Green ICT

Assessing the average energy intensity of Internet transmissions is a complex task that has been a controversial subject of discussion. Estimates published over the last decade diverge by up to four orders of magnitude — from 0.0064 kilowatt-hours per gigabyte (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB. This article presents a review of the methodological approaches used so far in such assessments: i) top–down analyses based on estimates of the overall Internet energy consumption and the overall Internet traffic, whereby average energy intensity is calculated by dividing energy by traffic for a given period of time, ii) model-based approaches that model all components needed to sustain an amount of Internet traffic, and iii) bottom–up approaches based on case studies and generalization of the results. Our analysis of the existing studies shows that the large spread of results is mainly caused by two factors: a) the year of reference of the analysis, which has significant influence due to efficiency gains in electronic equipment, and b) whether end devices such as personal computers or servers are included within the system boundary or not. For an overall assessment of the energy needed to perform a specific task involving the Internet, it is necessary to account for the types of end devices needed for the task, while the energy needed for data transmission can be added based on a generic estimate of Internet energy intensity for a given year. Separating the Internet as a data transmission system from the end devices leads to more accurate models and to results that are more informative for decision makers, because end devices and the networking equipment of the Internet usually belong to different spheres of control.

The environmental performance of presently operated GSM and UMTS networks was analysed concentrating on the environmental effects of the End-of-Life (EOL) phase using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The study was performed based on comprehensive life cycle inventory and life cycle modelling. The environmental effects were quantified using the IMPACT2002+ method. Based on technological forecasts, the environmental effects of forthcoming mobile telephone networks were approximated.
The results indicate that a parallel operation of GSM and UMTS networks is environmentally detrimental and the transition phase should be kept as short as possible. The use phase (i.e. the operation) of the radio network components account for a large fraction of the total environmental impact. In particular, there is a need to lower the energy consumption of those network components. Seen in relation to each other, UMTS networks provide an environmentally more efficient mobile communication technology than GSM networks. In assessing the EOL phase, recycling the electronic scrap of mobile phone networks was shown to have clear environmental benefits. Under the present conditions, material recycling could help lower the environmental impact of the production phase by up to 50%.

Connected technologies, such as the connected car, the smart home or the smart grid are powerful tools to reduce the environmental impact of business activity. This is achieved though mechanisms such as optimisation (e.g. of energy consumption, production processes or supply chain operations), substitution (e.g. virtualisation of paper based billing, car sharing vs car ownership), incentivisation (e.g. of healthy behaviour via quantified-self applications) or improved decision making (i.e. big data informed environmental policy making).

Companies can generate immense business benefits from pursuing sustainability - from reduced costs (i.e. through optimised production processes) through increased sales (e.g. via green product lines) and increased innovativeness (Aronson Principle) up to reduced risks (e.g. via intelligent compliance with environmental norms). Strong incentives, such as regulatory and NGO pressure, increasing consumer demand, long term rising commodity prices and board pressure make it hard for any company to ignore business upsides of sustainable business and product innovation.

This slide-document presents a process designed to successfully implement sustainable business and product innovation in practice. Six case studies highlighting the generated sustainability and business benefits are included as well.

The level of information and communications technology (ICT) penetration in Spanish society is very high, making up 4.61% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). According to official statistics, 57% of households have a computer and 39% have internet access, while 94% of companies are connected to the internet.There was 109.1% penetration of mobile telephony in the fourth quarter of 2009 – in other words, there are more mobile phone lines (51 million) than inhabitants (46 million). Spain has a good legislative framework, and a long but uneven practice of electronic waste (e‑waste) management. The issue of ICTs and climate change, however, is still in its infancy.

Despite the fact that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are responsible for only a small part of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions–current estimations attribute around 2% of man made emissions to ICT–this sector is the one with the fastest growing emissions. As a result, there is an increasing concern about the environmental impact of ICT, especially the climate change potential induced by ICT related energy consumption.

