Unit - 5 Marks : 25

Regulating Green IT: Laws, Standards and Protocols

5.1 Introduction
Organizations in the information and communication technology (ICT) sectors have many
regulations to make their products environmentally friendly. Business organizations also are forced to
implement green IT – based applications.
The term green IT refers to information technologies that have minimum direct effects on the
environment in that they (i) consume low amounts of electrical energy (ii) contribute minimally to
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (iii) are designed for the environment and (iv) can be easily disposed
of, reused or recycled.
Green IT – based applications perform one or more of the following functions:
1. Monitor and report on GHG emissions.
2. Control and report on waste, toxic and hazardous materials use.
3. Manage energy-consuming facilities such as offices, manufacturing facilities and other
buildings, including data centres.
4. Enable design for environment (DfE).
5. Help redesign business processes to make them energy efficient.
6. Enable energy-efficient transport throughout the supply chain.
7. Integrate with existing IT-based platforms to make them and/or the business processes they
support energy efficient .

5.2 The Regulatory Environment and IT Manufacturers

As seen from Figure 5.1, electrical, electronics and IT manufacturers have to obey global
regulations on environmental issues. They may also help regulators, both individually and
collectively, to form current and future environmental laws that govern their processes and products.
The European Union (EU) has formed environmental laws based on the Restriction of Hazardous
Substances (RoHS) Directive, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive,
the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACh) Regulation, the Eco-Design
for Energy Using Products (EuP) Directive and its amended Battery Directive (2006/66/EC), which
regulates the manufacture and disposal of batteries in the European Union.

1
Figure 5.1 The global regulatory environment for the electrical, electronic and IT sectors.
A practical example will illustrate the challenge facing IT manufacturers. A laptop has over 200
parts. When it is disposed of, the different parts may be separated out. Each part may have a set for
restricted substances. All put together laptop is unsafe.

5.2.1 RoHS
The RoHS Directive was instituted by the European Union in February 2003 and came into
force on 1 July 2006. It restricts the use of hazardous materials in products that cause environmental
pollution during the disposal and recycling of electrical, electronic and IT equipment. The substances
currently targeted by RoHS are mercury, lead, cadmium, etc.
Table 5.1 illustrates the IT equipment currently covered under RoHS.

Table 5.1 IT equipment covered under RoHS

Equipment categories

Mainframes Minicomputers
Servers (exempt from lead-free solder until 1 January 2010) Routers,
switches, and so on
Printers
Personal computers (including the CPU and all peripheral devices) Laptop
computers
Notebook computers Notepad computers
Copying equipment
Electrical and electronic typewriters Pocket and desk
calculators
User terminals and systems Facsimile machines
Telex
Telephones – all types
Video conferencing and so on
All other products and equipment for the collection, storage, processing, presentation or
communication of information by electronic means

The real problem for IT manufacturers is that they are so heavily dependent on suppliers ( Tier 1 to
n). This makes it difficult for an IT manufacturer to properly assess whether particular components
bought from suppliers are following the regulations.

5.2.2 REACh
The REACh Regulation in June 2007 requires organizations to declare the possible dangers associated
with materials used in their products both in use and on disposal. REACh also places disclosure
requirements. Customers and organizations like Green-peace have access to information on regulated
substances in use.

5.2.3 WEEE
The WEEE Directive, which was instituted in February 2003, establishes collection, take-back and
recycling targets for IT equipment, electrical and electronic devices. The responsibility for the take-
back, disposal, recycling and reuse of WEEE is placed on manufacturers.
2
 The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) covers hazardous substances across the whole range
of manufacturing sectors.

5.2.4 Legislating for GHG Emissions and Energy Use of IT equipment

The EC EuP Directive(Energy Using Products) 2005 32/EC focuses on energy efficiency in electrical,
electronic and IT products. This law sets targets for energy savings of up to 9% in the majority of
electrical, electronic and IT products from 2008 to 2016. It required IT manufacturers to make
declarations on the energy used in the design, packaging, delivery and recycling of products across
supply chains, in addition to the energy consumed during use.

