Carbon Emissions Management Solution or business analytics? Probably both

Deloitte released a report last week entitled ‘Analytics for the sustainable business’.

The report is here, but the main thrust is that with the increasing emphasis on sustainability and climate change, business leaders are looking for help in decision making. While many companies are gathering sustainability-related data across their operations, there is a need to implement business intelligence and data analytics capabilities to turn that raw data into actionable business plans.

The report argues that by applying analytics decision makers can: identify which actions and investments are achieving their
intended goals; detect indicators of risk; allocate resources to efforts with the best prospects of success; understand the economic, social, and environmental factors associated with the entire product and service value chain; and take into account the views and needs of various stakeholders.

“We expect the current strong and growing interest in analytics, coupled with heightened corporate emphasis on sustainability and climate change, to lead to a distinct type of new capability we call “sustainability analytics.” Sustainability analytics, in a broad sense, is an approach that aims to effectively use technology to collect, disseminate, analyze, and use sustainability-related information across the enterprise. Technology is used to gather, store, and aggregate sustainability-related data; to facilitate the preparation of internal and external reports; to perform analytics on sustainability data to help leaders better understand the implications; and to present the results to leadership in a clear, easily understandable format. The overarching goal is to provide internal and external stakeholders with the high-quality information about sustainability they need in order to make
informed decisions.” (My italics)

The report goes on to say that even organisations that already use environmental management information systems to report on environmental or emissions metrics are finding the solutions are not up to the job at enterprise level, because they were often implemented to address a specific plan or on a local business basis.

 

It’s an interesting comment. As I’ve maintained in the past, the counting of emissions is complex enough for large organisations and often requires sophisticated solutions. Many of these solutions have extensive capability to track and manage emissions, run scenarios, etc, but do they go far enough?

There are two aspects here. Firstly, do current systems provide the level of analysis that Deloitte describes? Certainly some do and I believe they will get more sophisticated in their analysis in the future. Industry-specific solutions are likely to emerge that not only analyse but also recommend actions, with the potential to benchmark results.

Secondly, will enterprises implement one central solution across an international organisation, or will local operations implement their own solutions. Well history suggests that the latter will often be the case, particularly in the short term. If so, then there will undoubtedly be a need for business intelligent solutions to pull disparate information together and draw the conclusions on which corporate actions will be based.

In the long term I suspect that in practice both approaches will be widespread, particularly if the business intelligence/analytics companies have anything to do with it.

Cloud computing needs planning and management if it’s going to be green

The IT Governance Institute (ITGI) has published the Global Status Report on the Governance of Enterprise IT (GEIT)—2011.

The ITGI is a US-based organisation that recognises that business success often depends on IT and provides guidance to companies on issues related to the enterprise governance of IT. The report is based on a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers and is in its fourth edition. Started in 2004, the objective is to ascertain and analyse the degree to which the concept of GEIT is recognised, established and accepted. The survey covered 800 respondents from 21 countries.

One of the interesting conclusions is that more than 40% of respondents use or are planning to use cloud computing for mission-critical IT services. Of those that who don’t have plans, security, privacy and reliability concerns are the main reasons, as you might expect.  But 35% of senior executives also cited a significant investment in legacy infrastructure as the reason they are not adopting cloud computing.

Things such as cloud computing and outsourcing (93% of respondents fully or partially outsource their IT activities) make governance that much more important. “Organizations need to adopt new service delivery models to stay competitive, and this is fuelling a strong commitment to enterprise IT governance across the C-suite,” said Ken Vander Wal, CISA, CPA, international vice president of ISACA (which set up the ITGI). “Assessing the value of current investments, building consensus among stakeholders and mitigating risk with third-party providers all require a comprehensive governance framework for organizations to be sure they are doing the right things and doing things right.”

 

There are two important points here. Firstly, while in ideal circumstances cloud computing may well be a greener solution, it very much depends on how the service is provided. If it means throwing out legacy infrastructure before the end of its useful life, then green IT is unlikely to be one of its achievements.

The other point is that, as with outsourcing, cloud computing requires good IT governance. If it’s on the agenda for IT development, for green or other reasons, then governance needs to be part of both the decision and management process.

New web site for The Green IT Report

Web site readers will notice that The Green IT Review has blossomed into a new website under the broader Green IT Report umbrella.

The site provides background into what’s happening in Green ICT – the challenges and opportunities – as well as the services we provide to ICT vendors and users to help address those challenges.

From identifying market trends, benchmarking efforts, marketing support and targeted research services, The Green IT Report is well-placed to give you the support you need.

Take a look around the site for more details. If you like what you see then get in touch and we can talk about how we can help you. Contact details are on the Contact page.

And if you’re reading this in an email update, take a look at the web site. As well as the most recent news and comment, it has over three years of searchable content dedicated to green ICT issues, trends, products and vendors.

By the way, The Green IT Review headlines automatically go out via Twitter, so if you want to keep up with the latest comments sign up at @GreenITReview.

