"Green IT": Save Power, Save Money

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is asking CIOs to do something Jimmy Carter couldn’t convince consumers to do in the 1970s: curb their energy consumption. No, EPA head Christie Todd Whitman isn’t going to don a cardigan and ask CIOs to turn off their extra computers. Instead, the agency is campaigning to get CIOs to save energy and is offering free software that’ll make doing so a cinch.

Monitors and computers represent 1 percent of the country’s electricity use, according to the EPA, but about half of that output is wasted by computers and monitors that are left on overnight or that don’t use the sleep mode feature. Research by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, Calif., reveals that about 70 percent of monitors and 55 percent of computers used by U.S. businesses and government offices are left humming after hours, and that sleep mode has been disabled or is not functioning on 40 percent of monitors and 75 percent of computers. Steve Ryan, the EPA’s Energy Star Project manager, explains that because sleep mode can inadvertently disconnect computers from networks, CIO-types often turn it off, and he suspects some computer manufacturers do so as well to appease customers.

The EPA has posted free software at www.energystar.gov that lets administrators activate sleep mode on all of a network’s monitors in one fell swoop. The agency is focusing on monitors, says Bruce Nordman, a principal research associate at LBNL, for two reasons: Sleep mode does not affect network operations when used on monitors, and it saves more energy when used on monitors than computers?approximately 85 watts per hour compared with about 20 watts per hour.

"The network [can] run smoothly and operate properly while improving [the organization’s] bottom line," says Ryan. The EPA’s suggested practices can save 380,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per year for every 1,000 computers, or roughly $38,000, he says. That $38,000 may not get you far, but it’s a lot better than losing money?Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electrical Power Research Institute estimates California businesses lost $1.7 billion because of last winter’s demand-induced blackouts.

From: CIO.com

Going Green

In different lexicons, "green" means different things. In business terms, we think profits. In environmental terms, sustainability. But today, the term green is just as applicable to dollars as it is to saving the environment. That's because environmental sustainability, once little more than a moral incentive for companies, is now an imperative to doing business. And that means it's an imperative for IT too.

Regardless of environmental impact, data center efficiency is one of the most prominent issues on the CIO's radar right now. Gartner estimates that most large IT orgs spend 5% of their total IT budgets on energy, a figure that could increase by two or three times within the next five years. But while the data center eats away at the green (environmental sustainability and profits alike), it's only one of the environmental challenges facing IT. It's also not the only place IT can have an impact on the company's environmental sustainability.

In fact, Gartner says that the CIO is in a unique position when it comes to environmental initiatives. While carbon emissions from the data center and toxic substances, such as cadmium and lead from e-waste, add to environmental problems, IT also has a chance to have a direct impact on environmental wellbeing. Through limiting those carbon emissions, launching e-cycling initiatives, utilizing virtualization and using BI tools to manage environmental compliance information, for instance, IT is actually in a position to have a huge impact on the overall sustainability of the company.

My new Green IT blog for CIO.com will address the environmental issues facing IT, the reasons why such issues can't be ignored, and how addressing them can actually help your company's bottom line.

What are some of the environmental issues facing your IT department? And what are some of the ways IT is helping environmental sustainability at your company? Let the discussion begin.

From: Cio.com