Importance of Green IT and Sustainability - Term Paper Example

Green IT and Sustainability Name Institution Date Question 3 The word “sustainability” is thrown around a lot in the IT sector. Explain the importance of green IT and sustainability. Green IT and Sustainability Introduction Over the past few decades, “Green IT” has continued to be used to refer to a field at the juncture of two trends. First, individuals have become more concerned about issues that surround their environment across many human communities. Secondly, there has been an increase over the years of the use of digital devices and the techniques for manipulation of information and social phenomena surrounding these systems (Tomlinson, 2010). Importance of Green IT and Sustainability Green IT has been centre of discussion in recent years all over the world. Organizations all over the world are becoming more concerned and increasing their awareness of their sustainability and ecological responsibility (Sharma & Singh, 2013). At the same time, sustainability efforts continue to advocate for development of technologies that are friendly to the environment. Recent research works carried out by Gartner, have revealed the increasing concern among businesses, investors and other interested parties across different sectors of the economy in India regarding green IT and sustainability (Sharma & Singh, 2013). According to the study, India was set to spend about US$ 45 billion on initiatives that address issues surrounding green IT and sustainability in 2013; this figure projected to rise to about US$ 70 billion by 2015. With the rising interests drawn towards this subject all over the world, this paper investigates green IT and sustainability associated with it, focusing on the benefits gained by embracing these strategies. In the past, IT design and development was carried out and their implementation done without considerations of the environmental implications. The growing concerns, however, have closely liked green IT consideration and organizational sustainability through development of savvy technologies. Sustainability is now considered to be a significant part of organizational competitive and strategic positioning. It is continuing to drive fundamental shifts within the competitive landscape and creating game-changing opportunities. This has been the reason why organizations have advanced from unfocused investments towards sustainability strategies consistently aligned with core business activities. As Funk (2003) claims, empirical evidence reveal a positive relationship between organizational performance and corporate responsibility. Fuchs (2008) discusses some of the major concerns that surround ICT and sustainability. The author states that telework has been associated with reduced travel around the world and as a result led to reduced pollution of the environment. Again, the information economy is weightless and greatly dematerialised leading to reduced environmental impacts. IT infrastructures require lower energy and resource intensities as compared to the total economy demands. Other interested parties have also alluded that IT allows for savings in resources, energy as well as transport savings. Concerns have, however, remained with regard to burning of digital music on CDs and DVDs, and printing of books and other digital articles, which have been liked to increase in new material and energy impacts around the world. Schäfer (2013) says that the IT sector accounts for about 2% of human greenhouse gas emissions. The author also mentions that IT continues to grow and is at the centre of several economies of the world. While the industry grows, Schafer raises the need to reduce the amount of emissions from the sector, adding that green IT and sustainability is becoming dominant in the sector. Organizations now seek to find out whether or not devices are manufactured in a manner that is eco-friendly, energy efficient, recyclable or whether they have long lifecycles. These concerns are driving manufacturing towards use of materials that are good to the environment and those that consume little energy. With the improved, longer lasting devices, users can now benefit from cash savings due to the reduced need to replace devices (Schäfer, 2013). Technologies like cloud computing have been extensively used to achieve some of the objectives within green IT and sustainability. Energy savings have been realised through cloud computing since functions and programmes can be outsourced to service providers over the internet. Information sharing has therefore been made easier through this technology so that users can only posses smaller and in some cases completely mobile devices that require small energies to handle large volumes of data (Schäfer, 2013). IT advancements have again resulted to creation and use of virtual spaces that has presented new opportunities for digital sharing. Through these resources, video conferencing programmes and even new ideas can be accessed without the need for individuals to take flights or travel for meetings. These technologies have promoted climate-friendliness by shifting meetings and discussions to everyone’s desk. More energy saving is realised when such meetings through online services are done using modern LCD screens and laptops as opposed to traditional CRT monitors which have a particularly high energy consumption. In the spirit of promoting green IT, there exists a range of various electrical sockets that have on-off switches that have been deployed when electronic devices are used for longer periods (Schäfer, 2013). Manufacturers, users and other stakeholder of the IT sector are getting increasingly aware of particular design and