| Does your business take green IT seriously? Well it | | | | offset. |
| should, because ignoring climate change could cost you | | | | As well as giving you more credibility in today's |
| money and harm your credibility. | | | | increasingly enviro-friendly world, taking a few hours to |
| There are now over 1.1 billion computers in operation | | | | review your carbon footprint can lead to some |
| worldwide, collectively producing about one billion | | | | worthwhile cost savings as well. A simple example is |
| tonnes of CO2 through their electricity requirements. | | | | turning off (or hibernating if, like me, you hate rebooting |
| E-waste is serious headache too with computers, | | | | and getting back to where you were each morning) |
| mobile phones and electronic gadgets now accounting | | | | your PC at night. A recent study by Fujitsu estimated |
| for 5% of the world's garbage ( | | | | that the UK alone wastes £123m on electricity |
| But surely small IT companies don't need to be | | | | powering PCs left on out-of-hours. See for general |
| worrying about that kind of thing? Actually, they do - | | | | energy-efficiency tips. |
| there are solid reasons why all businesses should be | | | | Virtually greener |
| going greener, and not just because of the | | | | Carbon offsetting is all good stuff, but when it comes |
| do-gooder's warm fuzzy feelings to be had! Over | | | | to IT power consumption, prevention is better than |
| 70% of PCs will not be recycled when disposed of | | | | cure. Demand for high-availability, centralised server |
| over the next five years, and globally we will dispose | | | | resource is growing relentlessly, and high-density |
| of 512 million. We are now legally obliged to dispose of | | | | computing uses a lot of energy. Even a base-spec 1U |
| PC equipment properly, and that normally incurs | | | | rackmount server will burn 100-200 Watts continuously, |
| charges. Thankfully there is a free and simple, if | | | | and once you fill a few racks and add in cooling |
| underused, alternative; lots of people in the world are in | | | | requirements you are looking at a whopping electricity |
| dire need of our "outdated" computers, so donate | | | | bill! With energy prices doubling every few years |
| them to the likes of For safety, I would suggest you | | | | datacentres' power consumption is fast becoming a |
| scrub your drives first (try dban.sourceforge.net). More | | | | major issue for IT business, and is now the main cost |
| regulation info at | | | | underlying server hosting. |
| Perhaps more importantly, consumers and businesses | | | | The oddity from our perspective is that the vast bulk |
| are increasingly taking note of how the products and | | | | of servers in our datacentres idle most of the time, |
| services they use impact the environment. Memset ( | | | | with perhaps 90% never getting close to full capacity. |
| became the UK's first "carbon neutral" Web host last | | | | While many applications are best hosted on their own |
| Summer and that has definitely helped us win more | | | | dedicated server (better security, for example), few |
| business, which is also probably why so many other | | | | need the full resource of a modern multi-core, |
| dedicated server hosts are following suit. | | | | gigahertz machine. That is where virtualisation comes |
| Carbon offsetting | | | | in; the latest generation of virtual machines, using the |
| Things like travel, electricity usage and product | | | | hardware-assisted virtualisation in new AMD and Intel's |
| manufacture have a "carbon footprint"; the quantity of | | | | chips (eg. are operationally indistinguishable from a |
| greenhouse gases directly or indirectly produced as a | | | | physical server but use 5-20% of the electricity. The |
| result of those activities. Most activities are impossible | | | | reduced power and hardware costs give you |
| to make 100% green, but you can offset the effective | | | | significant savings while not costing anything you |
| carbon impact by investing in carbon sequestration | | | | actually needed in the first place, and at the same time |
| projects (eg. planting trees) or in greener power | | | | you are tackling climate change. |
| generation facilities (eg. wind farms), thus becoming | | | | It can be argued that all such measures are a dribble in |
| "carbon neutral". | | | | the ocean, and some have serious doubts about the |
| Organisations like the CarbonNeutral Company ( and | | | | efficacy of our whole approach to climate change. |
| the Carbon Trust ( can guide you through offsetting, | | | | However, being more climate-friendly is not difficult for |
| and it is neither expensive nor difficult. For example, an | | | | most IT businesses and almost certainly helps, so can |
| average small office with 10 staff might have | | | | you really afford to ignore the risks, or miss out on the |
| equivalent emissions of 20 tonnes CO2/year, which | | | | benefits of going greener? |
| would probably only cost around £200/year to | | | | |