WHY GREEN ICT SHOULd bE pART OF

Why green ICT should be part of
your strategy
ICT tools have come out from the back-office and are now almost essential for an efficient and sustainable (in
the broadest sense of continuity and survival) organisation, whether public sector, charity or private business,
with key roles to play in most processes and transactions. Bob Crooks, Head of the BCS Green IT Specialist
Group, discusses how organisations can reduce their green footprint through their ICT choices.
Sustainable is often meant in the
broadest sense of business survival.
Increasingly this requires sustainability
in the narrower sense of low, minimal
environment impacts: we can no longer
continue to do things without regard for
the environmental capital from our use
of the basic four elemental resources
of energy and the earth’s liquids, solids
and gases, to our impact on the more
complex structures of our environment
such as biodiversity and climate.
• W
e are no longer inheriting from our
parents, but are now borrowing from
our children.
• We must do more with less.
• Green is the new black.
These earth’s resources are increasingly
becoming scarce as the consequences
of so called ‘three planet lifestyle’ come
to bear on us, and also more expensive
(directly because of that scarcity and
increasing demand, but also indirectly
because of society getting concerned
about the impacts on its quality of life and
requiring a value to be placed on such
things as our landscape, biodiversity and
climate (For example, Carbon Taxes).
1.Economic
• enabling efficiency from adopting
ICT tools and cloud services for more
flexible and virtual ways of working,
moving from an habitual default
assumption of using physical provisions
such as travel and accommodation,
towards using the internet and cloud
services as the default means for
working and collaborating; use of
physical provisions is coming to be seen
as expensive and therefore only used
in exceptional circumstances where
they would lead to enhanced value;
There are many mantras recited to
realign our thinking such as:
Pillars of sustainability
With information increasingly central to our
organisation’s processes and transactions,
ICT has to be at the heart of providing the
means for reducing their impact across the
three pillars of sustainability.
• e
nvironmental controls such as
smart meters in building and house
management;
• transactions with customers, for example,
UK Government’s ‘digital by default’ initiative;
• more collaborative and faster decision
taking, through:
• electronic conversations through
blogging, for example Yammer;
• information management, for
example Huddle;
• finding people and information or
data, for example LinkedIn, Google;
• electronic meetings, for example
Skype, Hang-out, Webex.
2.Environmental
Taking care to ensure the future provision
of the resources we need by reducing:
• w
aste and hence moving towards a
circular economy that re-uses material
from ‘end of life’ (EoL) assets in new
products and away from consuming
new virgin resources from our
environment; ICT could be used to
track this and be re-usable itself;
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green IT
• consumables,
for example paper;
• energy consumption and carbon
emissions. Again ICT could be
used to measure and help reduce
these further through:
• the improved management
of resources;
• the building of management
systems and controls;
• managing natural resources;
• position tracking;
• sensors;
• control and feedback systems.
3.Social
The social exploitation in our work, rest and play:
• m
ore frequent contact with friends
and families;
• collaboration on projects, games in
and outside work;
• consuming/shopping/exchanging goods
and services;
• exploring and planning for the future;
• enabled by:
• social media tools;
• behaviour change.
ICT and global footprint
With the increasing use and pervasiveness
of ICT assets and services the old two
per cent/98 per cent balance must
surely now be weighed towards ICT
contributing a higher proportion to the
global footprint. The huge energy demands
of data centres and internet switches
on a scale approaching that of cities
and small countries, and the increasing
commoditisation and proliferation of ICT
assets from smartphones, iPADs, laptops,
through switches/routers to servers,
means significant additional demands on
the earth’s resources across the whole ICT
asset lifecycle. With the rising adoption of
cloud services these impacts are being
hidden from the public and organisations.
The debate on ‘Is the Cloud Green’ at
the last Green ICT Specialist Group
AGM highlighted the opportunities for
ICT services to be greener if delivered
through the cloud, with adoption of
international standards and practices
such as those set out in the EU Code of
Conduct. However, it also found that this
was not guaranteed. It depended on:
• the environmental model adopted;
• location determining the carbon
density of energy supply used;
• consumer pressure, for example
the Greenpeace Dirty Data report.
The BCS Data Centre SG has taken
the step of providing a service known
as CEEDA to help CIOs understand
and reduce the environmental
impacts of data centres they use.
Increasing reliance
We must not lose sight of our personal use
and increasing reliance on ICT services
and assets in our daily lives. From
managing our accounts, buying things,
communicating with each other, playing,
using appliances and daily planning
activities, ICT is coming to be indispensable.
So as ICT practitioners and managers
we must continue to focus on the ICT
footprint, but also finding the right
balance between necessary consumption
and resource management.
This is recognised in the UK Greening
government ICT strategy (http://www.
cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/
uk-government-ict-strategy-resources)
with its vision of seeking a cost-effective
and energy efficient ICT estate, fully
exploited with reduced environmental
impacts, to enable new and sustainable
ways of working for staff, organisations
and customers. On the same site you will
also find some of the resources that are
being used across the UK public sector
to manage what is now an extensive
and pervasive green ICT agenda.
The Green ICT SG in the BCS seeks to
develop resources and a community
of interest on these issues,
• b
y engaging with branches through talks
and events;
• by developing training courses (a Green
ICT Foundation certificate is already in
place and being adopted by a number
of ICT training agencies around the
world, (http://www.bcs.org/content/
conWebDoc/34172). It is also looking
to develop an intermediate diploma;
• by looking to use the new tools to
engage more directly with its members
(not only those we have in the UK but
also those from other countries ) in
the year ahead, to share and develop
best practices and exchange views and
experiences of pursuing green ICT.
To join us please go to the
BCS Members website:
http://www.bcs.org/category/10547
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