Environmental impact of Computers & the IT Industry
Environmental Impact IT Industry
Although the technology involved in the survey is quite extensive – all computers, office IT equipment, servers, mobile and fixed telephony etc, the report suggests that the combined contribution is 2% of global CO2 emissions – about the same as the airline industry.
The airline industry is an obvious object of blame, with travellers being encouraged to find alternative means of transport, or if travelling by air, to offset the emissions of their journey, but there are far fewer concerned voices being heard discussing this issue.
Some practical measures detailed within the article to help reduce this include:
- Become aware of and start measuring power consumption of your IT devices
- To use fewer servers and printers by increasing utilization – virtualizing servers (More info on virtualizing servers here…)
- To stop over-privsioning – plan capacity requirements more efficiently
- Improve the efficiency of cooling – wasting energy with servers overheating, then wasting this energy by cooling with expensive and high energy air conditioning
- To use the power managemement features on devices, and to turn power off when devices are not in use
- Extend the life of hardware assetts by re-using within the business, or to pass on to be used outside of the business after use
- Ensure and validate the correct disposition of all electrical equipment ensuring no energy is being wasted un-necessarily
- Become aware of and analyze all waste
A connected article was published in The Times of London, detailing the estimated environmental cost of Google searches. Estimated, because no one is quite sure of the size of Google operations for commercial reasons.
It’s important to be aware that all of our actions have an impact int his world, whether it be good, bad or indifferent – even just cruising around on the web…
