Sustainability in ICT - a brief study

Sustainability by ICT
Radhakrishnan Gopal
Senior ICT & ELV engineer
Aecom, AUH
15 Dec 2015

• The images are from Google and other web sites. Whilst some of the owners of the images and contents
were contacted for permission, others there were no response or missed in asking permission. The images
are taken purely for educational purpose and for illustration. We will acknowledge the images at the
earliest opportunity.

Sustainability in ICT design
“The heart of the concept is the principle that the way society conducts
its affairs should be in the best interests of the environment as a whole,
and that the world we leave to our children should be at least as healthy
and as fair as the one we inherited.”

“There are many ways to reduce our
carbon footprint at every stage of the
ICT product and service lifecycle.”
A sustainable ICT System is designed ,
installed , operated , maintained ,
rehabilitated, and reused/recycled
with an emphasis throughout its life
emphasis throughout its life -cycle on
using cycle on using natural resources
efficiently and preserving the global
environment. the global environment.

• 2% of global carbon emissions come from the manufacture
and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
• 98% do not.
• Is ICT part of the problem… … or part of the solution?

What is carbon emission?
“Carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere,
produced by vehicles and industrial processes.”

What is carbon foot print?
A carbon footprint is defined as: The
total amount of greenhouse gases
produced to directly and indirectly
support human activities, usually
expressed in equivalent tons
of carbon dioxide (CO2)
The term carbon footprint, therefore,
is a shorthand to describe the best
estimate that we can get of the full
climate change impact

World carbon foot print:
( Courtesy: Google carbon emissions interactive map)

Why we should consider
sustainability?
• Involves the three
spheres
• Being sustainable saves
money
• Leave a better place for
our children

How much energy does ICT use?
• ICT equipment accounts for 10% of the
a country's electricity consumption
• Non-domestic energy consumption
from ICT equipment rose by 70% from
2000 – 2006; forecast growth 40% by
2020
• Data centers account for quarter of the
ICT sector’s emissions. Annual
electricity cost of $7.4 billion in 2011.
• More than 60% of ICT departments
use less than half their server storage
space

How much energy does ICT use? Some
facts:
• 30% of the overall energy consumed by
PCs is wasted by being left on when not
in use
• 1,000 PCs running 24/7 cost around
£70,000 in electricity over a year
• A third of employees in the UK don’t
switch off their PCs when they leave the
office at the end of the day, costing the
UK £123 million a year in electricity
• If all UK businesses shut down their
computers when not in use, it would
contribute 10% of the Government’s
Climate Change Levy target and 40% of
the energy efficiency targets set by the
Carbon Trust
• Less social network, more social future

Did You Know?
• It is estimated that a medium-sized
server has roughly the same annual
carbon footprint as an SUV vehicle
doing 15 miles per gallon, covering
15,000 km
• According to Forrester Research a
data centre with 1000 servers will use
enough electricity in a single month
to power 16,800 homes for a year
• A significant proportion of lifetime
carbon emission of ICT equipment is
in its manufacture. The manufacture
of one PC requires about 1.7 tonnes
of raw materials and water, and
consumes over ten times the
computer’s weight in fossil fuels.

ICT is part of the solution.
ICT could deliver a 15% reduction in global CO2 by 2020,
delivering a cost saving in fuel, energy and the
cost of carbon of over a trillion dollars

Standards
• TIA, ANSI/TIA-4994, Standard for Sustainable Information Communications
Technology,
• First-of-its-kind industry benchmark for sustainable energy and materials
• Practices related to low voltage ICT systems.
• The standard establishes a five-phase approach:
– Planning,
– implementing
– measuring the sustainability impact of an ICT project
– setting a clear benchmark for sustainable energy and materials practices.
• It applies to most building technology systems such as:
– video surveillance,
– servers
– Telephones
– energy consumption
– heat loads
– The result is higher performance criteria for achieving sustainability.

Questions to ask when our organization is considering a new ICT
investment.
• Raw minerals extracted with minimal impact to the environment
and biodiversity?
• Products’ components, are recycled?
• Travel long distances? Airplane or Sea or rail
• Weigh less than competitor or legacy products
• Product use less power than competitor or legacy products
• Fewer raw materials used
• Product rely less on rare or precious raw materials
• Manufacturing process consider water use and to conserve or
reuse water
• Do the products meet environmental requirements under law
• Reduce or eliminate hazardous substances used in the product
beyond legislative or guideline requirements?
• Products registered /rated against an environmental system
• Any inbuilt power-saving technology
• Fully recyclable or reusable?
• Components go to landfill at the end of the product’s life
• Does the vendor use compact, reusable and recyclable packaging
• Can the vendor demonstrate its credentials against the factors
above

Reducing environmental impact during the use
phase:
• Typical Energy Consumption (TEC): KWh/year.
• Size and weight: smaller, lighter option.
Virtualized and blade servers
• Resilience and supportability: Long life, low
failure rates. demand for spare parts, support
service.
• Thin client infrastructure: Thin client solution,
Hot-desking, cooling, environmental impact.
• Remote management: manage remotely
• Power management toolsets: idle / shut down
automatically).
• Inbuilt power management settings: Sleep
mode
• Printers and paper consumption: reduce the
number of printers, Duplex printing
• Retire or reuse servers or port their hosted
applications to a virtualized environment