Enterprise energy consumption is expected to increase enterprise costs and CO2 emissions. Presently ICT is seen as an enabler to resolve high energy, cost issues and bring greater efficiency. This is referred as Green ICT which involves energy conservation and cost reduction of ICT usage. Various countries have already applied Green ICT initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions. Greening ICT strategies in enterprise can decrease these negative impacts. Thus Green ICT aimed at influencing not only technology but also competitive strategy and even the legitimacy of some business strategic options in enterprise. Current findings suggest that although ICT Professionals are already concerns about climate change and power consumption of ICT, there is still a lack of a model that can reduce the time taken to implement Green strategies in enhancing business value in enterprise. Therefore this paper utilized secondary research by reviewing literature on Green ICT and developed a Green ICT model for sustainable enterprise strategy, aimed at reducing time taken to initiate and diffuse Green strategies for enhancing business value in enterprise. The research implication for future studies involves the evaluation of the Green ICT Model. The evaluation will be done using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test the hypothesis derived from the literatures and to check the correlation among the independent, control and dependent variables in this research paper.

This paper received Outstanding Paper Award 2010, Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce sustainability as a new dimension of information systems (IS) evaluation. Customers, policymakers and business partners increasingly require the monitoring and reporting of the organisational impact on sustainability. However, traditional IS evaluation approaches are not able to capture the impact of information technology (IT)/IS on sustainability, especially in relation to social and environmental dimensions, so the authors want to stimulate discussion and research related to this area.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper is conceptual. However, it is based on the results of an existing related research project focussed on supply chain evaluation.

Findings – In order to stimulate discussion and research, the authors propose a framework that was originally developed to evaluate supply chain practices, in which IS often play a major role. The framework is built on three dimensions – economic, social and environmental – which are divided further into three sub-dimensions. It can be used as a starting point to develop a framework for sustainability-oriented IS evaluation.

Research limitations/implications – The framework was originally developed for supply chain evaluation; however, it has generic features that can be adjusted or modified in order to be applied to a whole range of IT/IS initiatives

Practical implications – Sustainability and its new dimensions create new challenges for information systems evaluation. Companies require frameworks and tools that can help them to measure and evaluate the impact of IS on sustainability. The researcher's role is to answer such needs and focus on this emerging research topic; this paper aims to stimulate such research.

Originality/value – Sustainability is a new dimension in IT/IS evaluation. Current approaches do not include all sustainability dimensions (environmental aspects are excluded, evaluation of the social impact is limited).

This paper is based on the paper submitted by the authors for the European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems EMCIS 2008, 25-26 May, Al Bostan Rotana, Dubai (ISVN 978-1-902316-58-1). For more details about EMCIS, please visit www.emcis.org

Emerald: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1817308

Sustainable development requires the decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts and from the use of natural resources. This article gives an overview of existing approaches to using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the service of sustainability: Environmental Informatics, Green ICT, and Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

A life cycle assessment was carried out based on a detailed life cycle inventory for a typical GSM 900 mobile phone network and related End of Life (EOL) treatment infrastructure. The environmental relevance of the three life cycle phases: production, use and EOL treatment was analysed using IMPACT2002+. The environmentally preferable EOL treatment alternative was identified on the basis of six previously developed EOL treatment scenarios.The results indicate that the environmental impacts attributable to the use phase dominate the environmental impacts incurred over the entire life cycle of the network. The impacts of the production phase are primarily attributable to the energy intensive manufacturing of printed wiring boards (PWB). The EOL phase dominates the impacts on ecosystem quality. In particular the long-term emissions of heavy metals have critical effects. Detailed analysis of the EOL phase shows that recycling of network materials in general leads to a two fold reduction of environmental impacts: in the EOL phase itself as well as by means of the avoided primary production of materials recovered in the EOL phase. An increase in the material quality of the secondary precious and rare materials leads to a significant reduction in the impacts on human health.

There is evidence that occupants’ energy use holds a large fraction of the total energy consumed at the office. Our work, motivated by a relevant study investigating the effect of individual feedback on energy use at the workdesk, exploits earlier findings to design a six-month field trial that monitors occupants’ energy use and provides individual feedback to 18 office employees in a university setting. This paper presents the research design and methods used, employing data analysis to assess how office workers responded to the feedback provided, and to examine their impact on the energy consumption of their desktop computers. The main findings were: the behaviour of occupants affected the energy consumption of their computers in a large extent; emails were considered better communication channels than posters and leaflets; a combination of feedback messages was more useful, with personal advice, self monitoring and education being the most powerful; finally and most importantly energy reduction and proper use of equipment continued for 13 weeks after the feedback was removed.

