Information Technology and the Reduction of Carbon Footprints

Information Technology and the Reduction of century FootprintsInformation Technology has constrain take off and parcel of the business do byes across industries and the orbicular pursuit of outlet cat valium depart remain unachieved unless IT enables the lessening of Carbon-Footprints. verdure-IT is an finiseavor to shift to to a greater extent efficient products and approaches to bothow us to objurgate oftentimes equipment within the given energy foot-print. Regulations on the building of data-centers, get around technologies to do so, environment friendly usage of technology be the key-focus aras of Green-IT.Green IT was the Top Strategic Technology for the year 2008 as per Gartner. It went ahead of the multi-core chips, springs supplies, fans and origin soldieryagement soft-w atomic number 18s and a push-down store of innovation, re-thinking and re-designing is happening in the technology vender and business processes sphere.IT is all-encompassing and holi stic, supporting all the functions ilk supply-chain, logistics, travel, facility management, collaboration, personnel department management and the overall brand.In his book, Green to Gold, Daniel Esty a Yale Professor, eluci whiles that IT leaves its fingerprints on all the business processes and its carbon-foot prints argon to a fault every-where. IT has the responsibility as well as the opportunity to combat this menace.Role of Information Technology in going Green to GoldInformation technology is an industry which has grown at a remarkably fast pace in the pull round hardly a(prenominal) decades Fast growing computers and telecom network, ever-increasing demands for cypher mogul, rapid annex in usage of computers, PCs, laptops, data-centers, mobile phones, etc entertain ca commitd IT to leave a lot of Carbon-foot prints across the globe. The foot-prints ar heading more towards the developing and less-developed countries. These ICT driven devices would be write out the b iggest spirt-ho design spatter emitters by 2020. and it has a potential to centralise far more of the carbon-footprints than it causes.A McKinsey study has found that IT posterior help oneself in eliminating 7.8 measured gigatons of greenhouse gas outpourings annually by 2020 which is equivalent to 15 percent of global emissions today and five convictions more than the estimated emissions from these technologies in 2020. generator McKinsey Report, How IT wad reduce Carbon Emission, 2008The carbon-foot print has been calculated on the primer of levels of emissions associated with the usage, manufacture and distrisolelyion of ICT. ICT emits about 2% of the emission globally which is estimated to become 3% or 1.54 careful gigatons, twice of what the UK produces today.The rapid development in ICT in the countries resembling China, India and Brazil result cause the increase in gas-emission. The rapid development in ICT in the countries like China, India and Brazil provid eing cause major increase in gas-emission. Emissions from manufacture and usage of PCs will double by 2020 owing to digitalization of middle class in the developing countries. Mobile-phones carbon-foot prints will triple by 2020 majorly due to phthisis of atomic arrive 14 and other rare metals. But most of the damage is caused due to increase in size and number of data-centers serving the un-quenchable thirst for increased computing and processing power. This emission is expected to become 5-folds by 2020 as compared to what it was in 2002.As the crisis is becoming fiercer by the day, its amply time that corporate and brass has started paying heed to this.The technological advancement in the field of entropy and communication buttocks be used to abate the emission of green-house gases caused by the very growth of ICT itself. Some of the possible technological solutions are explained below.Virtualization 2.0Virtualization enables to do more with less.The technology allows for co nsolidation of large no. of individual machines on one large server (like high density blade servers) resulting in lesser effective cost, and easier management. It overly improves the productiveness and overall ROI of the IT infrastructure with the use of SANs (Storage Area Networks) and other NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices which reduce redundancy and idle time for the scarce, energy guzzling resources. Virtualization improves the server utilization rates resulting in lesser no. of data centers required. The technology enables lesser energy consumption, lesser green house-gas emission, reduced heat generation, and lesser production of e- angrys.According to Gartner, the bestow number of virtual machines deployed introductionwide is expected to increase from 540,000 at the end of 2006 to more than 4 million by 2009. This technology can reduce the power consumption of data centers by 50-80 % and floor situation by 65%.Virtualization tops the list of top 10 Strategic techno logies for 2009 published by Gartner. With Green IT being at number 4.Material Recycling just about 20-30% of IT equipments become obsolete each year. The IT sector companies generated 3.3 lakh tones of e-wastes in the year 2007 in India. This number is expected to increase to 4.7 lakh tones by the end of 2011. IT sector during the course of their normal activities do non put much strain on the natural resources. But the wastes that they create like CPU, servers, newswriter cartridge etc. cause much strain on the ecologic balance.Many components of the e-wastes have plastic blends which do not bio-degrade easily. The e-wastes also maintain lease, cadmium, mercury and bromine flame retardants which are harmful to environment. The lead in computer monitors (approx. 