IT goes green
"The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response." Or so said the Stern report published by the government in October 2006.
The gist of Stern's 500-page report is simple. Doing something about the underlying causes of global warming will take decades and cost billions, but not doing anything will be much, much worse. One of the villains of the peace is CO2, gushed into the atmosphere during electricity generation and the transportation of people and cargo.
Energy prices are bound to increase. Government policy is fairly blunt: it normally comes down to hitting the consumer hard with tax until people apologise and start behaving morally. As a way of changing behaviour of businesses, tax is a start. Businesses have had a foretaste of rising energy bills already and are putting fuel-economy on the agenda.
Inevitably these changes in priority will affect their purchase of ICT. In competitive markets lower running costs are immediately felt on the bottom line. In short, 'going green' first could give a competitive advantage. What might this mean for telecom gear?
A move to IP technology might not be a bad thing, power-wise. IP trunking reduces electricity consumption by eliminating power-hungry ISDN cards and a cooler-running PBX might mean less use of air con. The case for IP phones is less clear-cut - let's face it, each phone is like another small computer on your desk which remains on all the time - but fixed-mobile convergence may cut electricity bills if it cuts number of devices.
That's just one side of the equation. IP also supports more effective flexible working and more use of video conferencing (although neither of these is exclusive to IP). Doing more from home or local office space could mean fewer commuting miles, saving the individual and the business money. Hooray for new age communications technology!
But let's not pretend telecommunications is the panacea. Video has not taken off except for certain limited uses. To date it has been an additional way to communicate, not a replacement for all meetings requiring travel. Technology that does not recognise what it means to be human is resisted, even when it's done for the greater good of man-kind...
Inevitably the solution to a warming world will mean a change of design priorities. When tech companies develop new products we might focus on effective, rich-experience solutions, with a thought for new power efficiencies. Can desk phones be powered down when no one is logged-on (or, like motion-driven light switches, when no one is in the room)? Could they use solar-power to charge batteries that let the phones tick over at night? Should soft-clients be encouraged, to reduce number of power-hungry devices? When we sell an 'economy phone', should it also be our most power efficient?
According to Stern, global warming's impacts include melting glaciers, flooding, declining crop yields, migration and over-crowding, hunger, disease and death. ICT is both contributing cause and part of the solution. The right moral position is already the essential business policy. Let's start the trek to the high-ground, and before the water is lapping at our feet.
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