World’s first biodegradable computer mouse

Fujitsu has announced what it claims is the world’s first entirely plastic-free, biodegradable computer mouse. Through the use of renewable materials, the mouse is 100% recyclable.

The Fujitsu Mouse M440 ECO is made from ‘environmentally-conscious’ plastic substitutes and joins a previously released keyboard also manufactured from renewable materials.

Fujitsu says that by using biodegradable materials from renewable sources, it promotes sustainable production and helps reduce CO₂ emissions during manufacturing. It also means less plastic waste is destined for landfill at the end of the product’s life, because of the 100% biodegradable materials.

The mouse follows the ECO keyboard, available last year, which was also said to be the first made from renewable materials, with 45% of the plastic keyboard components replaced with materials from renewable sources. Fujitsu estimates that switching to renewable materials saves approximately 60,000 kilograms of plastic a year.

The Mouse M440 ECO is available in the UK for £11 excluding VAT.

 

Actually it doesn’t seem to be that straightforward. According to businessGreen, the 100% biodegradable claim in the press release applies only to the plastic casing. The electronic components inside can be recycled, but they’re not biodegradable.

It’s a minor point (can electronics ever be biodegradable?) but if you’re selling a product on its green aspects it’s important that claims are clear and accurate.

So, to be clear, the mouse is 100% recyclable and the casing is bio-degradable. That can’t be bad, particularly since the new materials apparently also make it more comfortable to use!

The positive impact of mandatory carbon reporting – ICT has a role to play

Pressure is mounting on the UK government to enact mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reporting.

The UK Climate Change Act requires the government to introduce mandatory business reporting of GHG emissions by April 6, 2012 or explain to Parliament why not. The coalition government has given no firm commitment to comply, so last week 150 companies and NGOs wrote to Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, supporting mandatory carbon reporting.

Signatories included AstraZeneca, BAA, Capgemini, CA, Centrica, Guardian Media Group, National Grid, Nestle,  The Co-operative and many more (including The Green IT Report).

Interestingly, later in the week a report into sustainability reporting was published that throws some light on the impact. It was commissioned by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and conducted by KPMG, SustainAbility and Futerra Sustainability Communications. It’s a survey of 5,000 reporters and readers – the full report is here.

The Executive Summary includes the following point:

‘The purpose of reporting is performance. Reporting is driving performance worldwide. Both Readers and Reporters listed their top two reporting objectives as ‘improving internal processes’ and ‘accounting for sustainability performance’. Above any other business case for reporting, making real progress on sustainability is the priority’.

It looks like a pretty convincing case for emissions reporting. And as if to make the point, The Guardian carried a report last week that Tesco plans to install touch screen energy boards in 500 stores.

Tesco is one company that doesn’t need reminding about reducing it’s emissions. The store group has a long-term commitment to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% and is using CA’s ecoSoftware to help it get there.

The energy boards will be placed in the staff areas of each store showing which store areas are consuming the most energy. The idea is that staff will be able to adapt to reduce power where it’s not needed. Apparently, after the test run at nine stores energy consumption dropped by two to three per cent. It also reduces the need for the paper to report on energy consumption.

 

So, reporting, internally and externally, on sustainability in general and greenhouse gas emissions in particular, does drive better performance. At the same time, pressure is on for governments to make it mandatory.

It’s one area where green ICT can make a clear contribution, through the software that does the counting and the technology that can make it available. Whilst there has been a lot of talk about carbon counting solutions, comparing and displaying the information will become an increasingly important area for ICT. For example, I would expect to see the Tesco energy screens, with user-friendly displays, in the public areas of the stores in the future and adopted in most large retail outlets (and public buildings).

Horizontal collaboration in the supply chain – can IT providers keep up with this green opportunity?

Back in December eyefortransport published its European Supply Chain Horizontal Collaboration Report 2010, which makes quite interesting reading.

Clearly collaboration within the supply chain is a greener approach, as well as more cost effective for all parties, and seems to be spreading rapidly. It generally involves a pooling of resources between manufacturers or retailers, including consolidation of goods flows, sharing of transport vehicles and network capacity, sharing warehouses, etc. as well as back office processes such as finance, administration and customer service.

The report is a survey-based analysis looking at the extent of acceptance and adoption of collaboration and the issues involved. It was addressed at companies of all sizes and included manufacturers/retailers, third party logistics suppliers (3PL), carriers, and solutions/technology providers.

Lowering carbon emissions was only assessed as 9th of the 14 drivers for horizontal collaboration among manufacturers and retailers. The ranking was based on those who thought it a very important driver (c10%), but a much larger number, around 70%, thought lowering carbon emissions is either important, quite important or very important as a driver for horizontal supply chain collaboration.

The solutions providers had the lowest expectations for the implementation of horizontal collaboration, although they did report a much higher level of acceptance than a year ago and significantly higher implementation is expected within the next three years.

 

When it comes to implementing horizontal collaboration, lack of IT infrastructure and/or support was seen as a barrier for 20% of the manufacturers/retailers. Significantly, though, the figure was much higher for the carriers, as the chart shows. Whilst the carriers, understandably, have more concerns generally, the lack of IT infrastructure and/or support is second only to the difficulty in establishing a relationship of trust.

