Green IT Saving the Earth

For the past decades and eras, humans have created technologies to make life simpler and easier – yet there’s always consequences we have to pay. Technology is one of the biggest factors why our only home is “damaged”. Just like humans, the Earth can get sick! We need to act fast before it gets worse by using The Green IT Revolution. But how do we use IT to make things better since IT is the one that created all the pollution?

Living in a digital world we used to send or receive email, text, photos, and videos with everyone. But have you ever thought that every 65 emails we send produces pollution such as driving a car for 1 km. The giant servers we were using are also operating 24/7, it’s working with no rest and causing carbon emission. The company’s technology generates significant emissions, mainly due to the use of electricity for the company’s IT operations. Still, the biggest cause of carbon is end-user devices, not local data centers. End-user devices are laptops, tablets, smartphones and printers that generate 1.5 to 2.0 times more carbon globally than data centers. These carbon emissions can cause global warming and climate change!

Companies and governments are raising their hopes on IT to stop climate change. Based on the Enterprise Technology Emissions Analysis conducted by McKinsey, it was found that when it comes to going green, many CIOs (Chief Information Officers) think in terms of the investment required to replace items or upgrade facilities. However, many CIOs can derive significant carbon benefits without making significant investments, even saving companies money in some cases. There are 3 steps to prepare the organization for a long-term effort towards the “Green IT Revolution” :

• New sourcing strategy : The quickest way to reduce carbon emission is to revise policies for sourcing technology. By optimizing the number of devices, for example; Company has one printer for every 16 people in the workplace, while other companies usually have one printer per 8 people. As the rollout of 5G, increasingly advanced processing and computing power allows all the key processing functions happening on the server. Therefore, the end-user devices can be reduced and consume much less energy.

• Setting green ROI metrics for technology costs : Any real progress in green technology can only happen when companies measure their “green returns.” The current state of affairs is that most green metrics eliminate costs and savings, which in turn make them impractical. A better metric focuses on the cost per ton of carbon stored. Advanced models calculate emissions throughout the full life cycle, including production, transportation, and disposal. 

• Implementing a green measurement system : Companies track real-time computer and network usage for applications in the cloud. This kind of measurement system ensures that CIOs know what is working and what is not, so they can adjust quickly. Implementing green measures can be a challenge. Some companies have spent a year measuring their carbon footprints, ending up with outdated analyzes. CIOs can make substantial progress by prioritizing the measurements where impact is highest, such as tracking the number of end-user devices purchased and used, the current duration of use for each device, and the device-per-user ratio.

Furthermore, low-cost, high-impact actions can be taken including optimizing the computing needs of business travel and data centers, and increasing the use of the cloud to manage workloads. Structural improvements in the data center and optimized layouts can help, but their impact is limited, and many companies are already implementing them. More “aggressive” measures, such as moving data centers to cooler locations or investing in new cooling technology are very expensive. More effective is migrating workloads to the cloud. With prudent migration optimized use of Cloud Computing, enterprises can reduce carbon emissions from their data centers by more than 55 percent, or about 40 megatonnes of CO2E worldwide, equivalent to the total carbon emissions in Switzerland.

Combating climate change effectively will not come through one or two major wins. To have real impact, companies and governments need to act on many fronts. BIGIT is helping the companies to get profit, also opening a new opportunity to help your organization to get rid of the carbon emission that is damaging the environment. IT is just not about money and business, but keeping the balance with society and environment!