7 Ways to Green Your IT Department
7. IT Power Usage – Find out how much energy you are using by checking your bill. If you don’t pay your electrical bill, as many businesses do not directly, find your facilities manager and take a look at it. Once you’ve taken some steps to reduce your power use, have another look at the bill again. Simply, seeing the impacts of your efforts will help you maintain your momentum toward reducing power use. Not only that, but you have some solid numbers to show your boss at your next performance review.
6. Utilising New Technology – As you continue to turn your IT department, consider where you can implement green ideas and technologies. Green hosting, either Carbon Free or Caron Neutral green hosting is a fantastic and cost effective way to turn your website green and reduce your Carbon footprint. You may not need to replace clients or servers now, but think about what you need and when the day does come to buy replacements, plan to buy the replacements that use less energy than what you have now.
5. Computer System Settings -- The quickest, easiest change you can make won’t cost you a thing. Simply set your clients’ power saving settings to turn off their monitors and computers after a certain time. Better yet, teach your workers that those power buttons on the front of their monitors can be pressed anytime. If they’re not using the computer, simply turn off the monitor.
4. Datacentre Check – Make sure your data centre is organized as logically as possible. Make sure you have racks of equipment set up with the cool aisle/hot aisle model. This ensures that racks of equipment aren’t using the exhaust from the rack in front of it for cooling. Also, if you have it in you, make sure the cables underneath the floor are laid out in a neat manner. This ensures that air can flow under the equipment and provides some measure of cooling you don’t have to pay for.
3. General Recycling – Recycling stretches further than just reusing paper or using the recycling bin. When you get rid of old or damaged equipment, make sure that you send it to a reputable recycler - don't just dump it outside with the rubbish! Before recycling externally, check if you can use your old equipment within the office. If it can still be used in your organisation, do it. That is, maybe you have an old printer you’re replacing, but if there is a function the printer can perform – even if it isn’t what you initially intended it for – use it there. You save yourself the money of buying new equipment and self-cycling cuts out the recycling issue.
2. Paperless office – You can save plenty of cash each year by turning your office paperless. This means storing your information online. There are very secure sites and servers that can accommodate sensitive information. It is estimated that the average document is copied nine to 11 times at a cost of about £18. To file a document, it cost £17. Even worse, the cost to retrieve a misfiled document is £104. Also, if you maintain all your files online, you can retrieve them from anywhere.
1. Thin clients – If you consider thin clients, you may only need to update the physical memory on old clients and they will be perfect to use in a new server/thin client plan. This allows you to re-purpose old clients. You don’t need to worry about recycling the old machines and it fits into our #1 green IT tip:
Green IT is vital now more than ever. With most of the Carbon emissions from businesses coming from IT, it needs to be top of every company's list. You may not care about baby seals or deforestation or any environmental issues. That's a personal prerogative but you can’t deny that cheaper power bills will help you in the long run. To go green you don’t have to jump in with both feet, just make some easy changes and start greening your office today.
Green Hosting - The Facts
The definition: Green web hosting or Eco-friendly website hosting is anaddition to the arena of website hosting which involves a given green website hosting company showing that they are not having any negative impact on the environment in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. The two main options for green web hosting are Carbon Neutral and Carbon Free web hosting. The difference is that Carbon Neutral uses a Carbon offsetting system to balance the carbon emissions used to provide the green web hosting while Carbon Free web hosting uses leaves no carbon footprint at all.
The figures: World Internet usage statistics showed figures that the Internet is growing from 400 to 1000% every year, worldwide. The raw fact is that the total electricity bill to operate and run servers and related infrastructure equipment was £5.8 billion worldwide*. In 2007, Internet organisation, WebHostingCompare.org predicted that by 2020 the hosting industry would be on a par with the aviation industry in terms of carbon emissions. Other sources beleive we are a lot closer to that comparison already. Datacentremanagement.com believes data centres contribute the largest single proportion of energy use and carbon emissions from the IT sector. Data centres account for a quarter of IT-related carbon emissions, which in turn make up 2% of the world’s total carbon emissions. With so much demand on resources, eco-friendly or green web hosting services has emerged as a necessity.
*Article: Data Center Energy Consumption Has Doubled Since 2000, dated 2.15.07
Data Centre's account for over 25% of global ICT CO2 emissions
Data centres that require energy to run servers and provide cooling account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from information and communications technology (ICT), according to Gartner.
Not enough attention has been paid to reducing the data centre’s carbon emissions and it's the fastest growing area within the IT industry. With more and more websites going live every day, the rise in hosting needs is ever increasing. Organisations should aim to keep their data centre CO2 emissions constant but this is easier said than done. This all illustrates the need for green hosting, carbon free and carbon neutral services to help reduce your carbon emissions.
