A practical guide to deploying green IT for ICAEW

Flash Player 9 (or above) is needed to view presentations.
We have detected that you do not have it on your computer. To install it, go here.

more share options
Embed For WordPress.com

Without related presentations

Notes on slide 1

And this is the bookICAEW IT Faculty member s and subscriber get a free a copy. Others can get them from the ICAEW shop

Our research into companies’ attitude to green showed that it wasn’t high on the priority list.All organisations are being squeezed by three major forces: finance, regulation and reputation. The impact of each will vary by type of organisation. Some way behind these three, but probably creeping up the list, are pressures exerted by employees and other stakeholders. Staff retention/preventing churn for example. Or institutional investors looking at your longer term prospects.You’ll notice that ‘green’ or ‘sustainability’ doesn’t get a look in as a driver.It does, though, have an impact on all four pressures:Green measures can save money and make money. Less energy means lower bills and the avoidance of regulatory penalties. It can improve your reputation making customers more willing to buy from you – and that applies in B2B as well as B2C situations. (Newsweek recently promoted the greenness of IT companies HP, IBM, Dell and Intel. Hmmm. ) And employees do like to feel good about the organisation they work for.

Here is a simple reminder of the relationship of IT, business and green measures.IT can change the way it runs itself. Energy can be cut in different ways: virtualisation, consolidation, free cooling. That’s the positive impact.It can also be used to help improve the organisation’s green credentials, but it will take computer power to do this, so it’s a negative for IT but a positive for business. Obviously the savings have to be bigger, otherwise don’t do it.The Climate Group’s ‘Smart 2020 report’ suggests that the overall impact of IT will be to save emissions five times larger than that of IT itself.This includes large scale infrastructure projects such as power transmission. It doesn’t all apply to you. We’ll cover the more down to earth stuff today.

As with the ICAEW report, today we’re focusing on four things that affect all companies. We’ll drill down later.Cutting the use of consumables: They carry an environmental debt anyway. Printer ink and paper.Optimising IT itself: Audit, reduce – not use power (online documents, practical things which help the bottom line too), virtualise, maybe even cloud, purchase, disposal. Extend user, give to charity, avoid landfill. Maybe thin client.Cutting transport: Reduce transport and travel. Online meeting and webinar tools and fleet logistics – one parcels company in USA plan routes to minimise left (across traffic) turns.And keeping tabs on what’s going on. This helps you track your progress as well as report it as and when required by the authorities – increasingly from next year. Carbon footprint, Lifecycle (from mining to delivery to your customer) – hard but software is available and external services like Trucost may be able to help. Some accounting packages contain emissions accounting and this is likely to grow. Power metering is a simple and effective way to log what’s going on. If you’re a larger organisation, you might want to see what CA is offering with its ecoSoftware products.

Involve staff : They’re generally ahead of the company. They have kids and grandchidren and wonder what sort of world they’re leaving. They’re willing. Get them into a ‘switch off’ habit. PCs at night, power to chargers (it doesn’t do much - a phone charger in 24 hours is like one second of driving) but it doesn’t hurt to think ‘save energy’ at every turn. Don’t ask them to discriminate.Use less of anything – petrol, air miles, paper, ink – it’s another mindset thing. Necessary? Cycle, walk, train, drive – think & make right decisions.Delay the purchase of new stuff – computers, cars etc – it dodges the generally huge environmental harm involved in manufacture, and it saves money of course. Less use = last longer.. Windows 7 a power reversal?Base purchases on needs not desires. We all want screaming laptops but do we need them? Not for word processing, most spreadsheet and presentations.Substitute virtual for real. And finally, related to some of the above, do things virtually not physically. Travel is the big one - online meetings. Had EDI for years. Now XML document exchange, scanning documents on entry to the workflow, anything that reduces consumption will improve costs too. No photocopying, envelopes, rushing around with bits of paper.

Behaviour is at the heart of people doing things.I mentioned getting staff on board is important. But it starts higher than that.The board has to be committed. If it doesn’t lay out its environmental strategy clearly and provide support – possibly through departmental or site champions (‘go to’ people), then it will turn into an ad hoc and variably effective set of staff initiatives.Make ‘sustainability’ part of the employee’s thinking, top to bottom of the organisation. “How can we improve” should always be on their minds.If taking sustainability seriously embed sustainability in job descriptionsCut waste bins, have recycling bins, make printers less convenient Staff come up with great ideas, rather than funnel them into a suggestion box where they’re filtered and judgement passed down, why not expose them to others through social tools? Suggestions can flourish or die quickly through peer review. It’s a rapid and helpful way to move forward.Sign up to helpful websites: Climate Futures, WWF, Carbon Trust etc (loads of others). A list of useful links will be in your download of this slide deck.