This chapter provides an overview of energy demand issues in the field of ICT with a focus on the history of measuring, modelling and regulating ICT electricity consumption and the resulting methodological challenges. While the energy efficiency of ICT hardware has been dramatically improving and will continue to improve for some decades, the overall energy used for ICT is still increasing. The growing demand for ICT devices and services outpaces the efficiency gains of individual devices. Worldwide per capita ICT electricity consumption exceeded 100 kWh/year in 2007 (a value which roughly doubles if entertainment equipment is included) and is further increasing. Methodological challenges include issues of data collection and modelling ICT devices and ser-vices, assessing the entire life cycle of ICT devices and infrastructures, account-ing for embedded ICT, and assessing the effect of software on ICT energy con-sumption.

This paper presents a design of a Green ICT maturity model that is aimed at maturity assessment of a Green ICT capability in SMEs that figure as users of ICT services. Based on a literature review and internet search, six maturity models in the Green ICT area were detected and further analysed. Since these maturity models do not suit maturity assessment in non-ICT SMEs, a new Green ICT maturity model for SMEs was developed. This paper introduces the process of model development, description of the resulted model and evaluation of the model.

In recent years, Asia and the Pacific has been rocked by a series of crises, ranging from sudden increases in food and fuel prices to the deep Economic Crisis in the context of growing threats of climate change. ESCAP member countries have been grappling with urgent measures, responses and actions to deal with all of them at the same time, while addressing other socio-economic development issues and poverty reduction. In order to address the current global Economic Crisis, a number of countries pledged stimulus packages and increased government spending to sustain economies. Some countries went a
step further to announce what is labeled as a "Green Stimulus Package" to ensure that environmental aspects are taken into account in dispensing the packages.

This introductory chapter provides definitions of sustainability, sustainable development, decoupling, and related terms; gives an overview of existing interdisciplinary research fields related to ICT for Sustainability, including Environmental Informatics, Computational Sustainability, Sustainable HCI, and Green ICT; introduces a conceptual framework to structure the effects of ICT on sustainability; and provides an overview of this book.

For quite some years now, there has been a growing debate under the label of “Green I(C)T” about reducing the energy consumption of ICT equipment. More recently, the discourse started to partly shift towards a novel discussion on using ICT to induce energy savings in sectors other than ICT. Advocates suggest that the cumulated potential for ICT-induced savings is several times larger than the entire energy consumption of ICT itself. Numerous studies on ICT-related energy consumption exist, and also an increasing number of studies looking at ICT-induced energy efficiency. The few studies, however, considering both aspects, typically do so independently, without relating the two aspects. Moreover, in the energy efficiency discourse, ICT is usually treated as a monolithic block of technologies – only the application areas that are expected to benefit from it being differentiated. In this paper, we make the case that ICT energy consumption and ICT’s potential for inducing energy efficiency can – and should – be related to each other. We further argue that this can only be obtained by decomposing the “ICT monolith” and look at its (naturally heterogeneous) parts separately. Based on a first round of expert interviews, we show that it is possible to qualitatively determine for every single technology subsumed under ICT its potential for inducing energy efficiency. We finally argue that only by consequently following low energy consumption targets for technologies with a low energy efficiency potential, while at the same time not suffocating technologies with a high energy efficiency potential through restrictive consumption targets, the full ICT-related energy saving potential can be unleashed.

ABSTRACT As has been discussed for decades, a reduction of the input of natural resources into industrial production and consumption by a factor of 4-10 is a necessary condition for Sustainable Development. This paper discusses the potential contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to such a dematerialization of the industrial societies and introduces a conceptual framework which accounts for positive and negative impacts of ICT on physical flows.

Green information and communication technology (Green ICT) is a new term that follows purchasing and using though into how ICT is possible used to minimize various aspects of our environmental impact and goes on to address how the use of smart technology could make many other processes more efficient. This paper describes the factors that influence on organizations that adopt (Green ICT) in Iraq. Many questionnaires were distributed among managers of Iraqi organizations, where fuzzy logic system is used for analyzing them. the researchers find many results in this paper, the most significant result is the adoption of Green ICT by organizations in Iraq are probably affected by several factors which are costs, government legislation, political and social pressures, enlighten self-interest, the responsibility of environmental system business, and new opportunities of the market and this effect can be negative or positive according to the environmental and political conditions.

A new methodology was created to measure the energy consumption and related Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of a computer Operating System (OS) across different device platforms. The methodology involved the direct power measurement of devices under different activity states. In order to include all aspects of an OS, the methodology included measurements in various OS modes, whilst uniquely, also incorporating measurements when running an array of defined software activities, so as to include OS application management features. The methodology was demonstrated on a laptop and phone that could each run multiple OS, results confirmed that OS can significantly impact the energy consumption of devices. In particular new versions of the Microsoft Windows OS were tested and highlighted significant differences between the OS versions on the same hardware. The developed methodology could enable a greater awareness of energy consumption, during both the software development and software marketing processes.