Improving the energy efficiency of data centers – avoid wastage
• Cloud adoption increasing the demand for data center infrastructure
• Need to improve energy efficiency
• Driven by the need to reduce costs
• Also by encouragement from industry trade bodies (notably The Green Grid) and environmental pressure
groups such as Greenpeace.
• ICT systems may consume only 50% of a data center’s total energy – this equates to a Power Usage
Effectiveness (PUE) of 2.0.
• Modern data centers PUE ratings of 1.5 or less
• Cooling equipment can account for more than half of non-ICT power consumption

Questions to consider while designing and possibly ask the client
Service level management
• Do service levels include energy-reduction and carbon-emission commitments and drive behavioral change?
• Are there two-way commitments to sustainability between the ICT service provider and you as the customer?
Configuration management
• Are existing assets being ‘sweated’ enough (that is, used for as long as possible)?
• Are cradle-to-grave decisions supported (that is, from purchase through to disposal and refresh)?
• Does the configuration management database contain information to prepare sustainability reports
Capacity management
• Possible to avoid implementing short-term ‘Band-Aid’ solutions to the infrastructure
Availability management
• Are the services required all of the time
• Can we track relevant trends to suggest improvements to the service and/or ICT infrastructure
Problem management
• Does the processes support the quick identification of potential problems
Change management
• Are the environmental impacts of planned changes assessed as standard?
• Are those responsible for change empowered to make decisions with a mandate to reduce sustainability impact
(and potentially cost)?
Incident management
• Is the service desk needed 24/7?
• ‘first-time fixes’, minimizing the need for multiple engineering visits
IT service continuity
• Does the service consider energy efficiency? (
Financial management
• Can the ICT element of power and water bills be separated?

What's at stake: Opportunities:
According to the Climate Group, the carbon footprint of the ICT
• Sector is predicted to increase by 75% by 2020
• Use of ICT could contribute a reduction in carbon emissions by 5
times
• Identified opportunities
• “Dematerialization” – swapping high carbon activities with low
carbon alternatives
• e-billing instead of paper billing,
• teleconferencing instead of travelling to meetings
• e-media instead of producing CDs or newspapers
• “Smart motors” , energy used by production lines /being on or off.
• “Smart logistics” better coordination, communication
• “Smart buildings”, occupancy based lighting, heating solutions,
capture sunlight, shades
• “Smart grids” , avoid transmission loss, smart meters with
interactive real-time energy management, displays

Accountability - What to Measure?
Desktop end user environment
– Desktops
– Laptops
– Monitors
– Thin Clients
– Printers
– Multi-Functional Devices
Telecommunication and networking
– Routers
– Wireless devices
– Boosters
Data Centre
– Servers
– Storage Drives
– Any telecoms equipment housed within the data
centre
– Switch gears
– Cooling, lighting and other facilities
– Backup power supplies

Data Centre Optimization: Some tips
• Optimizing data centre operations can include:
• Repairs to air conditioning units and floor tiles,
• increasing the temperature setting by a degree or two
• Periodic cleaning of the data centre to reduce dust and
debris
• Improvements to the operation of the data centre
facilities
• The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centers was launched in
November 2008 outlines the best practices
• The Code of Conduct is a voluntary initiative that
organizations can sign up to
• The Best Practice Guidelines and the Reporting Form are
excellent tools
• The Uptime Institute estimates that the three-year
operating cost of powering and cooling servers is
• currently one and a half times the capital expense of
purchasing the server hardware
• ( £500 purchasing cost, is actually £1250 in the TCO over a
typical three year lifecycle)

Green ICT Procurement
• checking suppliers’ green credentials, with the
aim of limiting the environmental impact of
purchases.
• Ask potential suppliers to explain how their
products are:
– less toxic,
– conserve natural resources,
– are designed to encourage recycling and
reduce waste
– minimize packaging and shipping
– ask for evidence on how they do it.
• Green Electronics Councils, Electronic Product
Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) -
Certification programme to help institutions
buy the greenest computers and monitors
possible.
• Energy Star rate energy efficiency. Helps
towards a uniform set of standards in the ICT
and CE industries
• But still only a voluntary scheme

Greenwash
• Greenwash is the practice of making
false, misleading and/or deceptive
claims about the environmental
practices of a company or the
environmental attributes of its goods
and/ or services.
• This includes environmental claims
that are inaccurate, vague, irrelevant
or false or
• Greenwash can lead to the
continuation of negative
environmental practices, despite
purchasers thinking they are doing
the right thing by the environment

How do I avoid being greenwashed?
• Having a basic understanding of what the main environmental
impacts are for the goods or services
• Are the goods made from virgin material
• Are the goods going to use energy or water when in operation
• Might they contain toxic substances
• Will they be expensive to dispose of when no longer required
• Making sure we identify which trusted certifications, standards and
ecolabels
• Maintaining an ongoing discussion with suppliers to ensure they
understand that you are serious
• about purchasing genuine green goods and services
• Being wary of supplier claims that are not supported by evidence or
are vague, for example ‘environmentally friendly’, ‘low carbon’ or
‘natural’
• Updating our knowledge to keep up with green goods and services
developments

COP21: What does the Paris climate agreement mean for me?
Endorphin disruption?

Sustainability in ICT - a brief study

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (20)

Similaire à Sustainability in ICT - a brief study

Similaire à Sustainability in ICT - a brief study (20)

Sustainability in ICT - a brief study