With globalization, the economic depression, IPL, there is something else everyone is looking into, the green bandwagon these days, which I very cheekily call - looking out for the GREENER PASTURES. We were discussing the same in SARANGSoft office a few days back. Governments are implementing environmentally friendly policies, companies are using their sustainability credentials as a marketing tool, and more people are opting to make responsible lifestyle choices.

IT has not escaped the trend and that is not surprising. According to 2007 study by Jonathan Koomey, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berekeley National Laboratory and a consulting professor at Stanford University, the powering and cooling of servers and auxillary infrastructure accounted for 1.2% of energy consumption in US during 2005 and cost businesses $2.7 billion. He also highlighted the possibility that servers will demand even more electricity in coming years. "“If power per server remains constant, those trends would imply an increase in electricity used by servers worldwide of about 40 percent by 2010,” notes Koomey. “If, in addition, the average power use per unit goes up at the same rate for each class, as our analysis indicates that it did from 2000 to 2005, total electricity used by servers by 2010 would be 76 percent higher than it was in 2005.”

Such an exponential increase in demand and consumption would obviously have serious consequences. In April 2007, Gartner estimated that the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector was responsible for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and, should Koomey’s estimates prove correct, that percentage would substantially increase. To meet the increased demand, utility companies would need to construct additional power plants—something that would itself require additional power and that could result in the loss of undeveloped green sites.

Simple economics are playing a major role in moving green IT into enterprise mainstream. Reducing the amount of energy used will reduce the electricity bill. We all know that we need to cut cost at all levels keeping the recession in mind. For example, in Bangalore over 48 hours, we have 35 degrees during noon, we know that there the air conditioning energy needed is fairly high and cooling demand is higher. Conversely, you have a rainy day and the temperature is hovering around just 20 degrees and hence, the cooling demand is lower. Very sophisticated markets like Europe and the US, and probably all over Asia in future, will have different terraces with different times. Basically, we need to resort to smart combinations of production and demand and this is basically a huge new area for IT.

What happens in typically Indian companies is we try to replicate western climatic conditions. We erect glass buildings and then air-condition the whole thing. Why can't we look at dust-filtering technologies or innovative uses of building architecture and air-conditioning.

In this context the problem is that some, especially international companies, have their same building designs replicated everywhere. They build it in Colorado in the mountains where it is cold for six months and they replicate the same in the tropical regions. This again does not make sense. Here sitting in my SARANGSoft office which fortunately is housed in a concrete old construction and eventually suited for the hot, humid climate of Kolkata, when I look outside my office I see tall glass buildings hovering over the IT Sector. I can only imagine the power consumption to cool them at the temperatures of 37 degree Celsius and a humidity of 88% which is a common trend of Kolkata climate.

I think we should combine modern technology like IT with traditional knowledge on housing because if we look at the traditional architecture, almost all countries around the world have their own style of building and that was always related to availability of the material in the region and secondly to the climate zone. Why can't we combine those two and add the weather forecast where we know what we have to do instead of making a bit better? This way, we can actually save a lot of energy. It is very innovative for the new industry, and last but not least, they will probably look nicer.

Business will also save on hardware and IT administration and management costs. Look at the massive data centers coming up. A lot of green initiatives are also being initiated. Do we see any technology or are we discussing with any organization where servers can consume less power than they are now, that would be a leap-frog in going green. I have got some information from different manufacturers that they could actually do this but nobody is really demanding it. So there is no real market demand. I think this is a great chance to initiate a conservative action where we have global standards and efficiency standards at the same time and the IT sector can actually deliver those servers. They have a new market and as I learned from our own IT department, we are also exchanging our servers every third of fourth year or so. So there is an exchange happening anyway.

As we can understand that there is no demand out there. This is a serious roadblock. What I am looking for is improved technical standards to increase efficiency. Cause this can drive innovation without being cost -insensitive. For example, there are programs in Europe where the utility pays one a 100 Euros if one buys a more energy-efficient washing machine. In Japan too, they have a top running model which means that the best equipment defines the standards and the worst is pushed out of the market. In other words, if a certain laptop needs 50 Watts and another consumes only 20 Watts, then 20 Watts becomes the standard within two or three years and the 50-Watt model would not be allowed into the market anymore. The same today is happening even with India, for eg the air conditioners today have come up with stars for power consumption. The more the number of stars the more one saves on power. Many small corporate offices to shops are all using them to conserve more power.

Thus greener pastures are a combination of everything. It is also competition and if we know our competitor has a very unofficial model, one can actually push it out of the market by bringing something more efficient.

We, SARANGSoft are a small company, but we are very much aware of greener pastures. We have started by using less and less hardcopies. Anyhow our electricity consumption are much lower as we are housed in a very traditional building in the IT sector. We are making software like employee management, attendance management and leave management which will eventually help in discarding the big registers and forms eventually bringing in greener pastures for the generations to come.

Ref:

http://enduse.lbl.gov/bios/jonathan.html