manufacturing considerations that have been seen as unsustainable. Damaging materials used in the manufacture of IT components include batteries in mobile phones which are known to contain metals like lithium or cadmium. The quarrying and processing of the ores of these metals is lengthy and expensive and has caused significant environmental disruptions. Other toxic metals like lead have been used in the manufacture of devices like the CRT, presenting serious health threats to users given that disposal of these devices may not be done in the right way in several countries around the world (EITO, 2002). The manufacturing processes have also been hugely resource intensive. A study in the US revealed that production of the average computer chip would require about 45.46 litres of water. Between 4.5 million litres and 13.5 million litters of water was also found to be used in a chip plant every day. In another study by the European Union, it was found that production of a personal computer which included production of the material, manufacturing and distribution of the final product would cause the release of 190 kilograms of greenhouse gases, use about 3.6 GJ of energy and produce about 36 kilograms of overall waste (EITO, 2002). Tomlinson (2010) while discussing green IT mentions while IT has the potential of contributing positively the environment and society, its development has been associated with increased computation which has increased power consumption all over the world. It has also resulted to worrying levels of electronic wastes, with the culture of disposability due to the rapid innovation in the sector and turnover rates associated with computational technologies becoming increasingly problematic. As Mingay (2007) further points out, the IT sector emits almost as much carbon dioxide as airline industry. On the other hand, other researchers stated that IT provides opportunities for minimization of these effects and for the establishment of positive environmental benefits (Tomlinson, 2013). Green IT is reducing these effects and minimising the quantities of resources needed. Economic as well as environmental benefits have been realised through development of more efficient chips. These chips have greater processing power and smaller size; the reduction factor in the size in every generation of devices has been approximately 0.7. Manufacture of mobile phones has now incorporated considerations like material identification and easy assembly so that the materials can be easily recycled. Tomlinson (2010) argues that human existence and that of other living organisms will depend on the balance between naturally available resources and their rates of depletion. He further says that human societies continue to exhaust natural resources, whose generation follow slow natural nonhuman processes. Exhaustion of these resources which include natural minerals, petroleum products, energy sources etc, directly influences the ability of these societies to guarantee sustainability and the future survival of their own descendants. But in the middle of all these concerns, researchers believe that computing capabilities achieved through development of IT presents an important weapon in the human armoury that will ensure the future of the planet. IT has both a critical role to play and a profitable opportunity to engage other sectors to come up with solutions that will create a low carbon society (Phuah, 2010). IT has therefore contributed to the improvement of the deteriorated environmental conditions through various applications that have reduced time and space. Green IT has helped in spreading information concerning environmental issues. Individuals and organizations have therefore, managed to share information on the best practices for addressing these issue. It can therefore provide a great assistance towards mitigation of the global problems that seem to be looming in the future. IT technologies dedicated to environmental systems exist today – like the smart energy grids and hybrid car engine optimization systems. Other IT technologies developed for non-environmental reasons have already had great environmental effects such as the GPS systems. Through the GPS system, humans have managed to travel more efficiently directly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions As Laitner (2003) suggests, information technologies can provide new insights e.g. through the application of new algorithms to achieve better understanding of climate models. They can also help to promote the reduction of energy use through the use of smart grids or demand-side management and can help individuals reduce time and distance between the measured effects and appropriate actions that need to be taken. Online access to such kind of information provides real-time information to various user-groups and helps influence their actions. IT technologies could also be used by other sectors of the economy like the industrial sector to increase their efficiency through the use of smart-motor systems, demand side management or end-to-end optimizations. O’Neill (2010) describes green IT as a collection of specifically designed strategies that aim at reducing the carbon footprint within organizations’ computing operations. He however adds that green IT efforts do not just entail the reduction of the environmental effect of the ICT industry but also involves the use of ICT services to help in the reduction of organizations’ overall carbon footprint. O’Neill further states that IT has great potential toward contribution to organization’s carbon footprint reduction due to the extent to which it influences the daily activities of individuals within organizations. IT serves businesses by