 

 

The report’s general conclusion is that horizontal collaboration in the supply chain is spreading in both acceptance and practice. With the benefits in terms of cost reduction and service levels, horizontal collaboration is seen as the next step in supply chain development.

It’s clearly also going to be a significant factor in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and it seems to me that it could easily become a much higher priority if broader carbon-reduction legislation is introduced, or even if carbon reporting becomes more widespread.

As yet, though, it seems that the IT aspect remains an issue. Solutions providers have the lowest expectations for its adoption and a significant number of carriers (40% plus) feel that IT is holding things back.

It looks like supply chain solutions providers are behind the market on this one, or if they have solutions that can handle horizontal collaboration they’re not making it clear to the market. With such a significant green IT potential it does seem that the supply chain solutions providers are doing themselves, the market and the environment no favours.

Smart meters get a better reception in Europe – for the moment

Smart meter installation continues to meet resistance in the US, particularly in California where the Marin County Board of Supervisors has voted to ban their installation for a year. Concerns mainly focus on health and privacy, as well as the cost. But the ban is little more than a gesture, since the California Public Utility Commission has the final say, but it does seem to reflect a lack of communication between utilities and consumers.

By contrast, there seems (at the moment) to be more acceptance for the limited installations that have taken place in Europe.

For example, According to a survey by the Emden public utilities (on the north coast of Germany) electricity customers are very interested in smart meters: 88% of the 195 respondents favoured their use. The Emden energy provider asked customers what they thought of the meters, what they already know about them and whether they had concerns about data security, which seems to be the primary concern in Europe.

It’s stems from a Deutsche Telekom installation of 100 households in a new housing development with the infrastructure for intelligent gas and electricity meters. The company provides the data link and installed the communications boxes in the households. Customers will be able to check their current usage on a secure Internet portal.

In addressing the security issue, Gabriele Riedmann de Trinidad, Manager of the Energy Group Business Area at Deutsche Telekom, pointed out that; “We do not use the customer’s DSL connections for the data transfer but are building our own, independent infrastructure and operating it.”

 

So things are currently looking better in Europe (at least in one small area), although it’s early days yet. In Emden the high approval rating has been seen by the utility company as a sign that they should further promote the installation of the new digital meters.

Telecommuting set to grow in the French public sector

GreenIT.fr has reported that the French government has set the General Council of Industry, Energy and Technology (CGIET) the task of expanding teleworking in the public sector. Apparently the objective is to review telework practices and see how it could be expanded. If it proves possible, proposals will be drawn up and presented to trade unions at the end of next spring (which is how things work in France).

It seems that the country is lagging in the number people working from home – just 6% in 2008 compared with 42% in Denmark. It’s worse in the public sector with only 1%. By comparison, the figure in the US in 2007 for public sector teleworking was just over 6%, although a lot more were eligible, and around 7.5% in the UK.

While teleworking is less developed in the public sector than the private sector in France, it’s seen as an ideal candidate, since most work is paperless.  It’s also a focus for the government looking to make savings.

GreenIT.fr points out that transportation and offices are the only two sources of public sector greenhouse gas emissions and were up 22% between 1990 and 2004. So broader telework could significantly reduce these emissions and help towards the French target of a 20% reduction in the 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The ICT sector will need to play its part.

SAP tests an electric car fleet in Germany

SAP has introduced a number of electric cars into its fleet. It’s part of a ‘Future Fleet’ research project testing the use in corporate car fleets of electric vehicles powered by energy generated exclusively from renewable sources.

SAP will be the first German company to use electric vehicles, with up to 30 cars used in its fleet in and around Walldorf, Germany. In the field test, due to run from February to September, around 450 employees will get to use the electric cars in place of their usual company cars.

The project involves constructing a dedicated charging infrastructure and integrating it into existing energy grids, as well as developing and testing information and communication technology to help ensure efficient energy use. MVV Energie is working on designing, installing and operating this infrastructure, including smart charging stations capable of filling electric cars exclusively with certified green energy.

 

It may not sound significant, but with over 80% of SAP’s direct CO2 emissions in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region attributed to the use of company cars, a successful project could lead to a substantial reduction in emissions.

Apple receives patent for solar-powered electronics

According to Cnet, Apple has received a patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office for solar powered electronics.

The patent is for a system for using a solar panel to charge a variety of portable devices, including notebooks, tablets and phones. The main thrust is around converting the power from a solar panel, which could be embedded or removable, so as to be useable by the electronic devices to recharge batteries.

Patently Apple (a web site entirely devoted to Apple patents, would you believe) has lots of detail about the device and points out that it’s Apple's fourth solar powered patent.

It looks like this is a theme for device manufacturers, although it’s not new. Vodafone Essar, the Indian subsidiary of Vodafone, launched a solar-charging handset in India last year. Cnet reports that there are already a number of third-party solar chargers designed for Apple equipment, although ‘Solar charger makers say that Apple products are particularly demanding in terms of the quality of power needed to effectively use solar panels’.

