Understandably, Microsoft sees commercial benefits in this move. Their new software, and other industry developments, are difficult to exploit in the XP environment; therefore from a usability standpoint this seems like a good thing.

To support Microsoft’s newer OSs new, faster PCs with more memory and storage resources will need to be bought prematurely. Apart from an improvement in the energy management capabilities of newer PCs and OSs, this has no perceivable upside for carbon reduction and has the potential of considerably increasing embedded energy.

This action may force users to reconsider their computing platform and may prove an Achilles heel for Microsoft, especially as Linux matures and new players, like Google’s Chrome, provide more options and choice.

With many more organisations considering cloud, thin-client technologies and other, more agile, forms of business computing, perhaps Microsoft’s action signifies the beginning of a major change in the business and personal computing landscape.

The sentiments expressed are not unexpected and there are many recent examples of similar approaches by IT Managers.

For years businesses ignored important issues such as business continuity and even basic disaster recovery. Only when a formalised standard existed, and in some enshrined in law, did organisations take note of the available best practices.

Although there are always smart organisations who recognise the benefits of implementing best practice, the majority wait to be pushed, by which time they have lost many years of receiving key business benefits, including reduced costs. This approach seems both unprofessional and self-defeating.

History is repeating itself with the EU’s Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency. As governments and governing bodies move to adopt the principles of the code and place stronger importance on energy management, this issue is not going to quietly disappear.

Not surprisingly, the current biggest take up of the EU code is vendor organisations who seek to gain marketing benefits from its adoption; however its real value is in the long term benefits it can deliver to organisations that must pay the energy bill through regular assessment.

In its current form, the EU code is a highly competent and authoritative set of best practices and although it still has some way to go, it is a credible start for any organisation looking to establish energy management as a discipline within the data centre.

Although author of many important standards, ISO has designed ISO 50001 to be able to implemented as either a stand-alone management system or to be seamlessly combined or integrated with its important corporate standards, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.

Implementing ISO 9001 has meant that an organisation fulfils defined and accepted quality requirements, and all applicable regulatory requirements in the pursuit of delivering goods and services to its customers.

Similarly the implementation of ISO 14001 has enabled organisation to implement a comprehensive management system that seeks to minimise the harmful effects on the environment caused by its own business activities. The standard also aims to guide organisations to continually improve its operations and performance with respect to the environment.

The new standard, ISO 50001 will enable organisations to extend its environmental responsibilities to the management and consumption of energy resources. As such the standard should become a major component of an organisation’s response, providing an internationally-approved precedent for both the technical and strategic management aspects of energy use and consumption, to the increasing commercial and legislative pressures that are developing, such as increased energy costs and the focus by governments on CO2 emissions.

Using the same Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology ISO 50001 as adopted in the other ISO management standards and so enhancing its inter-operability.

Dimension 85 is a best practice software house and consultancy specialising in energy management systems for data centres, IT and sustainability issues.

‘ICT today accounts for 2% of the global carbon footprint, but this is expected to grow.’ Source: EU Commission

Whether the statement is true or just the application of mathmatics, there is a recognition of the impact that IT-generated carbon emissions now has on the global carbon footprint. Governments are now assigning a considerable amount of resources to the management of carbon emissions and with this a high degree of focus is being turned on to IT for the measurement and reduction of IT-related emissions. This document provides a brief overview as to what is a carbon footprint, how and why it is calculated.

Definition

As CO₂e is being used as a primary method of accounting carbon emissions, international coordination of standards and control are being established to ensure that a consistent approach is being taken to the calculation and usage of the value.

The carbon footprint is generally calculated based on a set of principles known as the GHG Protocol which are consistent with those proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for compilation of emissions at the national level. However, although strong international standards are emerging, they are not mandatory and some companies may prefer to develop their own methods of calculation.

Carbon footprint calculations consists of two main components know as direct and indirect emissions. This distinction is important as it allows for emissions to be calculated for a specific entity, or company and provides a mechanism to ensure that double accounting does not occur.

Scope of the Carbon Footprint

When calculating the carbon footprint it is important to ensure the boundaries of the calculation are established. It is possible to visualise the scope of the carbon footprint as having several different boundaries.