Data centres account for such a large portion of ICT CO2 emissions for a number of reasons. There is a lack of floor-space, a failure to house high-density servers and increased power consumption and heat generation. In addition, the cooling systems are adding to the problem.
Most organisations have grown their infrastructure (servers, storage and networks) considerably during the past three years. While the volume growth of these machines is set to rise annually for the next five years, a general lack of new data centre builds during the past nine years means that quality data-centre floor space is limited. The importance of more green data centres and green hosting is more and more crucial.
The Damage of Data Centres
According to recent reports from Gartner, the 'IT Professional's best first source for addressing virtually any IT issue', data centres account for approximately a quarter of the entire IT industry carbon emissions with PCs and monitors account for 40 per cent of all output.
This figure only further backs up the need for green IT solutions including green hosting and stricter guidelines on how to green up a typical office.
The 25% figure is unfortunately not standing still and the damaging effect of data centres is rapidly rising as virtualisation and growing data processing becomes ever more vital. The World Wide Web, it's online companies, it's hosting and it's information is steadily growing. With the Internet expanding at an alarming rate we can expect that 25% to rise dramatically.
In January 2007, an Internet monitoring company called Netcraft has tracked Web growth since 1995, reported that there were 106,875,138 Web sites with domain names and content on them in 2007, compared to just 18,000 Web sites in August 1995. There are now, in 2009, over 162,000,000 (million) sites and every site has to be hosted and stored and powered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
"Data centres account for such a large portion of ICT CO2 emissions for three main reasons," said Rakesh Kumar, a research vice president at Gartner.
"There is a lack of floor space, a failure to house high-density servers and increased power consumption and heat generation. These three issues will affect the cost of running a data centres."
It is estimated that microprocessor energy consumption alone will double within the next 10 years. Hardware such as PCs and monitors are making leaps and bounds to cut their energy consumption but data centres are slower on the up take. Iceland is starting to develop something with energy efficient data centres and their is development in greener battery power. Carbon Free hosting centres are needed in mass and are we to reduce IT emission figures, they are needed fast.
Green Hosting in Iceland
Lurking behind all the large internet companies lies huge and never ending data centres full of energy guzzling servers running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The energy used to power the servers themselves is one thing, the system needed to cool them is another Put the 2 together and you end up with one environmentally damaging monstrosity. The solution may lie with Iceland’s cool climate and cold water rush the could help reduce the energy levels needed for cooling. A green hosting centre for websites who want to go green and reduce their carbon footprint.
On a global scale, the Data Centre industry has a genuine need for a cleaner, greener energy solution that not only reduces carbon emissions but reduces cost. Iceland's new announcement of a green data centre to provide green hosting may hold the key. When you consider that distributing 10 megabytes of information uses the energy equivalent of burning 900 grams of coal, a green hosting solution and an environmental data centre is well overdue.
"The data centre industry now is on par with the airline industry as far as the carbon footprint,"
"But, if you think about the growth of those two industries, the growth of the data centre industry is exponentially greater than the airline industry.
"The two are going to cross and we think that - just like the legislation that was passed in the UK concerning carbon footprint and power utilisation - it is going to be a growing concern across the industry."
- Jeff Monroe, CEO of Verne Global
The first site for the green data centre is on the outskirts of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik. Verne Global is responsible for building this green data centre on a former NATO military base in southwest Iceland next to the Keflavik International Airport.
Energy costs are continuously fluctuating and going up more than down, and data centres consuming a large amount of energy there is a core need in the market for a green innovation solution that reduces energy and offers a green hosting solution.
Iceland’s natural environment and it’s volcanic forces have also gifted the country large amounts of geothermal power - 100% of the country's electricity is renewable and more or less carbon free, much of that green energy comes from water heated below ground.
The advantage of a company moving its data centre to Iceland would be a green hosting and environmentally cleaner solution to data centres and a heavily reduced carbon emissions. The end result is a cooler climate producing an endless supply of green energy. Green Carbon Free hosting for websites, green carbon free servers supplying cleaner energy and a natural resource cooling system. The future of green data centres looks to be Iceland.
The IT Issue to be included in the expanded CDM
Within a corporate environment, the IT department is one of the big offenders. To battle this, the IT industry will be brought up in the forthcoming draft climate treaty at next month's UN summit in Copenhagen, thanks to a successful lobbying campaign from the international body The International Telecommunications Union, regulators of the IT and telecommunications industry.
The main goal being to reduce Carbon emissions with the IT sector and to involve the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offsetting scheme.
Ways to reduce carbon emissions with the IT sector include general green practices such as eliminating your screen saver and switching off your computer to having your website hosted using carbon free web hosting or carbon neutral web hosting and using energy saving power sources.
