taken with one's home computer. For example, ensuring that personal
computers go to standby mode or are automatically switched off at
night when they are not being used. Similarly, batch printing can
often reduce energy costs.