; Carbon footprint at the department level

The definition of a boundary is an important concept when calculating the carbon footprint, but for simplicity we can consider the following scenarios. An organisation, or company has many different functional roles which can be separated into groups, departments, divisions or any other unit of organisation that makes business sense. Creating a boundary at this boundary level makes it is possible to measure the carbon footprint within the unit. This approach enables each business unit to be measured and locally-oriented solutions can be devised and applied as deemed suitable.

Problems can exist with departmental carbon footprinting such as achieving economies of scale that may only be possible when the solutions are applied across multiple business units. Often accruing cross-business unit benefits can be difficult and approaching the carbon footprint on a company-wide basis can help resolve this issue. However, assuming that the same calculation processes are used it is possible to complete departmental-based footprints and consolidate them at a corporate level, effectively achieving the same result. In each case it is necessary, indeed mandatory, to have the agreement and support of the organisation’s executive office, which inevitably means the sponsorship of any project at a Director level.

Carbon footprint at the organisational level

Carbon footprint across the supply chain

However, the ultimate approach is to view the carbon footprint across the entire supply chain. This is the most complex and difficult model to implement and is unlikely to be within the direct remit of any one company’s carbon management initiative. The most likely scenario is that pressure will be applied through the supply chain by purchasing managers for their suppliers to be conducting similar carbon emission-based initiatives.

The EU is already applying this principle through its “Green Public Procurement” initiative. With European Public authorities having control of 16% spend within the EU’s GDP, it is thought that using green-based priciples for driving purchasing decisions can substantially influence behaviour throughout the EU.

Other approaches include full life-cycle assessment (LCA) on a product or service based model. LCA is an ideal approach to establishing a business-focused carbon footprint model, but as with the supply chain model, for completeness it should cover the entire supply chain. Again a difficult approach for a company to adopt but LCA of business processes is now a well established methodology with relevent and well proven BSI and ISO standards. To complement business accounting processes, combining the LCA and organisational level models may prove to be a worthwhile compromise for many businesses.

Why Calculate the Carbon Footprint

Calculating the carbon footprint is a practical business-oriented activity and more than just an interesting academic exercise. It is important to calculate the carbon footprint using a set of standardised approaches and principles that apply to business processes and accounting practices.

There are many reasons for calculating the carbon footprint but they can be summarised as follows:

1. To establish a true and fair account of CO₂e.
2. To simplify and reduce the costs of associated with CO₂e.
3. To provide Management with information that can be used to build an effective strategy to enable the preparation of a carbon management programme.
4. To provide information that facilitates participation in voluntary and mandatory CO₂e reduction programmes.

And Finally…

Carbon footprint calculations should not be considered as one-off exercises. In order to meet the requirements of a well structured carbon management programme, it is necessary to implement a process that can persistently and consistently be able to reproduce the calculation as a normal business process.

In this paper we have covered many aspects of what is a carbon footprint. The subject of carbon footprinting is both wide ranging and complex but addressed in a proper and professional manner can be used as a significant and beneficial business metric.

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising in IT, sustainability issues and the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency.

It is well known that under President Bush, an environmental sceptic, the USA were the only developed nation who refused to subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol. This singular, notorious action has led to the USA becoming an international pariah and environmental bogeyman. Can we really judge an entire country by the actions of one man, even if he is the President of the United States?

Taking a closer look at the USA, its independent states, cities and municipalities, and you see that President Obama’s ‘change we can believe in’ is already beginning from the ground up. As a federation member, each state can make its own legislation, as can city mayors. Consequently, a strongly contested fight has sprung up at city level as mayors compete to be the greenest. This challenge, laid down by Denver mayor John Wright Hickenlooper in 2006 has gathered huge momentum, with 944 cities signed up to the Kyoto Protocol by mid 2009. Nor is this a purely regional development, these cities between them encompass all fifty states.

The pattern is reflected at state level, with numerous states, including California, fighting for tougher legislation and adopting it within their jurisdiction. Even Governor Schwarznegger, who spearheaded several challenges to the government over Kyoto, has adapted his hummer for hydrogen!