Here are some worthwhile but more expensive and more complicated to implement things:Telepresence: like sitting in the same room – cut senior executives’ flying and accommodation costs, liberate time and maybe save their marriages.Virtualise: I’ve mentioned it. Make servers do more work. Cuts overall count or saves buying kit. Cloud: pressure for energy in Docklands, Run elsewhere?Centralise management of networked estate: switch off/on, print, (divert run to where needed), thin client (cut down PC, long life, software runs in datacentre)?Remote monitoring: Don’t have to send people out in vans. Cuts routine maintenance visits – vending kiosks tell you, reservoirs, storage tanks...Free cooling: suck in air from outside in the cooler months – less strain on chiller.Re-use waste heat: from data centre. E.g. space, swimming pool, car park...Manage the supply chain: place demands in RFPs, record in purchase system (suppliers’ own chain info’ – maybe use Trucost if not directly available...

Going back to the four pressures, let’s see how we’re getting onFinance: you’ve seen plenty of ways of cutting costsRegulations: better to be in control than have it forced on you at the last minute. (Always more expensive to tackle then.)Reputation: you will attract more business from customers that care about sustainability matters. B2B and B2C.And, with your staff, you are almost certainly pushing against an open door.The overall end result of everything I’ve talked about is a greener, more compliant organisation that’s saving money and attracting new business into the bargain.Good luck!

Favorites, Groups & Events

A practical guide to deploying green IT for ICAEW - Presentation Transcript

A practical guide to deploying green IT
David Tebbutt
Freeform Dynamics Ltd
+44 1895 677845
davidt@freeformdynamics.com
www.freeformdynamics.com
1
The publication
Free to members of, and subscribers to, the IT Faculty.
Others can buy it at the ICAEW shop.
http://www.icaew.com/shop
2
Organisations are being squeezed
3
IT’s environmental impact
4
Areas for attention
Consumables
IT
Transport
Measurement
5
Quick wins
Involve staff
Switch off
Use less
Use for longer
Needs not desires
Bits not atoms
6
Behaviour
Board commitment + champions
Part of employee thinking (like ‘quality’)
Embed sustainability in job descriptions
Silent reminders (bins, printers)
Use social tools for dialogue
Sign up to helpful websites (links in download)
7
Longer term wins
Telepresence
Virtualise (& ‘cloud’?)
Central management (go thin?)
Remote monitoring
Free cooling
Re-use waste heat
Manage supply chain
8
Conclusions
Finance: you can make savings
Regulations: you can be ahead of the game
Reputation: you can hold your head high
Staff: they’ll willingly help
Good luck!
9
Thank you
Now it’s your turn
David Tebbutt
Freeform Dynamics Ltd
+44 1895 677845
davidt@freeformdynamics.com
www.freeformdynamics.com
10
Links: 1 of 3
Access: http://www.theaccessgroup.com/
Act On CO2: http://campaigns2.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home.html
AMEE: http://www.amee.com/
BASDA Green Charter: http://www.basda.org/BASDA-Green-Charter-39099.htm
ByeByeStandy: http://www.byebyestandby.co.uk/
CA, ecoSoftware: http://www.ca.com/us/energy-software.aspx
Carbon Footprint: http://www.carbonfootprint.co.uk/
Carbon Trust: http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/
11
Links: 2 of 3
Climate Futures: the economic, political, social and psychological consequences of climate change: http://www.forumforthefuture.org/files/Climate%20Futures_WEB.pdf
ComputerAid: http://www.computeraid.org/
Cradle to Cradle: remaking the way we make things by Michael Braungart and
William McDonough: http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm
Energy Star – energy efficient products and practices: http://www.energystar.gov/
EPEAT – desktop computers, notebooks and monitors with environmental
attributes: http://www.epeat.net/
Footprinter: http://fp1.footprinter.com/
GaBi Software: http://www.gabi-software.com/
12
Links: 3 of 3
Getting to Zero: defining corporate carbon neutrality: http://www.forumforthefuture.org/files/Getting%20to%20Zero_UK%20version_June%202008.Pdf
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Environmental Sustainability Dashboard: http://
www.microsoft.com/dynamics/environment.mspx
PAS-2050 Guide: http://www.bsigroup.com/en/Standards-and-Publications/Industry-Sectors/Energy/PAS-2050/
SimaPro: http://www.pre.nl/simapro/
WWF: IT solutions that help business and the planet: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/it_user_guide_a4.pdf
13