The best sustainable technology services firms – according to Verdantix

Verdantix, the sustainable business analyst firm, has released a report, called Green Quadrant: Sustainable Technology Services 2011, that compares 15 global IT services firms on 49 assessment criteria. The study analysed IT service delivery capabilities for building energy efficiency, renewable energy, intelligent transport, electric vehicles, carbon and energy management software, climate change risk modelling and utility smart grid.

The Green Quadrant and details of the study can be found here, but key findings include:

• Deloitte, IBM and Logica lead the global market for sustainable technology services. This is based on a strategic commitment to sustainable business, visionary commercial leaders, deep domain expertise, big project wins and a broad portfolio.

• BT, HP and Orange Business Services leverage a solid sustainability platform. BT Global Services, HP and Orange Business Services embed sustainability into their firm’s culture, according to Verdantix, and have market leading corporate sustainability performance.

• Capgemini, CSC and Hitachi Consulting show promise in specific service lines. Capgemini in data centre energy efficiency, utility smart grid and water management, CSC in intelligent transport, climate change risk assessment, smart grid, data centres and water management and Hitachi Consulting across a broader range of service lines.

Stuart Neumann, Verdantix Industry Analyst and author of the report said “Technology services firms rooted in outmoded green IT thinking are already losing out on multi-million dollar contracts. Our research found that large multi-nationals and city leaders want IT support for new sustainability initiatives such as electric vehicle infrastructure, offshore wind farms and global carbon management systems. Technology investment in these new areas is much larger than spend on green IT projects like data centre energy efficiency and PC power management.”

 

Hmmm…

Well I agree with the general comments about the scope of green IT. In fact in a report I wrote more than two years ago I described green IT as covering:

• Carbon counting and management solutions.

• Carbon economy systems, e.g. carbon reporting, compliance and trading.

• New infrastructure/transport projects, e.g. road charging systems, public transport optimisation, etc.

• Enterprise solutions: data centres, facilities management, logistics/transport.

• Renewable energy generation and distribution, e.g. solar/wind-farm control systems.

• Climate change opportunities, such as weather monitoring and reporting, impact assessments, risk management systems, business continuity, real-time information, etc.

If I was to rewrite it today the only change I would make would be to at least mention smart grids (under renewable energy generation and distribution). I’m not sure whether the Verdantix report goes as far as covering all of the above.

And there’s the rub. This report is useful – the general points are well made and Deloitte, IBM and Logica would be at or near the top of my green IT services company choice (although not necessarily in that order). But vendor positioning depends very much on the definitions and assessment criteria employed. Some of the placings of other companies suggests a particular view of what is important, which may not be everyone’s opinion (for instance, does the assessment include how green the service delivery itself is or the ability to measure and track the benefits of the service that’s delivered?).

Stuart Neumann also said that “The sustainable business market opportunity for technology services firms is in transition. Only a handful of thought leaders globally understand where the chips will fall.” Again, I agree – but doesn’t that also undermine company assessment? Maybe there’s more detail in the full report.

One thing I very much agree with and would also emphasise is that green IT is much, much more than making IT itself greener. I would prefer to spend a lot more time writing and talking about the other aspects in my green IT list above, but even the IT services companies themselves seem to prefer to talk about data centres and PC power management.

So if you do have an news, views, comment, etc. about IT service or solution that helps businesses or economies become more sustainable or reduce their emissions, then do please tell.

GE makes moves into Green ICT markets

GE, the US ‘diversified infrastructure, finance and media’ conglomerate has been in the news recently with several announcements that emphasise the company’s intentions to be a player in the low-carbon ICT sector.

• The company has announced a new phase of its $200m ‘ecomagination’ challenge addressing home energy management. GE and its venture capital partners have announced the “Powering Your Home” Challenge, which begins today.

The first phase of ecomagination focused on ideas for building the next-generation power grid. This second phase is aimed at finding and funding new ways to improve the energy efficiency of individual households. The global challenge invites technologists, entrepreneurs and start-ups to share their best ideas and come together to build and improve the eco home of the future.

The judging panel of GE executives, academics and technologists will select five $100,000 Innovation Award winners whose ideas represent pioneering entrepreneurship and innovation. They will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through investment and other business support. If you’re interested there’s more information at http://www.ecomagination.com.

• Not that GE doesn’t have its own ideas of markets to be in. Last week it acquired UK smart meter company Remote Energy Monitoring (REM), which I’ve mentioned in previous despatches.

REM’s solutions allow consumers and utilities to better monitor and manage their energy use and come with the added advantage of being field upgradeable so that new capabilities can be added without switching out meters. REM’s metering solutions are approved by UK regulators and the acquisition gives GE a stronger European foothold around smart meters/smart grids.

“Combining Remote Energy Monitoring’s UK smart metering expertise with GE’s worldwide metering, manufacturing and smart grid leadership will expedite the rollout of this important technology, enabling the UK to lead in this area of energy management and efficiency,” said Bob Gilligan, vice president of GE’s Digital Energy business.