President Obama has made it no secret that he wishes to see the USA once again taking leadership on environmental issues, the current biggest global priority. With a clear wish among the voting public for action, will we finally see the USA step up to its responsibilities in a 21st century environment?

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising in IT, sustainability issues and the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency.

They have recently released a document updating the status of the strategy, citing many advances in Government ICT.

Are Government organisations, including Councils and outsourcers really signed up to these strategic objectives?

How much will the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) actually affect them, or will we be paying penalties through our council tax?

How many of these organisations have signed up to, or even really understand the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency, the emerging EU standard on energy efficiency for data centre based ICT?

So the question is, is the Greening IT Strategy working and is it really beginning to deliver benefits?

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising in IT, sustainability issues and the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency.

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising in IT and sustainability issues.

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising in IT and sustainability issues.

It could be argued that compression at the disk level is sufficient, but that does not help the movement of data across networks. Delivery of software to your PC by vendors is now commonplace and the number of programs that compress data are increasing and widely used.

The .ZIP format is common and well used to compress data on the Windows platform. It’s highly successful format can reduce data sometimes up to 90%, but this depends on the original data format. For example Textual data formats will reach this type of compression, but video and other media-rich content is unfortunately unable to compress very much at all. This is because the data format, such as mp3, is already in a compressed format.

You should be aware of issues around double, or multiple compressing of files; that is compressing a compressed file. This only adds to the size of the file as the second and subsequent compressions do nothing apart from add extra information (Meta Data) to the original file.

So with all of the potential files that are in ZIP format, and more and more companies and web-users sending out or making ZIP files available, facilities for ZIP and UNZIP are native in the operating system have significance.

A little known gem of Microsoft’s flagship PC operating system, Vista and XP before it, is that it provides a native zip and unzip functionality directly from the explorer (file). The facilities have limited functionality but they work and can help you obtain the benefits as discussed above. Micorsoft’s official position on this is available here, are well worth a read and contain information for Outlook integration.

Many vendors have developed added-value software that enhances the Microsoft offering and some vendors do provide free UNZIP programs.

Compressed data will become more important even with giant hard drives, as movement of of data around the internet is destined to increase and we recommend that you embrace file compression within your daily file management practices.

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising IT sustainability issues.

Dimension 85 is a best practice consultancy specialising IT sustainability issues.

As it’s name implies, the CRC is aimed at reducing carbon emissions (CO2e) in accordance with the UK’s long-term commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% of levels by the year 2050.

The basis of the scheme is to create a cap and trade system that rewards organisations that reduce their energy consumption and penalise those who do not.

Participants in the scheme will be rated, based primarily on their absolute CO2e reduction and other criteria, against all other organisations in the scheme and a resulting league table will be drawn up.  This highly visible table will enable comparison between organisations with the potential for marketing opportunities going to the high performers and may have implications for a company’s market reputation.

The cap and trade side of the CRC is based on the organisation’s level of CO2e.  The scheme has been designed to be revenue neutral for the Treasury and where emission targets have been achieved, fiscal rewards will be received by those who achieve while penalties will be paid by those who missed their target. The overall effect should drive down energy usage therefore CO2e with your position in the league table affecting your financial responsibilities within the scheme.

There are several criteria set for qualifying but the most important one is based on the use of more than 6000MWh per annum (6 million megawatt hours).  Registration in the scheme can be achieved through a web-based system and is mandatory at this level of consumption.  The process requires disclosure of information that will be tracked over time and form the basis of the measurement metrics of the scheme.

Organisations that consume less that 6000MWh but are on half hourly metering are also legally obliged to submit disclosure of their consumption but are not currently being considered for inclusion in the cap and trade processes.

Fiscal penalties will be applied to any organisation who qualifies but does not register, so compliance is recommended.

The full scope of each organisation is being included when measuring and monitoring with companies being grouped together under the highest parent company as defined within the Companies Act.

Although considerable effort will be necessary to reduce energy usage and carbon emissions, the CRC processes are not difficult and can be summarised as:

• Monitor CO2e to meet annual disclosure obligations.
• Trade, either through sale or purchase of credits ensuring that sufficient allowances have been purchased to cover the organisation’s energy usage.
• Report emissions through self-certification
• Manage receipt payments

In essence, the CRC programme has already begun as the metrics used for the first year’s activity have already been established.  Qualification has been based on energy usage in 2008, consequently you should already know if you will need to comply with this statute.