Diese Bachelorarbeit entwickelt mit Hilfe systematischer Vorgehensweisen aus anderen Arbeiten eine Methodik zur Klassifizierung von Workloads eines gesamten Rechenzentrums aufGrundlage der IT-Ressourcennutzung. Dazu werden charakteristische Parameter von CPU, RAM und E/A-Operationen einbezogen, die durch einen Workload beansprucht werden. Ein häufig eingesetzter Clusteralgorithmus zeigt die Existenz von sieben Workloadklassen an einem Fallbeispiel und lässt erkennen, dass einige Servertypen ausschließlich in einer der Klassen auftreten. Die eingef¨uhrte Methodik kann ergänzt werden, um in der Kapazitätsplanung Anwendung zu finden und ermöglicht die Klassifizierung großer Datensätze.

The direct energy demand of Internet data flows can be assessed using a variety of methodological approaches (top-down, bottom-up, or hybrid/model based) and different definitions of system boundaries. Because of this diversity, results reported in the literature differ by up to two orders of magnitude and are difficult to compare. We present a first assessment that uses a pure bottom-up approach and a system boundary that includes only transmission equipment. The assessment is based on the case study of a 40 megabit per second videoconferencing transmission between Switzerland and Japan, yielding a consumption of 0.2 kilowatt-hours per transmitted gigabyte for 2009, a result that supports the lowest of the existing estimates. We discuss the practical implications of our findings.

The notion of Green IT has become hype after the publication of Gartner's report" Green IT: a new industry shock wave"[1]. Many projects have been conducted and seminal studies published by industry associations (eg The Climate Group), NGOs (eg WWF [2]) and international organizations (eg OECD [3]). Most of the existing studies focus on the impacts of ICT on CO2 emissions, either related to the power consumption of ICT or to the role of ICT as an enabling technology for conserving energy in various fields.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are contributing both to environmental problems and to their solution. Will ICT producers, users and recyclers be the major polluters of tomorrow, or will 'Green IT' and a dematerialized information society save the climate? This book provides an in-depth analysis of the relationship between ICT and sustainable development, culminating in 15 recommendations - to producers, users and political decision makers - which show the way to a sustainable information society.

There is a growing consensus that ICT can contribute to the reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, both by increasing the efficiency of existing processes and by enabling substitution effects to usher in more energy efficient patterns of production and consumption. While, however, many studies based on theoretical reduction potentials have been presented, in practice it has only been possible to cite a few examples of such reductions thus far.

This article presents the results of a field experiment for one particular domain in which ICT can be substituted for more carbon-intensive technologies: using advanced videoconferencing technology to reduce intercontinental conference travel and thus travel-related GHG emissions. We organized a large resource management conference simultaneously on two continents and assessed the emissions caused by the attendees’ travel and by the additional ICT equipment utilized to connect the two venues. We further assessed, based on a survey, the emissions in the alternative scenarios of holding the conference at either one of the places, and the satisfaction of the participants with the two-site conference format.

The results show that reductions of 37% and 50% in travel-related GHG emissions were attained as compared to the single-site alternatives, although more people took part than in any of these alternatives. At the same time, the attendees’ experience was clearly positive, showing that the multiple-site format can serve as an acceptable alternative to the traditional one-site format of holding an international conference.

