by Angela Miller
This week the ecology.IT blog officially moved to a web hosting service that is 100% solar-powered. GreenestHost.com was featured in Ted Samson’s blog 2 weeks ago and officially came online on August 6, 2007.

A couple of things impressed me about this company:

• They worked closely with vendors including AMD, VMWare, and Freus, to ensure they both chose the right technology and configured it appropriately for optimal energy efficiency and cooling.
• They worked with a mature company (AISO) to develop a web-hosting service built on a solid foundation.
• They deployed a solar environment that is self-sufficient and integrated with a battery system for use at night.

While this is not an endorsement or recommendation that everyone should switch to Greenesthost.com as a service provider, it does highlight that there is business sense in establishing and offering green computing technologies.

by Angela Miller
Carbon offsets are another solid option for companies that wish to green their IT department. It is possible to estimate the carbon load or footprint generated by the IT department on an annual basis and then invest in carbon offsets through a company or non-profit that sells certified emission reduction certificates. Again these certificates fund investment in net new renewable energy sources that would generate the same amount of electricity required to power the IT department on an annual basis only with zero carbon emissions.

Carbon trading became extremely active over the last two years and carbon offsets are easily available through a variety of reputable sources. An article on AdvancedTrading.com focused on the increased and robust trading in ‘carbon futures’ and how the trend is dramatically increasing.

It is important for companies to realize that purchasing carbon offsets does not provide a tangible and sustainable benefit to their company beyond the ability to market to their employees and customers that they are now ‘carbon neutral.’ But in a climate where customers are growing more concerned about how green their service providers and suppliers are, being carbon neutral could be a differentiator.

I am assuming that simply posting that companies should consider carbon offsets as a valuable tool in their green computing strategy will engender comments both from people who feel that they are nothing more than ‘buying your conscience so you can pollute more instead of addressing the problem’ and those who believe they are a smokescreen and a waste of money that could be invested in other IT improvements instead. I disagree with both of these stances and instead believe that any steps toward investing in new, cleaner technologies will have tangible long-term benefit for all. It is important that companies purchase carbon offsets from entities that are both reputable and that commit to real investment instead of simple futures trading. A few examples include (not a personal endorsement, but a list of entities I’ve researched):

TerraPass
The Gold Standard
ClimateTrust

For a report about the efficacy of carbon offset entities, check out the report information at Clean Air-Cool Planet.

Dig deeper on the issues:

I relied on the following sites for analysis in support of this post:
www.tekrati.com
Advanced Trading
Clean Air-Cool Planet
United States Environmental Protection Agency

by Angela Miller
While most IT departments would invest only in the basics of green computing based efficiency or cost savings, more advance companies will want to take their environmental initiatives further. These companies would potentially add environmental criteria to their IT projects- especially those that include purchasing new hardware where measurable, objective metrics on performance and manufacturing practice could be evaluated.

IT marketing research firm Forrester featured three analyses of green computing between April and May 2007: “Why Green IT Should Feature in Sourcing Plans” (Davis), “The Greening of IT” (Mines), and “Tapping Buyers Growing Interest in Green IT” (Mines). Each of these analyses highlighted the growing interest in green IT, and their conclusions were unsurprising—many forward-thinking, large companies placed environmental issues high on their list of corporate social responsibility initiatives; but most companies focused on Green IT as a matter of economics rather than ecology:

“We would do green because it makes business sense, not because it’s green. It would have to show cost savings.” – CIO quote to Forrester in “Tapping Buyers Growing Interest in Green IT” (Mines, May 2007, Copyright © 2007, Forrester Research, Inc.)

My previous post focus on the steps that the companies highlighted by Forrester could follow in order to meet their basic green IT needs driven by cost savings. This post takes another step down the green computing road by discussing a more advanced concept- Alternative Energy Sourcing.

Alternative Energy Sourcing

Many utilities now offer business customers the option of purchasing power which includes either a partial or 100% mix of renewable energy sources. For example, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power now offers customers the ability to choose Green Power for a premium of $0.03 per kilowatt hour of power. The State of California specifically has incentives to encourage utilities to invest in net new renewable energy sources and the companies use the premiums to assist in investing in the new construction.

Investment in alternative energy sourcing does not have a positive financial impact for an IT department. In fact, many companies might find it a tough sell at an enterprise level to pay the significantly higher costs of a 100% alternative energy mix. For small-to-medium businesses, however, such an investment could be small and worth the minor cost increase while for larger organizations a mix of less than 100% could still provide the opportunity to take steps toward greener IT.

Companies interested in investigating alternative energy sourcing should start by reviewing the US EPA guidelines here.