• GE has also acquired Lineage Power from The Gores Group. Lineage Power is a provider of high-efficiency power conversion infrastructure technology and services for the telecommunications and data centre industries. 

The deal gives GE access to the $20bn year power conversion space, where the demand for reliable, high-quality power is driven by the growth in cloud computing and mobile internet voice, video and data applications.

“According to recent studies, there will be 1.1 billion smartphones sold globally by 2013,” said Dan Heintzelman, GE Energy Services president & CEO. “Every new mobile device plugs into an infrastructure that requires an ever increasing amount of high-quality power. The growth in high-bandwidth mobile internet applications and cloud computing is accelerating that demand. A globally networked planet needs a lot of power to keep spinning. Customers want efficient, reliable means to manage that power.”

 

OK, so its arguable as to whether any of this is mainstream green ICT, but it is relevant because it’s starting to come up against the ICT domain, particularly the data centre, and new sectors of the market where they are likely to come head-to-head with ICT players, such as in home energy management. GE may well be looking for ICT partners in these markets, but this is a powerful player and it will be in the driving seat for most deals, with increasing in-house expertise of its own.

By the way, congratulations to Remote Energy Monitoring. It’s nice to report some good news on a company based in Tring - the same small town that’s the home to The Green IT Report.

UK IT industry introduces a data centre energy efficiency award

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT (and yes, that’s the actual name of the UK organisation, not a description) has introduced the Certified Energy Efficiency Datacentre Award (CEEDA). It’s designed to provide evidence that an organisation has implemented best practice in data centre efficiency, confirmed by an independent CEEDA-certified assessor.

The Institute (as we shall refer to it) was heavily involved in developing the EU Code of Conduct for data centres via the Best Practice Working Group. CEEDA goes further by defining a number of additional performance criteria and certifying compliance.

It’s in two parts. The first is a Bronze, Silver or Gold award that provides recognition of progress in maximising the energy efficiency of facilities. The second part is the provision of externally verifiable evidence of that progress, which will enable the validation and comparison of performance of different data centres across a range of industries and sites. The process assures that each of the criteria measured is based on the actual status of the facility at the time of inspection.

 

The assessment measures performance against six key areas:

• Data Centre Utilisation

• IT Equipment and Services

• Cooling

• Data Centre Power Equipment

• Data Centre Building

• Monitoring

The bronze award recognises concerted effort to implement best practice within their data centre. The silver goes to those that have implemented the majority of the best practices and are committed to further improvement. And the gold award is for those that have implemented the majority of best practices and have achieved an annualised PUE (Power Usage Efficiency – ratio of total facility energy use to that used by the IT equipment) of less than 1.5.

The Institute has a pool of independent, trained and qualified assessors, each with a strong background in data centre build, design, operation and ICT. The assessors will visit sites, make an assessment, produce a detailed report of the findings and an action plan, and will make an award recommendation to the Institute if appropriate.

The assessor must see sufficient evidence to verify that best practice has been implemented. This is different from the EU Code of Conduct process where an organisation can commit to implement a best practice up to 36 months into the future.

 

Sounds good. It’s a real, on-the-ground assessment from people who know what they’re doing. There’s also on-going assessments every 2-3 years to ensure continued commitment. It’ll be interesting to see the uptake.

Earth Networks to provide much needed climate change data

AWS Convergence Technologies, the company behind WeatherBug, which I commented on back in November, is moving beyond global weather observations into more extensive environmental monitoring capabilities. Renamed Earth Networks, it’s aiming to become a major provider of data on the overall health of the planet.

In collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Earth Networks is initially deploying a greenhouse gas network that will observe and measure atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane gases. By combining that data with its existing global weather information the company will be able to provide detailed global environmental data. Over time, the company will implement additional sensor networks that measure other environmental factors such as air quality, water quality, wind and pollution.

Earth Networks will initially deploy 100 GHG observing systems worldwide, beginning with 50 in the continental US, followed by deployments in Europe and beyond. The density will allow it to track localised GHG emissions and changes.

The network will enable the measurement, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas levels and emissions to support international and regional climate policy initiatives. The data will be made available to the research community, policy makers and private industry, so companies will be better able to make business decisions that have environmental dependencies.

At the same time, Earth Networks is establishing the Earth Networks Center for Climate Research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego.

It’s certainly something that’s needed. Coincidentally, a recent study of the financial services industry showed that the current availability of, and access to, climate change information is inadequate, both in format and quality.

The study was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and was based on an international survey by the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and the Sustainable Business Institute (SBI), Germany. The full report is here.

A total of 60 institutions took part and the study confirmed the increasing financial relevance of climate change and the fact that financial institutions need better information on changing weather patterns. Financial service providers and their customers are already affected by the impacts of climate change, e.g. by extreme weather events, and insurers, reinsurers, lenders and asset managers expect these kinds of risks to increase in the future.

 

 

Respondents expressed a strong need for better access and availability of climate information to enhance climate change-related risk management. ‘Given that financial institutions are able to influence their clients and investee companies across all sectors of the economy and throughout geographies, they can play a key role in accelerating the implementation of adaptation measures by the private sector more broadly’.

