Local IT managers rate poorly in a global survey of eco-friendliness
KEY POINTS:
Do New Zealand IT managers have their heads in the sand over the need to sharpen up the environmental friendliness of their computer installations?
That's the way it looks from an online survey of 200 IT managers conducted on behalf of IBM by the Business Council for Sustainable Development, the results of which were released on Wednesday.
The IT bosses, a sub-group of a much larger sample (2302 business owners and employees), appeared to be a consistently paler shade of green than the rest of the survey respondents and more pallid, too, than their overseas peers.
For instance, whereas 69 per cent of respondents in non-IT management believe New Zealand businesses need to become more environmentally sustainable to compete globally, just 61 per cent of IT managers think so.
And while 62 per cent of Australian IT bosses in a separate survey are motivated by concern for the environment to reduce IT emissions, just 32 per cent of their New Zealand peers are similarly driven.
Yet awareness of the need to make IT greener is undoubtedly growing. Market analyst IDC released a "green poll" of nearly 600 Asia-Pacific organisations in January that showed IT supplier greenness would become "much more important" over the next few years.
Eighteen per cent of those surveyed by IDC considered the greenness of suppliers before buying IT products and another 30 per cent expected to do so in the near future.
Awareness is greatest within government agencies, says IDC New Zealand's Liam Gunson.
Perhaps that's exemplified by State-owned Meridian Energy, whose claim to fame is CarboNZero certification - all the electricity it supplies is either hydro or wind-generated.
Meridian showcases its green credentials in its new Wellington office building, awarded the highest rating for sustainability and efficiency by the Green Building Council.
Meridian's chief information officer, Rob Bolton, isn't one of those IT bosses doing an ostrich impression, saying the building's systems were built from the ground up with greenness in mind.
Perversely for an electricity generator, that meant choosing computers and phones that use as little power as possible, and opting for a variety of other technologies to minimise waste. The laptop computers and flat-screen displays the building's 200 staff use chew through as little as a third of the power of desktop PCs.
And the fact that staff can carry their computers into meetings with them and remain wirelessly connected to the organisation's network lets them save significant amounts of paper - there's no longer any need to print all those Powerpoint presentations.
More than that, the building's lighting and ventilation are also computer-controlled for maximum efficiency, responding to changes in the weather and occupancy levels.
Meridian thinks the greater capital cost is worth it, Bolton says. And the result is a "fabulous" working environment - which he only occasionally gets to enjoy, to his regret, as he occupies an office in Christchurch.
IBM put together the Meridian Building systems but the IT hardware comes from Hewlett-Packard. Bolton said suppliers had to meet Meridian's sustainability and efficiency requirements.
According to IBM's Andrew Fox, who heads the company's New Zealand systems and technology group, sensitivity to green issues has increased in the past six to eight months.
But as the Business Council for Sustainable Development survey bears out, he thinks New Zealand's IT community could be doing much more.
Fox points out that IT is responsible for the same level of carbon emissions as aviation - about 2 per cent of the global total. Yet the airline industry is taking more flak on the issue.
It's not that IT managers don't recognise the problem, he says, but they don't know where to start in tackling it.
He has some suggestions. Start by looking at energy consumption: like an old fridge, old computer gear uses more power than new machines.
One IBM customer reports a 20 per cent reduction in power use by replacing dozens of old machines with a handful of new ones.
Systems that are consuming power but not doing very much represent more "low-hanging fruit". Active energy management, whereby idle computer processors are switched off, can make significant savings.
Nor is there any reason for the thousands of PCs sitting idle in the nation's offices each night to be left on; if software upgrades are to be installed overnight, the machines can be turned on and off again remotely.
Before accusations of "green-washing" start flying, Fox says improving New Zealand IT's environmental impact is an issue he takes very seriously. If IT managers don't start getting serious about it too, he says we risk losing ground in the global economy as other countries shun our products.
"We have to live up to the image we have of ourselves as clean and green," Fox says. "The stakes are huge."
Pale green
Q: How, if at all, is your organisation reducing the environmental impact of its IT infrastructure?
Mandating the reduction of energy consumption: 33 per cent.
Mandating methods for disposal of old IT infrastructure: 28 per cent.
Other: 2 per cent.
N/A: We have no strategy to reduce the environmental impact from IT infrastructure: 47 per cent.
Question answered by 193 employees in IT or similar.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland-based technology journalist