enabling expansion of capacities, provision of global customer reach and enhancement of customer experience (Unhelkar, 2011). Through IT businesses have optimised their internal processes like inventory management and human resources management (Unhelkar, 2011). While new technologies continue to come up, IT continues to take centre stage in business and organization operations, signifying its critical in any interventions performed by these organizations and businesses. Traditionally, IT efforts in several organizations were perceived as impediments to the progress of the organizations, when the reality should be the complete opposite (O’Neill, 2010). While IT continues to revolutionize businesses, debate whether or not this revolution means greener solutions is unavoidable. When banks introduce online services, for example, critics will argue that these additional services mean huge amounts of infrastructure to support the services, leading to increased energy demand and increased embodied emissions. Green IT lobby will, however, point to the fact that reduced number of journeys will be made to the bank by the customers which will directly lead to reduced carbon emissions. The bank will also operate on less customer service points meaning that there will be reduced heat and light requirements and even space, all these signifying greener ways of working (O’Neill, 2013). It is true that the bank will be able to serve huge masses of people from their locations. This will surely lead to overall savings in fuel by the customers and reduced emissions. Green IT efforts therefore, focus upon increasing efficiency within organizations and the protection of the external environment mainly through reduction of carbon emission. By promoting strategies that address issues surrounding materials used in the development and manufacture of IT devices, green IT seeks to enhance environmental protection and sustainability through manufacture of smaller devices that will require less material and therefore minimize environmental destruction. These materials should also be safe and recyclable. Recycling will enable manufacturers assist in reduction of electronic wastes that have already become source of major concern around the world. By aiming at reduction of emissions through strategies that reduced car travel, green IT promotes savings for both the businesses and individual clients. Although ICT activities and its infrastructure only account for about 2% of total carbon emissions, researchers see great opportunities for IT interventions in not only reducing direct emissions but assisting other sectors of the economy in reducing their own carbon emissions. This has been achieved by promotion of IT interventions that have revolutionised business operations and establishing conditions that support sustainability efforts. Sustainability concerns regarding promotion of energy conservation and consolidation of data centres have driven the need for stakeholders to draw attention on innovations that contribute towards achievement of smaller carbon footprint. 2007 projections indicated that by 2010, two-thirds of enterprises dedicated to best practice efforts would realise 25% reduction in reduction of power consumption in the ICT sector by simply making adjustments to behaviours associated with client devices and in the data centre. Data centres have become of great interest (see appendix) due to the significant energy quantities originally consumed by the devices within these failities Conclusion This discussion therefore depicts the critical role of IT and its contribution towards achievement of sustainable environments all over the world. Currently, business managers continue to seek ways through which green IT can be successfully integrated into core business strategies so that achievement of sustainability becomes a combined effort by organizations. This will go a long way to creating greening cultures that will add strength to ongoing efforts aimed at ensuring a sustainable globe. References O’Neill M. (2010). Green IT for Sustainable business Practice:AN ISEB Foundation Guide. London: BCS, The Chartered Institute Unhelkar B. (2011). Green IT Strategies and Applications: Using Environmental Intelligence. Florida: CRC Press Tomlinson B. (2010). Greening through IT: Informational Technology for Environmental Sustainability. London: MIT Press Schäfer T. (2013). Green IT: sustainable communications and information technology. Retrieved on 28th September 2014 from < http://www.alumniportal- deutschland.org/en/sustainability/economy/article/green-it- sustainable-information- technology.html> Laitner J.A. (2003) Information Technology and U.S. Energy Consumption, Energy Hog, Productivity Tool, or Both? Journal of Industrial Ecology. Vol. 6, No. 2 Sharma M. & Singh A. (2013). Relevance of Branding of Green IT for Sustainable Development of IT Companies. Journal of Clean Energy Technologies. Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 194 – 197 Mingay S. (2007). Green IT: A new Industry Shock Wave. Retrieved on 28th September from Funk K (2003). Sustainability and Performance. MIT Sloan Management Review. Vol.44, No. 2, pp. 65-70. EITO. (2002). The Impact of ICT on sustainable development. Retrieved on 28th 2014 from < http://homepage.cs.latrobe.edu.au/sloke/greenIT/eito_forum_2002.pd f> Phuah J. (2010). An Australian Rules Football Club Approach to Green ICT. In Information Resources Management Association (Ed.), Green Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications (pp. 637-642). Hershey, PA: IGI Global Appendix Fig: carbon dioxide emissions, Source: Mingay (2007) Fig: Significance of efficiency within data centres, source: Mingay (2007) Read More