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There are potentially hundreds, if not thousands of ways in which we can reduce ICT's consumption of energy - we just don't have the mechanism to capture this innovation, quantify its environmental benefit and share it with corporate Australia.
One of the areas of focus for my role at Dimension Data is Green IT, and in that capacity I have attended or spoken at a number of ICT and climate change conferences over the past 12 months. At these events I've found that there is always at least one amazing green concept or innovation presented - but once the conference is over, what happens to those ideas?
Last month, I participated in a media roundtable together with other industry representatives. One of the speakers was John Maunder, CIO at the South Australian Department of Transport, Energy & Infrastructure who presented a range of lateral ideas on ways in which his department's ICT infrastructure can contribute to reducing our impact on the environment. John spoke about the idea of enabling Wi-Fi access on public transport to make it a more attractive option to commuters and thereby increase utilisation. He also explained how traffic flow systems can be applied intelligently to ensure that peak hour traffic is kept moving, reducing the time that vehicles spend on the road emitting carbon.
In the past, IT departments never saw the power bill - all this has now changed, and well-proven technologies are being marshalled to address the issue of cost and carbon.
Australian businesses are a pragmatic lot. They are focused on either making money or saving money - and always doing what they can with what they have.
The Green push of late tends to manifest itself for Australian businesses in the practicalities of a) running out of power b) running out of space and c) recognising the cost of power from a dollar and carbon perspective.
IT Storage consumes over 30% of the power required in a typical data centre, and is the fastest growing IT infrastructure element as our world thrives on data. This puts it right into the cross-hairs of consideration when discussing power consumption and carbon overhead.
In the last 18 months, I have seen a distinct shift in customer thinking and focus around technologies that can provide tangible cost savings in these areas. For example, the use of "thin provisioning" to reduce physical storage consumption has become a mandatory requirement for new storage footprint.
Whatever course we adopt, it will cost.
I make the following proposals for laws and expenditure to meet the menace of global warming brought on by the burning of coal and oil:
1. Postpone the introduction of carbon trading until after the next Federal election. We need more time for the formation of a public consensus and sound community support for meaningful action, for something more than mere soft support for laws that will keep the government in office. The political imperative may well lie elsewhere.
2. Side by side with a licensing and carbon trading regime, we need taxes of the nature of ground rent of mine sites and of an excise on coal produced for use, or for domestic and export markets.
3. The government proposes to reduce the excise now levied on some petroleum based fuel consumption. This is not enough. We should impose an equal excise on all fuel used in all categories of consumption, and not least on those now exempt as well as add in a tax on coal. All excise rates should be set upon a basis of thermal or carbon equivalents.
By Philip Siefert
A large organisation can replace upwards of 20,000 round-trip, short-haul flights annually with video meetings, saving 2,200 tons of CO2 from being released into the environment.
For companies to "go green," they need solutions that positively impact the environment without raising costs or sacrificing productivity.
However, to make an impact, we all need to take personal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The longer we wait the more difficult it is going to be. The point is to get started doing something now. So I say, accept that this rebellion is real and realise that the time for taking action on global warming is not tomorrow, not even today, but this very minute.
The key to engaging enterprises in this endeavour is to identify CO2 reduction programs that do not raise costs or sacrifice productivity. It is possible to be environmentally responsible and stay competitive, without breaking the bank. Companies must be presented though with workable steps that they can take today to reduce their carbon footprint.
Our answer to this question will shape many other considerations.
Australia has strong ties with the global economy. At the moment neither Australia nor the global economy are ecologically sustainable. Global warming is a key indicator; there are others.
To a significant extent economic increase drives environmental deterioration - at least in the affluent parts of the world. This is because economic increase is based on increasing the production and consumption of material goods, which currently involves increasing CO2 emissions and industrial toxins.
Thus it would appear that in our present industrial civilisation economic increase and environmental sustainability are incompatible. This might be called The Great Contradiction.
Below I will show some graphs from Prof Will Steffen (ANU) showing the correlation between economic increase, population growth and increase in global economic activity...
By Bill Gates
We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
Thirty years, twenty years, ten years ago, my focus was totally on how the magic of software could change the world. I believed that breakthroughs in technology could solve key problems. And they do, increasingly, for billions of people. But breakthroughs change lives primarily where people can afford to buy them, only where there is economic demand, and economic demand is not the same as economic need.
There are billions of people who need the great inventions of the computer age, and many more basic needs as well, but they have no way of expressing their needs in ways that matter to the market, so they go without.
If we are going to have a chance of changing their lives, we will need another level of innovation. Not just technology innovation, we need system innovation.