2009 should see the administration of the CRC, through the dissemination Qualification Packs to all known participants, by the Environment agency.  This should initiate action by participants to register online and enter the necessary disclosure information, although the registration period continues through to the end of the sixth month of the first compliance year.

The scheme will formally being an initial three year cycle in 2010.  Termed the ‘Introductory Phase’, the first compliance year is scheduled to begin in April 2010 and finish in March 2011.

In the second compliance year, 2011, the first sale of allowances will occur to enable participants to ensure that they have sufficient ‘carbon’ equity in the scheme to cover their CO2e for 2010/2011 and also for 2011/2012.

From 2013, capping controls aimed at reducing CO2e will be applied.

With many countries watching how the scheme works in the UK, as a complementary component to the UK’s CO2e and energy management strategy, the CRC has been crafted as a simple method that should be easy to administer for both participating organisations and Government.  However, the scheme has already been identified to have some potential issues, a topic for a later article, but as a blunt instrument for carbon emissions management, it should achieve its objectives.

Dimension 85 Ltd specialises in the provision of consulting solutions that address these issues, you can contact us at the Dimension 85 website.

As the current buzz word Green IT as a term has a short shelf life and will soon be consigned to the marketeers bin in favour of its successor but while it is with us we should perhaps take a look at the term itself.

Green has been used for several decades and has been associated with environmental groups. Unfortunately this has not always been subject to good press and PR as ecology organisations have endeavoured to address important ecological issues. Similarly, unfriendly terms like, tree huggers, have not really helped the cause of people who have been concerned for the planet’s health.

Similarly IT has not been having it all it’s own way either. For decades IT has been seen as a necessary cost in many businesses and although the business of IT is not always understood, except by those inside the glasshouse, is crucial to today’s modern business, irrespective of size. For example, Bank’s could not run up such huge debts without them, my groceries could not be ordered and delivered online, nor could I write this blog and communicate with thousands of people simultaneously!

So the question is, how is it that we have two words of seamingly dubious origin now applied in main stream IT marketing? Has the term Green IT evolved from as an industry word and now been hijacked by corporate marketing or have the world’s marketeers have been caught napping?

Although sustainability is here to stay, the rush to ‘Green’ is clearly a short term fad for the IT industry but the benefits of fully embracing a sustainable culture by the business executive for the IT department and for deployed commercial techologies should not be overlooked.

Dimension 85 Ltd specialises in the provision of consulting solutions that address these issues, you can contact Dimension 85 on the Dimension 85 website.

Carbon issues are at the forefront of social and Government agendas resulting in new legislation and business pressure through the supply chain. Action is required now in preparedness for ensuring compliance and to secure business benefits, such as increased efficiency, reduced cost, corporate social responsibility, enhanced reputation and competitiveness.

To meet this challenge, the Carbon Management discipline is being considered in organisational structures. This new role will unite many disciplines and with IT potentially accounting for a large percentage of a company’s CO2 emissions, engagement and access to specialist IT services and infrastructure skills will be mandatory.

However, adding headcount is always a difficult, costly and time-consuming response.

For IT, carbon management has considerable technical and managerial commitments to undertake including:

• Calculating and monitoring CO2 emissions.
• Delivery of reports, internally and externally.
• Developing programmes of change to incorporate CO2 reduction commitments.
• Aligning CO2 emissions with IT service delivery.
• Integration with IT service management.
• Keeping aware of new technologies
• Ensuring compliance and plan for new legislation
• Maintain carbon awareness programmes

These new responsibilities place increased overhead on already lean budgets without offering immediate or short-term ROI benefits.

Opportunities for business exist in managing their CO2 emissions efficiently and in order to adhere to the current directives and exploit their potential, careful and targeted use of resources will be necessary.

Although carbon management cannot be ignored embracing the issues can deliver real business benefits.

Dimension 85 ltd specialises in the provision of consulting solutions that address these issues, you can contact Dimension 85 on the Dimension 85 website.