‘The better the knowledge and expertise regarding climate change and its uncertainties though, the better these risks can be calculated. This can be crucial not only to the performance of individual businesses and financial institutions, but to the entire economic tissue of affected regions as well as the social well-being it underpins’.

 

As I’ve said before, climate change and weather monitoring are going to be an increasingly significant part of green ICT, with data fed directly into business planning and process applications. The downside to global business is that it is vulnerable to global disruption, which is what climate change will bring (if it isn’t to blame already).

Guardian Sustainable Business Awards – time is running out

Just a plug for UK readers for the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards. The Guardian wants to hear about initiatives that have driven real sustainability change in organisations.

There are a number of categories; Communicating sustainability, Engaging employees, Social impact, Biodiversity, Supply chain, Carbon, Waste & recycling, Water, Energy, ICT and Built environment. 

Within ICT the judges are looking for “Cutting-edge approaches that fully capitalise on the capabilities of ICT to reduce business' impact and drive low-carbon transition”.

Winners will feature in a special supplement on guardian.co.uk and the team with the best initiative will be invited to attend a 'winner's day' at the Guardian.

All entries meeting the awards criteria will be added to the new Guardian Sustainable Business best practice exchange - an online database to share sustainability ideas and drive progress.

Full details at Guardian Sustainable Business Awards – entry closes on February 7th, so not much time left.

 

While you’re on the web site you could also check out my musings, which is by way of saying that I have an interest in the Guardian Sustainable Business web site.

‘New’ carbon management software solutions in the UK

Following on from yesterday’s comments on carbon emissions management solutions, it’s certainly true that there’s no let-up in the companies joining the market. I’ve come across a couple of new (at least to me) companies in the UK recently:

• ManageCO2 (the company and product name) has apparently been successful in Ireland and launched into the UK on Monday this week with what it claims is the UK’s first all-in-one solution for carbon and energy management.

The cloud-based solution can track and report on a company’s international carbon footprint and has an energy management module that allows for real-time energy monitoring of electricity, gas and oil consumption.

Adrian Fleming, Managing Director of ManageCO2, commented, “We’ve spent a number of years developing the software, ensuring not only that reporting complies with international standards and Government reporting regulations, including the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, but also making sure that it is simple and easy for businesses to use”.

A quick look at their web site (www.manageco2.com) shows it also has some impressive IT, environmental and energy experience in its management.

• Another company new to me is Loreus. It’s a spin-out from Nottingham Trent University founded by two leading environmental experts. It’s been around for a quite a while, with over 700 public and private sector organisations using its environmental services - software, consultancy and training.

The main carbon management offering is Loreus Carbon Manager, which is described as a web-based, software tool for measuring, monitoring and reporting an organisation’s carbon footprint. The solution is in line with the UK’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (Scopes 1, 2 & 3) and the ISO 14064 international standard.

Interestingly, it’s also part of a suite of four carbon management software tools, which also includes Task Manager, to set and manage targets and tasks for reducing carbon emissions, Document Manager, which can control and store documents associated with managing carbon accounting, and Carbon Management Training, to help train staff about carbon management, standards, etc. The different tools can be purchased separately or together. (The company has a similar suite of environmental management system – EMS - solutions to address environmental performance).

 

This is a crowded market and companies will have to work hard to stay in it for the long term. Much of the basic business is going to go to accounting/ERP-like software providers who will provide sufficient functionality for many organisations. But I’m increasingly convinced that there will be a large niche sector for more complex requirements, such as large, international, diverse companies, or for industry-specific solutions that better fit individual companies. (There will also be a need for the surrounding business support, which makes the Loreus suite of products sound interesting).

The market will inevitably become more sophisticated over time with more detailed requirements and that’s the part that these ‘pure-play’ software providers will be fighting for.

Carbon footprinting uncertainty – an IBM rack-mounted server

Back in December researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s Green Design Institute released a paper with the title of ‘Uncertainty and Variability in Carbon Footprinting for Electronics: Case Study of an IBM Rack-mount Server.’

The research was aimed at better understanding the uncertainty in assessing carbon footprinting through a case study of a complex product - the IBM rack-mounted server. The view was that measuring a carbon footprint is not as precise an exercise as might be thought and often assumed in policy making and labelling.

Full details are in the paper, which is here, but the research found that uncertainty ranges from around +15% for the production and delivery phase to around +35% for cradle to grave carbon footprint. With the limitations in data, the paper believes the true uncertainty is much larger.

In production, relatively few components contributed to most of the uncertainty, although the report pointed out that delivery via air transport was an important factor and varied considerably between different final assembly sites and delivery locations. By contrast, the ‘use’ phase of a server represented around 94% of the uncertainty of the server’s total product carbon footprint. As Christopher Weber, Assistant Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon who wrote the paper put it; “It is impossible to know with certainty how and for how long a product will be used. On top of this, variability in the electricity mixes of different markets lead to vastly different impacts of using the product similarly in different places”.