5.3 Nonregulatory Government Initiatives

Governments across the world have changed the IT manufacturing industry through environmental
laws. The United States, the European Union and Japan have also initiated and supported several
industry standards and adopted nonregulatory initiatives.

Table 5.2 Government-sponsored green IT initiatives

Regulation or Law, regulation or policy standard

policy-making body

European Union The Eco-Label (Flower Label) standard mandates that an environmental
impact analysis be conducted on products or services throughout their
life cycle. The analysis should include life cycle stages such as the
extraction of raw materials, production, distribution and disposal or
recycling.

Germany German Sustainability in the Information and Communication

Technologies initiative. The Blaue Engel (Blue Angel) eco-label
covers more than 3600 products, including papers, oil burners, wall
paints and IT equipment.

United Kingdom Greening of Government ICT Strategy: The British government

developed a Green ICT Scorecard with evaluated constituent
departments, agencies and so on, using 32 key indicators, including
18 ICT-related metrics. Areas covered include green policy,
governance of policies, energy efficiency, waste management, supplier
management, procurement, buildings and energy management and
behaviours.

Denmark Action Plan for Green IT. This has two major strands the first of which
aims to (i) foster reductions in the environmental impact of IT use in
private sector organizations by promoting green IT to businesses,
(ii) adopt the same approach to promote energy-efficient IT to
children and teenagers, (iii) provide green IT guidelines for the public
sector and (4) create a knowledge base for energy consumption and
3
 GHG emissions calculations. The focus of the second strand is to
(i) foster R&D on green IT, pervasive computing and e-government;
(ii) the transfer of green IT knowledge and technologies and
(iii) green IT knowledge sharing using international conferences on
green IT hosted in Denmark.

Japan Green IT Promotion Council: The council consists of members from

academia, industry (nationally and internationally) and government or
the public sector. The green IT initiative aims to (i) generate R&D on
energy-efficient IT, (ii) promote awareness of the environmental impacts
of IT and (iii) institute education initiatives aimed at management of the
environment and green IT.
Thus, government organizations are heavy users of IT: They are aware that they could contribute
to IT-related environmental problems, if they did not take action on the use of toxic chemicals,
hazardous substances, e-waste and IT-related GHG emissions. Hence, they introduce programmes such
as those described in Table 5.2.

15.4 Industry Associations and Standards Bodies

There are many industry associations associated with the IT and related industry sectors. These
include Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the Storage
Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the Green IT Promotion Council (Japan) and the Information
Technology Industry Council (ITI). These organizations promote green IT among industry members.
They are associated with sector-based environmental movements such as the Climate Savers Computing
Initiative and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).
The GeSI is encouraging sustainable development in the IT and telecommunications sectors.
GeSI has programmes to reuse and recycle IT equipment, in addition to the promotion of green IT
applications that enable smart buildings and smart transportation systems. The Climate Savers
Computing Initiative promotes the use of green IT and its direct effects in lowering GHG emissions.
One function of industry standards is to spread best practices across organizations in a particular
sector. Others such as ISO 14000 series span several sectors.
Table 5.3 illustrates several key standards governing both process and product where green IT is
concerned.

4
5.5 Green Building Standards
As identified by the (Global e-Sustainability Initiative)GeSI’s Smart 2020 report, green IT
could make a significant contribution in environment-oriented, green IT – enabled building design and
management. There are two rival standards in use globally: the US Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) Standard, which is a green building rating system developed by the US
Green Building Council; and the United Kingdom’s BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment
Method), which is the leading and most widely used standard globally. Major US corporations are
implementing LEED in the construction of offices and manufacturing facilities and new data centres.

