Text 8 More Silicon, Less Carbon

“Please consider the environment before printing this message”. Those words, appearing at the bottom of many e-mails, are a visible manifes­tation of a trend that will gather momentum in 2009: the move towards more environmen­tally friendly information technology, or “green it”. Advertisements for pcs already tout their meagre energy con­sumption just as prominently as their number-crunching prowess.

Overall, computing and telecom­munications today produce 2% of glo­bal emissions, according to the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (Gesi), an in­dustry group. Of these, 49% come from pcs and printers, 37% from telecoms networks and devices, and 14% from data centres – the large warehouses full of computers operated by companies.

The overall volume of emissions is comparable with that from aviation. But the it industry, unlike aviation, has not provoked the wrath of environ­mental campaigners. Perhaps that is because computers are less visibly polluting, or their use is not deemed, like air travel, to be frivolous and unnecessary.

The aviation industry has found itself on the defen­sive, emphasising its efforts to switch to less fuel-hungry aircraft in the coming years. Makers of computer and telecoms gear, by contrast, have chosen to highlight the volume of emissions their machines produce, because they already have newer, greener products to sell today. New processing chips, clever software that lets one machine do the work of many, and smarter cooling systems can all reduce energy consumption and thus carbon-dioxide emissions.

For vendors, in other words, the large environmen­tal footprint of computing presents a sales opportunity. That is one reason why the hubbub about green it will increase in 2009.

A second reason is that companies like to tell every­one about their efforts to reduce their own carbon emissions, and technology is a relatively easy place to start. Hardly a week goes by without a large company announcing that it has just installed fancy new videoconferencing suites to reduce its carbon footprint. вSkyв, a British satellite-television and telecoms operator, was one of the first companies to go carbon-neutral by reducing its emissions as much as possible (by programming its set-top boxes to switch themselves to standby when not in use, for example), and offsetting the rest. Vodafone, a mobile-telecoms giant, has been turning down the air-conditioning in its base-stations, which accounts for a quarter of its car­bon footprint. Allowing the base-stations to operate at 25 °C instead of 21 °C can cut energy use by 10% in some cases, and newer base-stations can happily run at 35 °C. This will, the company says, help it to meet its target of cutting its emissions by 50% between 2006 and 2020. Expect more such announcements, in particu­lar from telecoms and financial-services firms, since a large part of their carbon footprints is associated with computers and networks.

Green it is also being pushed for a third reason: the computer industry's desire to stay in the limelight. It has become apparent that clean technol­ogy will be the “next big thing” as the internet becomes pervasive and, cor­respondingly, less exciting. Venture capitalists and executives have been jumping from computing to clean-tech companies. Pro­moting computing itself as a clean technology may help those left behind to convince themselves that their field is still at the cutting edge.