ALKHOBAR, 1 May 2007 — The global information and communications technology (ICT) industry accounts for approximately two percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation, according to a new estimate by Gartner, Inc. Despite the overall environmental value of IT, Gartner believes this is unsustainable.
Gartner’s estimate of the two percent of global CO2 emissions that ICT is responsible for includes the in-use phase of PCs, servers, cooling, fixed and mobile telephony, local area network (LAN), office telecommunications and printers. Gartner has also included an estimate of the embodied energy (that is used in design, manufacture and distribution) in large-volume devices, namely PCs and cell phones. It also included all commercial and governmental IT and telecommunications infrastructure worldwide, but not consumer electronics other than cell phones and PCs.
Until now, few organizations were concerned about power costs and CO2 emissions, let alone how ICT contributes to global climate change.
“During the next five years, increasing financial, environmental, legislative and risk-related pressures will force IT organizations to get ‘greener’; that is to say, more environmentally sustainable,” said Simon Mingay, research vice president, Gartner. “When enough buyers start demanding it and we get beyond the superficial, being ‘less bad’ will no longer be anywhere near acceptable enough. That point will be reached in 2007 and 2008 for some geographies, particularly Europe, with other countries and regions taking longer.”
According to Gartner, the ICT industry needs to gain a better understanding of the full life cycle of ICT products and services, and innovate to reduce environmental impact. This does not currently happen because of the lack of a commercial or legislative need to do so.
However, Gartner anticipates that buyers will ask more detailed questions about life cycle assessments during the next three years.
“Vendors are being forced to gain a better understanding of the life cycle due to new legislation and directives in countries and regions worldwide, as well as an increasing interest from clients in life cycle assessment,” said Mingay. “The areas for innovation to reduce CO2 emissions are in the reduction of the materiality, energy consumption and use of hazardous substances throughout the life cycle, in addition to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of recycling and the use of recycled materials.”
IT organizations, on the other hand, need to start by familiarizing themselves with existing enterprise environmental objectives and corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies. Gartner recommends IT organizations develop a strategy to address the current negative effects of using ICT. The growth in power requirements and levels of waste that it produces renders the current state unsustainable. Such a strategy would include:
• Start measuring power consumption.
• Consume fewer servers and printers by increasing utilization — virtualize servers.
• Stop over-provisioning; improve capacity planning.
• Improve the efficiency of cooling.
• Turn power management on, use a low power state or turn equipment off after hours.
• Extend the life of assets by reusing within the enterprise and externally.
• Ensure and validate the correct disposition of all electronic equipment.
• Analyze all waste.
Once initiatives are in place to reduce the negative effect of using ICT, Gartner recommends IT leaders develop initiatives that leverage ICT to reduce the enterprise’s overall environmental presence. Examples would include implementing travel-substitution applications or CSR compliance information management.
This will lead to 50 percent of IT organizations declaring an environmental imperative by 2010, and more than one-third of IT organizations having one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria.