20% by weight) chips in mother board are all highly damaging to environment.As per EPA estimates nearly 3 meg units of used electronic items will end up as waste in 2010. The average life of a desktop in ground force s has reduced to approximately 2 years. The consequence of trim down life dyad of electronics good is increase in amount of e-Waste.The expenditure on IT equipment is horrid (almost double in 5 years) and so is the toll these put by them on the natural resources. If practices are adopted that increase their useful life, it will contribute a lot in tackling the problem of e-wastes. Many experts select it as very effective route to tackle the problems of e-Waste by reduce their creation.E-Waste recycling helps us to recover some more value from the spot/waste, reduce using up natural resources and prevent contamination of tear and water by toxic wastes.One way to deal with e-Wastes is to give-up the ghost the old machines back to the manufactures. In case the original manufacturer does not turn back the product back, it can be given to a amenable reuser. When the recyclers get e-Wastes they try to make it reusable by making changes in the equipments. Then the wastes are str ipped into different components (process hollered de-manufacturing). The broad categories to which de-manufacturing is done can be to segregate plastics, metal non-ferrous and ferrous part, circuit boards, CRT (Cathode ray of light Tube) glass and Wood wastes. The steps followed at one such recycler (Waste Management) are shown belowAfter de-manufacturing parts are boxed and shipped for sale and re-use. The parts that cannot be re-used are sent for recycling and for safe disposal so that toxic parts do not come in adjoin with humans via rain water or land.e-waste management in IndiaIn India there had been no virtue/guidelines governing e-Wastes for a yearn time. still few states like Karnataka have started making rules related to e-Wastes and in April 2008 for the offshoot time Government came up with guidelines on disposal of e-Waste.Out of the total e-Waste created only two fifth used to get recycled. Now India is also adopting Extended Producer Responsibility, as per whic h now the producers will have to take responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products. So they will also have to take the responsibility of the recycling of their products.For this they can take the help of a registered recycler or start their own recycling plant or make products that have very low level of toxic products and use such process so that at a later date recycling cost can be curtailed.When talking about managing the e-Waste, the biggest gainsay is tracking the machines so that the companies can collect them and get them recycled. This will call for great investment in infrastructure and lot of data grounding management. Many companies operating in India provide such services in other nation because the rules of the land dictate so. In India the rules were lax then this practice was not adopted. However with Governments intent of implementation of EPR, things are belike to change in future. One way to ensure better accrual of e-Wastes can be to provide so me financial incentives if they collect and recycle more than a certain amount of e-Waste.Regarding son of a bitching of e-Wastes in India the law of country declares such activities as illegal. But the rules allow donation or kindness electronic goods to come in the nation. Many companies exploit this loophole to dump their e-Waste in India, in the garb of charity. Till recently nearly 70% of the e-Waste in recycling plants of India had been exported or dumped or given as charity to India. India needs to make rules to stop such digital-dumping in future.Green reason It is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently. It aims at reducing the raging materials, maximizing energy efficiency during products life time and promoting recyclability and bio-degradability of the defunct e-waste.A plethora of initiatives are being taken in this regards like climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) which aims at reducing the electric power consumption by PCs in active and inactive states. The Green Electronic Council has come up with Electronic Product Environmental Assessment tool (EPEAT) like The Electronics Environmental Benefits Calculator (EEBC) which assists the purchasers in evaluating green products by providing certificates like EPEAT tan, EPEAT Silver, and EPEAT Gold on the basis of compliance with the eco-friendly norms. There are global consortiums like The Green Grid (which has members like Microsoft, IBM, Dell, AMD, Sun Microsystems, and VMware etc) and non-profit organizations like Green Computing Impact Organization are also work in the field of green computing.Power ManagementThere are a number of open industry standards like Advanced strain and Power Interface (ACPI) which allow operating systems to control the power prudence options of the underlying hardware. For causa CPU performance-stepping that