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26 Nov 2009
Comments:2
Resellers should figure out how to incorporate the drive for green IT into their value-added services.
Customers may require their service providers to measure and report the carbon impact of their products and services. Most new tenders, especially in the public sector, actually require that clients demonstrate their own carbon emissions as well as the emissions associated with the provision of their solutions.
In addition, many customers expect that any new IT implementation should reduce the business’s IT carbon emissions over the contract period and save money on energy and refrigerants.
IT service providers must not only do these things, but communicate that they are doing them in a highly effective manner. IT can also help abate far more emissions in a company than its own production and use generates.
IT manufacturers and services companies are looking for ways to deliver energy efficiency through smart buildings, smart manufacturing and smart grids as well as telecommuting, teleconferencing, e-commerce and document management. Resellers need to have a portfolio of green products and services that support such projects.
Resellers should also keep themselves educated on the latest carbon-reduction legislation.
The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) energy-efficiency programme is a mandatory scheme targeting large commercial and public sector organisations that use more than 6,000MWh of electricity per annum.
Resellers may fall under the CRC scheme if they run datacentres or outsourced services such as helpdesks, network management or even logistics facilities.
If so, they need to ensure they can report their carbon emissions to the Environment Agency from April 2010.
Companies need to have an accurate and transparent measurement process as there are significant fines for inaccuracy and failure to report.
One other feature of the CRC scheme is that the participants’ relative performance in terms of emission reduction will be made public and, inevitably, media and environmental groups will draw attention to the worst performers in the league table. Failing to tackle carbon emissions could prove costly to reputations as well as budgets.
The sooner companies start addressing their liabilities under the CRC scheme, and other measures that will inevitably follow, the lower their risks will be. It needs to be led from the board as the changes required to service this new demand will permeate throughout the organisation, from operations to sales.
IT is said to represent 10 per cent of total UK energy consumption. In two years, businesses have seen their energy bills rising, perhaps even doubling. They cannot control the energy markets but are taking steps towards increasing energy efficiency across their entire operation.
IT is one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters. Recent estimates put the global carbon emissions of IT equipment at the same level as the aviation industry.
Ram Ramachander is chief operating officer at Greenstone Carbon Management
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IT, transport, and the environment
One of the greatest challenges for the future of the environment will be the human population's ever-increasing demand for mobility. The Kyoto agreement failed to take into account the significant impact of transport, as a robust, cost-effective technology was not available to provide a quantitative measure of emissions. It was therefore impossible to introduce any meaningful restrictions.
Today, however, advances in telematics have effectively filled that technology gap.
The transport sector is responsible for 28 per cent of total CO2 emissions in the EU, with by far the majority originating from the road transport sector.
In the UK, car travel grew by a fifth between 1990 and 2007, more than offsetting improvements in fuel efficiency. In the EU, carmakers must now reduce CO2 emissions from new cars to 130g/km. These improvements will be realised by engine and transmission design and other automotive design criteria.
Complementing this legislation, telematics can now offer additional technologies that not only reduce emissions but also, uniquely, provide real time quantitative measures of the carbon footprint which are directly compensated for by fuel savings. The two are inextricably linked by the telematics solutions - the implementation of a cost-effective green strategy paid for by reduced fuel costs.
Each litre of fuel emits a fixed amount of carbon content. Telematics enables operators to achieve more kilometres per litre, travelling greater distances for the same carbon emissions (i.e. less carbon per kilometre [g/km]). With telematics, operators have a simple route to supporting EU targets for vehicle emission controls.
The latest telematics technologies provide an interface to the engine management system. They report in real time on driver behaviour patterns, both direct to the driver and to management control, highlighting actions including sharp braking and rapid acceleration which are wasteful and fuel intensive operations. Current figures indicate that these real time, minute by minute alerts can help to moderate driver behaviour and can yield 12 per cent to 15 per cent savings on fuel usage. This represents a major impact on carbon emissions, which is paid for directly by reduced fuel consumption and therefore cost.
The systems also mitigate under the legal requirements of H&S and Duty of Care legislation. They provide quantitative measurements to implement and control risk management strategies, such as alerts for travel over road speed limits, adverse cornering and lane swerving. These in turn are paid for directly by improved corporate governance and an ability to negotiate reduced insurance premiums for lower risks.
Commerce operates in a fast-changing world, and the challenges facing our businesses are manifold and complex.
A telematics interface to the new family of digital tachographs also provides for the first time live minute by minute monitoring and control of working hours for both vehicle drivers and passengers, reporting both to the cab occupants and management control. This technology provides compliance systems under European Working Time Directive legislation and also gives a record of private and company mileage for HMC&R requirements.
All information is stored in perpetuity on secure server farms and can provide the driver and/or vehicle full usage history either on an individual basis or over the whole of the corporate enterprise (effectively, a driver and vehicle 'DNA'). This can also safeguard individuals and company directors against the ever increasing legislation facing the transport sector.
Telematics is today's most relevant tool to help achieve increased efficiency and cost reductions, making a very real contribution to implementing and continuously assessing green strategies to ensure they remain both cost effective and commercially beneficial.
Posted by Dr David Clayton | 22 Dec 2009
Smarter Printing Practices
It is true that resellers across the IT arena should figure out how to incorporate the drive for green solutions into the services that they offer end-users. Printing is no exception to this rule.
At OKI, we believe that print vendors need to demonstrate a responsible approach by mitigating their impact on the environment through the design, manufacturing, packaging and shipping of the product and through the sensible use of consumables. But we anticipate that resellers will also play their part in managing the logistics both of delivering new and returning used toner cartridges.
It is equally important that resellers and vendors work together to teach end-users about the benefits of ?green? printing.
We encourage our resellers to get close to customers and educate them in how they can best use their printer to limit its environmental impact and reduce wastage. Customers are not always aware that there are several simple steps they can take to achieve these goals, most of which will also be cost-effective for their business.
They should consider the printer that is most appropriate for the anticipated volume of printing required. By doing this, you optimise your efficiency and cost saving potential.
Another factor is the type of printer and the way that it is being used. . Users can save on resources by following the ?think before your print? guideline and never printing emails simply to read them, for example. If they really need to print, they can do so in mono rather than colour. In addition, they can be trained to reduce paper wastage by always using print preview; by printing in duplex and by using a web print utility to ensure each web page fits on one side of paper.
The benefits of the adoption of what we term ?smarter printing practices? are significant not just for individual businesses but for industry as a whole. A major new survey undertaken by leading independent economics consultancy, centre for economics and business research (cebr) states that savings of between £500 million and £1,760 million a year could come from more efficient management of existing in?house printing tasks.
The wider environmental consequences of this increase in efficiency are substantial too. If companies adopted the most efficient printing processes, resource usage could be reduced by the equivalent of up to 170,000 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) a year, which equates to 599,000 barrels of oil equivalent per year or taking around 46,000 cars off the UK?s roads.
Posted by Alan McLeish, senior product marketing manager, OKI Printing Solutions | 16 Dec 2009
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