Green IT matters

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: It is widely understood that the way in which we are behaving as a society is environmentally unsustainable, causing irreparable damage to our planet. It is becoming progressively more important for all businesses to act (and to be seen to act) in an environmentally responsible manner, both to fulfill their legal and moral obligations as well as to enhance the brand and improve corporate image.

Companies are competing in a green market and must avoid the real and growing financial penalties that are increasingly being levied against carbon production. So what does this mean for the IT industry? Information and communication technology accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Many IT companies have already reacted to rising power costs and concerns over climate change by creating more energy-efficient products and ramping up their marketing around environmental concerns. The main issues cited have been the amount of electricity used by processors and hardware—especially in datacentres. The intense power requirements needed to run and cool datacentres now account for almost a quarter of the global carbon dioxide emissions from ICT.

A typical 10,000 sq ft datacentre consumes more electricity than 8,000 60-watt light bulbs. That represents six to 10 times the power needed to operate a typical office building at peak demand. Given that most datacentres run 24x7x365, the companies that own them could end up paying millions just to keep their computers turned on. Forrester Research estimates that datacentres require 0.5 to 1 watt of cooling power for each watt of server power used and that a typical x86 server consumes between 30% and 40% of its maximum power when idle.

Legacy systems often require a large IT department to run them which, in itself, involves additional heating and lighting costs, as well as the environmental impact of running a large office.

Hence, environmental responsibility is emerging as an important topic for corporate IT organisations and their technology suppliers. Corporate IT will go green in the coming years, driven by a combination of cost efficiency, regulatory compliance and corporate responsibility motivations.