Bored with Green IT or would CRC be more interesting?
Friday, 15 January 2010 15:54.
It seems that the cold weather we have been experiencing recently has helped to focus IT minds on the hot topics for 2010. One of the big debates seems to be around Green IT and its importance to CIO’s plans for this year. Perhaps it is because we are all a little tired of the snow.
For example, Peter Graf of SAP is reported as stating that “I find [green IT] a little bit exaggerated”, www.cio.co.uk "SAP exec says Green IT exaggerated", 12th January 2010.
He is of course right in his basic assertion that IT contributes just 2% of global emissions today (Climate Group, in their “Smart 2020” report). It is also true that there are real benefits in looking at innovative ways for IT to help larger areas of greenhouse gas polluters. I presume he is also suggesting that SAP can help solve these problems!
However, I feel that articles like this are somewhat confusing and missing the real issue confronting CIO’s during 2010.
I firmly believe that the CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment) is the real green IT issue which needs to be urgently addressed. In summary the CRC is the U.K.’s mandatory climate change and energy saving scheme which is due to be introduced in April 2010. That’s just three months away, and our research shows that a lot of IT managers are either not aware of it or believe that it is a “facilities or building management” issue and therefore not their problem.
The Government has identified that it will affect approximately 5,000 public and private organisations whose electricity consumption exceeds 6,000 megawatt hours during 2008, www.decc.gov.uk.
In layman’s terms, that equates to annual electricity bill of around £500,000 per annum. Most CIO’s who run large operations know that there are many data centres which are consuming many more megawatts than this during a year. Indeed many data centres will be costing many hundreds of thousands more than this per annum. As a result, it will be very much an IT issue to deal with and the date of April 2010 is fast approaching!
All of the 5,000 public and private bodies identified will need to register into the scheme by April 2010, as it is a legal requirement. Failure to do so will face financial and other penalties including “naming and shaming” and possible criminal proceedings against directors and officers of the offending organisations.
Intergence is currently conducting research on how to measure power consumption more effectively and to use this information to help customers meet their CRC obligations. We will be running a number of seminars in the next few weeks to help clients understand what the legal and IT implications will be. Please bookmark our site at www.intergence.com/about-intergence/events to learn more about the next seminar.
Useful Links:
www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/lc_uk/crc
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