dynamically adjusts the energy requirements of processor in proportion to the load. Dynamic control of servers internal fan, Liquid cooling agents, and sharp arrangement of equipments in datacenters as per hot gangway/cold aisle layout also aids in reducing energy consumption.Efficient power supply and power management of a desktop computer can reduce in-use power consumption by 10-30%. Thin-client computing can reduce life-cycle energy consumption by 70-80%. .Video-conferencing TelecommutingA lot of companies have adopted Video-conferencing and Telepresence technologies to reduce carbon-emission related to employee travel, to reduce office-space, heating and lighting expenditure. For example 40% of the Suns employees use telecommuting. This helped in saving an estimated 29,000 tons of CO2 emissions and enabled beau monde cut on 6,660 office seats thus cutting actually estate cost by $63 million in the last fiscal year.Other initiatives like hotelling or flexible work-place reduce the space required per employee as space is reserved only when it is needed. Flexible clock and working from home also con tribute to reduced green-house gas emission and power consumption.Small Green InitiativesPaper-less Business ParadigmIn a small and cost-effective way IT can assist in dematerializing the goods and processes by establishing paper-less work-place. Double-sided printing reduces paper consumption up to 40%. A paperless process is 100% paper free. Initiatives like Green PDFs which emphasize paper-less usage and manduction of information electronically can be taken.The technology enabled tele-work for processes like e-billing, e-taxation and e-governance will reduce the deforestation and emission of green-house gases from fuels. Though it will consume electricity, but this model be viable given the un-utilized exorbitant processing and retention capacities of computers and the amount of reliability, portability, retrieval efficiency and availability it provides.ICT can facilitate in cutting down far more emission than it causes if energy productivity is focused in the sectors of build ings, power, transport and manufacturing.Building Manufacturing Power Transportation optimise energy usage, Reduce office-space, Telecommuting, Work from home Smart Control systems for motors Sensors in Grids to monitor power liberation and theft Smart technologies to manage transport logistics etc , Process of dematerialization of goods and processesBetter architecture, efficient technology to monitor lighting, heating public discussion E.g. In China, some plants could cut emission by 200 metric function megaton per year One grid in India reduced power loss by 15% by the use of sensors Reducing transportation through with(predicate) telecommuting, video conferencing, internet shopping, downloading contentSmart buildings can save up to 2.03 metric tons by 2020 By 2020, 0.68 metric gigatons can be saved annually Globally efficient grids can cut 2.03 gigatons of emissions by2020 0.5 metric gigatons a year can be reduced by this scotch downturn and Green ITGlobal warming unlike th e current sparing scenario is not cyclical in nature. To tide over the problem of global warming companies had started taking attempts to be greener. Naturally Green IT was a part of many such endeavors. In the current economic downturn IT is looked upon as a medium to remove inefficiencies of the processes. However the fact still remains that the current economic scenario has caused the IT budget across industries to decrease. The global economic nuclear meltdown has caused short term liquidity crisis and lack of faith, which has resulted in many yen term projects being put on shelf. Pursuing a long term strategic plan involves huge investment in look into and development, in implementation cost etc. Investment in Green IT, if done properly, will lead to good returns in long run. But the impact of the current short term- medium term economic crisis is that it has lead to projects of Green IT being put on back seats.However companies having way of life and willingness to pursue their long term ambitions still keep Green IT on the priority list. Companies from non IT business domain have continued their endeavors of becoming greener in their IT related activities and are going for upgrading of old infrastructure instead of disposing them and are going for environmental friendly servers.ConclusionThe rate at which man has recklessly harnessed the natural environment has brought him to the crisis where he faces struggle for existence. Its high time that businesses realize the gravity of situation and mend their ways. Information and confabulation Technology which invariably touches every aspect of the business holds a lot of responsibility as well as opportunity to reduce the carbon-footprints created by man. Green-IT is a two-pronged solution to this problem where-in it can reduce the emission caused by IT itself by technologies like virtualization, better e-waste management, better power management as well as it can assist other businesses and technologies in reducing their carbon-emissions by enabling resource sharing and establishing paradigms like paper-less offices, telecommuting, teleconferencing etc .This way it can first reduce and then help transform the world into a low carbon economy, thereby restoring Greener Earth. Information Technology can indeed take us from Green to Gold .