ACS reveals ICT’s carbon footprint

One of Australia’s professional bodies for the ICT sector, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) has released its first ICT carbon emissions audit.

The ACS has revealed that ICT use by Australian businesses generated 7.94 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide in 2005, which is the close equivalent to the civil aviation and the metal production Industries.

Responding to the findings, the ACS said the technology industry is in a position to demonstrate leadership by reducing its footprint, as well as leading the way in identifying and creating innovative green solutions for other industries and Australian consumers.

The report, conducted by leading technology solutions firm, the Ethan Group, revealed the following key findings showed the ICT usage by Australian businesses represents 2.84 percent of the emissions attributed to the stationary energy component (energy consumed excluding transportation), and 1.52 percent of the total national emissions, which totalled 522.2 Mt CO2; total estimated emissions from stationary energy combustion are equal to 53.5 percent of net national emissions.

The ACS has also reveled that one of the biggest power consumption demands comes from employees’ personal workstation equipment, which is generally in an operational state for 12 hours per day, and in many cases is not switched off.

ICT’s carbon emissions are comparable in size to other industries such as civil aviation, which is estimated to generate 0.97 percent of total carbon emissions and metal production (mostly iron and steel), which accounts for around 2.3 percent of total carbon emissions and the cement industry at around 1 percent.

ACS President Philip Argy said there is virtually no product sold on the planet that does not contain technology, or is not produced by some form of technology.

“However, our reliance on ICT comes at a price – an increasing demand for power and its consequent generation of carbon dioxide emissions.

"Environmental considerations are set to become an integral part of the professional conduct, practice and ethical considerations that ICT professionals will bring to their organisations.

"The purpose of the audit was to measure the extent to which commercial use of ICT is contributing to carbon emissions and to explore options for reducing the impact of that contribution,” he said.

The ACS audit reveals that business use of ICT has a sizeable carbon footprint and whilst the percentage may not seem large when compared to overall emissions; it still represents a significant opportunity to contribute to national reduction schemes and is comparable in size to other major industries such as aviation.

When you factor in individual consumption of ICT products – a calculation which was outside the scope of this report - the level of carbon emissions is far higher, said Argy.

In response to the findings, the ACS has launched a Policy Statement for Green ICT, which includes suggestions on initiatives ICT professionals, government, consumers and ICT manufacturers can take to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the use of ICT equipment.

The key recommendations include the following; extending the Energy Rating System to ICT equipment for domestic and commercial use – to be run as a joint initiative by the Federal, State and Territory governments, to cover domestic and commercial ICT equipment; leverage innovative technologies to reduce power consumption and lower carbon dioxide emissions; purchase carbon offsets to help offset the emissions being produced by ICT equipment used in the office.

For a typical Australian ICT SME comprising 5 to 20 employees, this would cost between $144 to $576 per annum.

The ACS also believes in replacing conventional telephone equipment with soft IP phone clients on computer workstations - Look at combining the communications server with existing servers; examining the feasibility of using virtualisation technology to significantly reduce the number of servers in use and disabling screen savers and implement ‘sleep mode’ for periods of inactivity for ICT equipment.

Argy said Innovation in ICT and advances in technology are streamlining processes, creating more energy efficient equipment, facilitating consolidation and sharing of networks and improving business models.

“Short term opportunities using technologies such as server consolidation and virtualisation can help stem the continuing growth in back office power consumption and emissions contribution, and business practices such as workstation hibernation can significantly reduce the power consumption from the desktop”, he said.