Within the limitations of available data, the report concluded that there is a 15% uncertainty around carbon footprinting of the production phase, 25% uncertainty in the delivery phase and 50% uncertainty in the use phase.

The paper concluded that averaging the carbon impact can be very misleading, particularly for delivery and use of products. “The use phase in turn is not only geographically varying, but also an inherently prospective, scenario-­‐based calculation with deep uncertainties dependent upon how a product’s use phase compares to designed lifetime and use profile. Further, because the use phase dominates the life cycle of this product, this scenario uncertainty was dominant and is likely to be so for many energy-­‐using products. When one considers that the exact same product sold in different markets has a +50% variability in product carbon footprint due to electricity mix alone, it becomes clear that simple weighted averages are inappropriate to communicate the variation in use phase emissions to customers”.


There are a lot of general figures bandied around about the relative emissions of ICT equipment in manufacture and use and this paper puts some of the issues in context. Whilst there may be more than ten times the quantity of emissions generated in use than in production, the uncertainty in the use phase is enormous. Minimising emissions in use could easily save as much, or even more, than those generated in production.

For me it highlights two aspects. Firstly, if you are serious about assessing the overall carbon footprint of products you use then you have to do it yourself. Using standard manufacturer estimates is not enough if, for example, they don’t even account for differences in delivery distances and methods.

Secondly, carbon assessments need to be tailored for the industry of the user and the products they use - although you can use standard IT equipment estimates if you use very little IT. For example, Envido recently launched CarbonTrack, a tool to measure carbon emissions from the advertising industry. It’s claimed to be the first and only tool designed to calculate the carbon footprint of advertising campaigns. There are an increasing number of tools like this aimed at different industry sectors.

Both points highlight the fact that there continues to be a need for more sophisticated carbon management software solutions.

Greenpeace publishes annual green electronics survey

You’ve probably seen the regular coverage of the quarterly Greenpeace ’Guide to Greener Electronics‘, which ranks manufacturers on overall corporate policies and practices, on these pages. By contrast, Greenpeace also has an annual survey that consists of an in-depth evaluation of the products that the manufacturers themselves considered to be their greenest. For the last couple of years the report has been released at the Consumer Electronics Show, which has just ended in Las Vegas.

For this latest version, in June 2010 Greenpeace asked 21
companies to submit the greenest products that would be on the market by November 1, 2010. Each company was allowed to submit three products per category and the highest-scoring device was included in the report. In all 18 companies submitted products. Those that declined were Apple and Philips (it’s not clear who the third one was). In any case Greenpeace assessed Philips’ Econova TV and Apple’s Macbook Pro MC374 to see how they would have performed.

Product categories were desktop, notebook and netbook computers, mobile phones and smart phones, LCD and plasma screen televisions and LCD computer monitors. Products were assessed on four broad criteria:

• Use of hazardous chemical substances.

• Power consumption of the products. Products were assessed by comparing them with the EPA’s Energy Star standards - the more a product exceeded the standards, the more points were awarded.

• Product lifecycle - such as the percentage of recycled plastic used in the product, the length of warranty and the availability of replacement parts.

• Innovation and marketing earned points for data on the energy taken to produce a product, the visibility of the product on company websites, other features, etc.

 

And the winners were:

Desktop Computers:

Notebook Computers:

Netbook Computers

Monitors:

Mobile phones:

Smart Phones:

 

There’s much more detail in the full survey report, called Towards Green Electronics, but Greenpeace had three main findings.  Firstly, there has been a significant reduction in the use of hazardous chemicals in these products. Secondly, almost all products met or exceeded the current Energy Star standards, although companies are putting much more effort into improving the energy efficiency of products rather than assessing and reducing the embedded energy from manufacture. Thirdly, lifecycle management is still the weakest point, i.e. the ability for products to be recycled, take-back practices and marketing efforts to prevent fast obsolescence of products.

So overall the news is not too bad, although with much room for improvement – the variations in scores between manufacturers shows how much improvement is possible. Greenpeace has also included a ‘Possible product’ score in each category which show what could be achieved by combining the highest scores allocated in the various category assessments.

But as Greenpeace points out, at least companies are becoming more transparent in the amount and type of product information they provide to customers – if only Apple and Philips would take part!

A universal mobile phone charger is coming to Europe soon

The good news is that a universal mobile phone charger is likely to be available in Europe in the near future thanks to efforts by the European Commission.

The EC put pressure on Europe’s mobile phone manufacturers to agree to adopt a universal charger for mobile phones and also asked the standardisation organisations CEN-CENELEC and ETSI to develop European standards for the common charger.

The standards bodies have now come up with the harmonised standards and compatible phones should be available shortly. The hope is that other countries will follow in adopting the standard.

The bad news is that the universal charger is a micro-USB connector that will be available on data-enabled mobile phones only, i.e. smart phones that can be connected to a computer.

According to a report in Euractiv, the Commission’s view was that there was no point in applying the standard to other mobile phones because most are expected to be replaced soon by the more advanced handsets.

So at the moment the ‘universal’ charger is applicable to just a quarter of the European market and most consumers won’t get the benefit.

