Going eco-efficient with IT
By Kim Thomas
Look at the typical business enterprise and you’ll see PCs running while their users are at lunch, lights left on overnight, printers and photocopiers spewing out reams of paper, and air-conditioning turned up high. With environmentalists urging us to reduce our carbon footprint, such laissez-faire attitudes to energy-saving start to look a little reckless.
But concern for the environment is not the only reason to cut power usage. As energy prices rocket, cost also becomes a big consideration. What’s more, power companies will soon be required to pay a penalty for generating unclean energy, which is likely to result in a further increase in electricity prices of 10 to 15 percent in the next three years.
Last year, analyst group 451 produced a report called Eco-Efficient IT, which looked at how companies can use IT to reduce their energy spend. Andy Lawrence, research director for eco-efficient IT at 451, identifies four main drivers for firms to become more energy-efficient. Going under the acronym ECCO, they are: economic, compliance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and operational.
Currently, compliance and CSR are relatively minor considerations: there are no laws requiring organisations to reduce energy usage, though that is likely to change. For some companies in London, however, there is a pressing operational driver: there is not enough power available from the grid to expand their data centres, so they need to reduce the amount of energy they are currently using.
But by far the most compelling driver is the economic one, says Lawrence. By adopting energy-saving measures, organisations can slash their electricity bills. And IT can also be used proactively to reduce costs, by, for example, using communications technologies to cut down on the time and money spent in travelling to meetings.
The first step in making efficiencies is to measure the amount of electricity your organisation is consuming and to set realistic targets for reducing it. “Until recently, CIOs haven’t even been aware of what power they’re using,” says Lawrence. “If they’re not aware of the financial impact of the power they use, it can’t be a driver for decision-making.”
This will have to change, he adds: the UK’s Climate Change bill, due to become law later this year, will require businesses that use more than 6000 Megawatt hours (MWh) a year to record all their power use.If they’re not aware of the financial impact of the power they use, it can’t be a driver for decision-making.
So how can your organisation start to make savings straight away? Users can be very poor at remembering to turn PCs off, so one of the easiest wins, says Lawrence, is to invest in desktop power management software, which switches off PCs or puts them into hibernation when they are not in use. Surveys estimate that the cost savings from using such systems are about 20 to 30 euros per PC, per year.
Data centres are also major users of energy, and are rarely used at full capacity: servers often use only 20 percent of their capacity during working hours. By consolidating the servers (replacing numerous small servers with a small number of big servers) and adopting virtualisation techniques, which enable servers to work more efficiently, organisations can save about 20-30 percent of the energy used by the data centre, says Lawrence. Similarly, data centre power management software can automatically switch off servers when they are not in use, or reallocate server jobs before switching off under-utilised servers.
The same approach can be used in communications. One example is the use of the OpenScape Unified Communications Server Voice Application solution on Siemens’s HiPath 8000. This enables organisations to manage their communications centrally, using fewer servers, and making it easy to scale the number of users. A ComConsult report last year found that the Siemens communications solution consumed 25 percent less power than a conventional solution.
There is the added problem of backup power supplies and the air conditioning used to cool the servers: between them, these account for more than half the energy used in the data centre, says Lawrence. “Most of that cooling is incredibly inefficient,” he says.
That inefficiency can be addressed by cooling the area where the heat is generated, rather than the whole room, and installing equipment that will reduce the cooling at times when the heat output drops because the computers are idle.Most of that cooling is incredibly inefficient
Some organisations are also starting to supplement air-conditioning with free air cooling, though they will need to keep air conditioning systems for times when the outside temperature rises. Others have begun keeping the temperature of their data centres one or two degrees higher than the cautious 66o F recommended by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). ASHRAE is currently rethinking its recommendations.
Those are all ways of dealing with existing resources. But when it comes to replacing equipment, you can also reduce costs by buying energy-efficient products. Thin clients, for example, use less energy than traditional desktop PCs. If you do use desktops, then look for ones with the Energy Star accreditation, which takes into account not just the operational efficiency of the product but the energy used in its manufacture.
But IT is not just a user of energy: it can save energy too. Most organisations spend a lot of money on travel between meetings, travel that could easily be replaced by webconferencing or videoconferencing systems, such as the newly launched OpenScape Video. OpenScape video overcomes many of the problems of traditional videoconferencing systems: it’s Internet-based, so can be used from any location; it’s easy to use; and it allows users to share documents and spreadsheets.
Setting targets to reduce the number of meetings employees travel to each year could result in substantial savings: on a larger scale, allowing employees to work from home could enable an organisation to reduce the amount of office space it needs. Organisations that have implemented a unified communications system find that employees’ locations become almost irrelevant, says Thomas Wiemers, Vice-President of Strategic Marketing at Siemens, because users can collaborate effectively wherever they are. “Efficient companies need fewer resources,” he says. “Unified communications solutions enable organisations to accelerate business and increase the productivity of their employees.”
Lawrence believes that the next big trend in energy efficiency will be the integration of IT with facilities management, so that intelligent systems will automatically turn off heating or lighting in particular rooms when they are not being used. As he points out: “Huge amounts of energy are used unnecessarily – the waste is quite extraordinary.”
Strategies to save energy are an important way of counteracting climate change. But they can also bring huge cost savings and help your organisation become leaner and more efficient. It’s a win-win for everyone concerned.