15.6 Green Data Centres

One industry association whose influence is significant in establishing standards for data centre
operation is The Green Grid. This industry association promotes user-centric models and metrics,
energy efficiency standards, processes and efficient technologies for use in data centres. The Green
Grid’s influence on IT professionals is evident in the widespread use of the Power Usage Effectiveness
5
(PUE) and Data Centre Efficiency (DCE) metrics for benchmarking energy efficiency. The EU also
publishes and promotes the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres, viz., the ‘Code of Conduct is a
voluntary commitment of individual companies, which own or operate data centers with the aim of
reducing energy consumption through the adoption of best practices in a defined timescale’.

Table 5.4 illustrates current initiatives in this area.

15.7 Social Movements and Greenpeace

Environmental concerns voiced by citizens and consumers gave rise to various social
movements, the most visible - the NGO Greenpeace. NGOs have been driving organizations towards
environmental sustainability. Social movements such as Friends of Earth, Greenpeace and the WWF
6
(world wide fund for nature) regularly target companies that are not environmentally responsible. Social
movements such as the WWF and Greenpeace also have direct and indirect effects on individual
organizations. The WWF is, participating in the Global e-Sustainability Initiative and the Climate
Savers Computing Initiative. Greenpeace directly monitors the processes and products of leading IT
corporations. It also try to change government laws and policies.

Three categories of ranking criteria are employed by Greenpeace to evaluate IT and consumer
electronics manufacturers: toxic chemicals, e-waste and energy. A scorecard was developed to score
each organization’s performance on a scale of 0 – 10.

The first category in the scorecard covers toxic chemicals and seeks to ‘stimulate substitution of
hazardous chemicals in electronic products and their production processes’
The five criteria in this category are (i) the application of the precautionary principle; (ii)
chemicals management; (iii) establishing a timeline for the elimination of PVCs(polytron version
control system) and BFR(brominated flame retardats); (iv) establishing a timeline for the phase-out of
substances (v) evaluating PVC-free and BFR-free models presently on the market.
In applying the second category, Greenpeace expects companies to take financial responsibility
for dealing with the e-waste generated by their products when discarded by consumers, to take back
discarded products in all countries with sales of their products and to reuse or recycle them
responsibility’ . The five criteria in this category cover (i) individual producer responsibility, (ii)
voluntary take-back, (iii) provision of take-back or recycling information to individual customers, (iv)
disclosures on amounts recycled and (v) use of recycled plastic content in products and packaging.

GHG Protocol
GHG Protocol classifies carbon emissions into three categories: Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3.

• Scope 1: GHG emissions are generated by all sources of combustion, processing as well as the
unintended leakage of gases from equipment and plant, all of which operate under the direct
control of organizations.
• Scope 2: GHG emissions relate to electricity consumption and the energy content of steam,
heating plant and cooling water.
• Scope 3: GHG emissions are embodied in the life cycle of products and corporate supply chains.

Greenpeace employs four criteria to evaluate electronics manufacturers in relation to GHG emissions
and a fifth in relation to adopting and adhering to energy efficiency standards. These cover (i) global
GHG emissions reduction support, (ii) carbon footprint disclosure, (iii) own GHG emissions reduction
commitment, (iv) amounts of renewable energy used and (v) energy efficiency of new models
(companies score double on this criterion). As with the other two categories, four of the criteria
covering GHG emissions involve disclosure – whether of support for institutional policies or emissions
using the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard:

1. The first criterion examines the political commitment of the organization.

2. The second criterion examines the level of disclosure of GHG emissions.
3. The third criterion is targeted at reducing GHG emissions from their own operations.
4. The final energy criterion evaluates the adoption of energy efficiency standards in current and future
products.

7
Criterion 3 on GHG emissions should concern all organizations, not just large IT manufacturers.
Another non-sector-specific global initiative is the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative, which is
a collaboration between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development. It provides the foundation for GHG standards and programmes globally – from the ISO
to The Climate Registry – in addition to structuring the GHG inventory and reporting activities of
individual organizations through the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard. It is used in sustainability
reports as is the protocol’s approach to GHG accounting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~