Goal, Scope and Background: Telephony as well as remote data transfer is increasingly performed via mobile phone networks. However, the environmental consequences, in particular of the End-of-Life (EOL) treatment, of such network infrastructures have been investigated insufficiently to date. In the present report the environmental implications of the EOL treatment of a single GSM 900 antenna rack have been analysed.
Methods: Based on comprehensive inventories of a GSM 900
antenna station rack and currently applied EOL treatment, the environmental impacts related to the EOL treatment of the rack are investigated. Six different EOL treatment scenarios are developed to find an environmentally safe treatment alternative. System expansion, i.e. inclusion of the production phase, is applied to all scenarios in order to consider different amounts of regained materials.
Results and Discussion. The production of primary rack materials, especially that of palladium (accounts for almost 40% of the ecotoxicity impact category), to substitute lost materials dominates the overall environmental impact. Releases of heavy metals from landfilled rack components / materials and of byproducts to the environment greatly influence the overall impacts on human health and ecosystem quality. The final disposal of rack components contributes to about 70% of the non-carcinogenic effects. Landfilled dust from steel production contributes to nearly 11% of this impact category.
Conclusions: The results suggest that all precious metals containing electronic scrap should be treated in specially equipped metal recovery plants. A complete rack disassembly before processing in high-standard metal recovery plants is not necessary. An elaborated pre-treatment and fractionation of the scrap prior to precious material recovery does not lower the environmental impacts and is not mandatory and would only become environmentally interesting if high recovery of heavy metals is achieved. To avoid the formation and release of volatile and toxic heavy metal, incineration of electronic scrap as of by-products prior to landfilling should be avoided. To reduce the overall environmental load, a standardisation of the sizes of rack components, facilitating their re-use, is recommended.

Green information and communication technology (Green ICT) is a new term that follows purchasing and using though into how ICT is possible used to minimize various aspects of our environmental impact and goes on to address how the use of smart technology could make many other processes more efficient. This paper describes the factors that influence on organizations that adopt (Green ICT) in Iraq. Many questionnaires were distributed among managers of Iraqi organizations, where fuzzy logic system is used for analyzing them. the researchers find many results in this paper, the most significant result is the adoption of Green ICT by organizations in Iraq are probably affected by several factors which are costs, government legislation, political and social pressures, enlighten self-interest, the responsibility of environmental system business, and new opportunities of the market and this effect can be negative or positive according to the environmental and political conditions.

Information Technology is known as one of the most important elements in changes and development of the current world and consequences from it will have a direct impact on people. These changes will carry words such as: Electronic commerce, Electronic Banking, Electronic city and even electronic government. It’s been many years that Electronic development is practically used in many countries yielding large capital returns and saving significant resources and capacities for those countries. Green ICT as one of the emerging concept born with the development of Information Technology. It would cover concepts such as Carbon Dioxide Emission from computer hardware, green transportation and so. The current situation of progress in green ICT in UTM has been investigated in this paper. There are various tools to gauge project progress aspects. We used “Stage of growth” as our strategic tool to investigate progress of green technology establishment in different area for UTM with concentrati...

Green Information and Communications Technology (Green ICT) is resource management process involved in policies, awareness, selection, elimination, efficient reuse of hardware and software for environmentally friendly practices. ICT is also tools for providing encouragement and support for organizations and education institutions to engage in corporate responsibility society (CSR) activities in response to society's needs, communication, serving society, promoting equality opportunity in access to higher education and reducing economic inequality. Therefore, this paper is to present the basic concept of Green ICT, key success factors in designing instructional courses which focus on USR for education institutions and two methods of selection are: selection of environmentally friendly products and selection of Green ICT for curriculum and instruction management in higher education institutions.

Candano, C. (2010) ITU: Moving Towards a Global Policy Framework on ICTs and Climate Change. In Leal Filho, W. (ed). "The Economic, Political and Social Elements of Climate Change." Springer Verlag, Berlin; p. 439-454

Online <pdf> http://www.springer.com/economics/environmental/book/978-3-642-14775-3

Online <pdf> http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-3-642-14775-3#section=817946&page=9&locus=62

Telework is a chance to improve social, economic and environmental sustainability through the use of ICT. However the take up of telework has, up to now, been very slow: on average in the EU teleworkers account for only 1.7% of the total labor force. The article focuses on the cultural barriers visible in employees' and employers' attitudes to telework. Hence, the articles applies the theory of social institutionalization of Berger and Luckmann (1966) to the on-site working paradigm in order to understand how it produces a set of values opposed to the adoption of telework. To systematize and generalize how these barriers arise, the article introduces a new heuristic concept, the petrifying effect and examines its emergence through an ongoing case study, in which 20 employees of Turin’s municipality spend 80% of their time teleworking.

The development and small scale field trial in Flanders of a home energy management system is presented. During the development, a user-centric approach was used to create interaction between developers and possible end-users in a living lab setting. This allowed actively addressing people’s needs and wants in the development process and testing the system in their homes. The preliminary results of the field trial indicate a high usage during the starting week, which gradually slows down over the weeks that follow. Usage of the different elements in the system varies over the weeks but a consistent “top 3” of elements remains. Dynamic pricing is used by a small but consistent part of the participants. They actively adapt their appliance usage to these prices.