Seems to me it’s a huge lost opportunity. It’s a bit ironic that the climate saving benefit from using a universal mobile phone charger is predicated on three quarters of European consumers going out and buying new phones!

Organisations come together to promote better CSR actions and reporting

As the need for business reporting on CSR grows (see yesterday’s post on emissions reporting in the US) so does the guidance on how to conduct businesses responsibility and to report on sustainability performance. The latest move is a partnership between the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Announced in December, the partnership will bring together the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises cover all major areas of business ethics and are addressed to all the activities of multinational enterprises operating in or from the 42 adhering countries. GRI provides a widely-used framework for producing sustainability reports with a vision of making disclosure of economic, environmental and social performance as commonplace and comparable as financial reporting.

Basically, the GRI provides guidance on how to measure sustainability performance and the OECD provides the means to assess such performance. The Memorandum of Understanding between the organisations establishes a three year programme to encourage companies to use both the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. The agreement also outlines the way GRI and OECD can work together to leverage the common ground between the two organisations.

 

Well the more we have universal standards for CSR/sustainability assessments and reporting the better, since complexity and confusion can only slow down adoption. It also means that IT solutions designed to help companies manage and report data and information become universally applicable and simpler to use (which means cheaper).

The IT market thrives on business complexity, particularly when driven by compliance legislation, but widespread legislation around CSR reporting still seems a long way off. The simpler CSR reporting is the more likely it is to be adopted voluntarily.

The EPA takes up the US climate change regulation initiative

There’s been a lot of false starts around climate change regulation in the US over the last year, so here’s a quick update.

Back in July 2010 the Democrats abandoned attempts to get a comprehensive climate change bill through the US senate. The original plan was for cap-and-trade legislation to reduce US carbon emissions by 17% by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, with 42% cuts by 2030 and 83% by 2050. However, even a watered-down version, addressing the electricity sector only rather than all large polluters, failed to get the required support from 60 Senators.

The focus has subsequently switched to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use its powers under the US Clean Air Act to control greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, on January 1 2011 an EPA permit system to control greenhouse gas emissions from power plants came into effect (see here for details).

However, even this process has been bitterly fought. According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the oil, gas, and coal industries spent $543m on lobbying Congress in 2009 and the first two quarters of 2010, and the largest trade association working to defeat clean energy and global warming legislation is the Chamber of Commerce, which spent nearly $190m. (We reported in October 2009 that Apple had left the organisation over the issue and urged others to follow suit).

Legal proceedings against the EPA’s move also continue in a number of US States. While most have, in the meantime, complied, Texas has refused. A decision is expected soon.

 

What happens with climate change legislation is important for green ICT because the US is such a large (and innovative) ICT market. Back in 2009 it looked like we might have a green ICT ‘Big Bang’ with prospects of international legislation agreed at Copenhagen and US federal legislation in the offing. It didn’t happen (and now never will), but legislation in the US will still have a significant knock-on impact.

I’ll keep you posted.

A Swedish researcher has developed a website carbon footprinting application

A researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Communications (CESC) based at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, has developed an application to calculate the carbon footprint of individual websites.

It’s called Greenalytics and matches web statistics with environmental data to show the emissions generated by the infrastructure behind a website. It’s effectively a mash-up, compiling information from various sources to calculate a result in real time. It uses statistics from Google Analytics to measure how many visitors a site has and environmental data on electricity consumption from servers, routers and from users, from research carried out by KTH.

In fact the application is running live at http://www.greenalytics.org/sites, showing the total emissions for a number of Swedish web sites for the year to date. Apparently KTH’s own site, which is among the top 100 in Sweden, produced seven tonnes of carbon dioxide last year, corresponding to a climate impact of 40,000 kilometres by car or 70 hours of air travel. So far this year the figure stands at 58.0 kg of CO2 (this is clearly a year-to-date figure – just three days - rather than the last 12 months as it says on the site).

Jorge Zapico, the researcher who produced Greenalytics, had some tips on how to reduce a website’s climate emissions; ”The electricity source for the server is the most important factor that can easily be influenced. Choose a server located in a country with a climate-friendly mix of electricity sources such as Sweden. If the server is powered by electricity from renewable sources, it is even better. It is also important to build light websites that do not need to load heavy content”.

 

An interesting project because of the complexity it needs to deal with. On the user side, the Google data provides the number, location and duration of visit and the CO2 is calculated by aggregating the impact per country - the total time visitors from that country spent on the site multiplied by how much electricity their computer consumes multiplied by the electricity factor (how much carbon dioxide is emitted per electricity unit) of that country. But there are also built-in assumptions and generalisations, such as the mix of devices accessing the site and the use of annual, national emissions factors for energy used. On the infrastructure side, emissions are calculated based on the energy used per unit of data transmitted, which itself includes a number of other assumptions and is in any case a generic figure.

It does show how complex carbon footprinting can be, particularly in a world of cloud computing and on-line business. But if organisations are to be required to take responsibility for their emissions, it’s an issue that has to be faced.