Did The Recession Kill Green IT?

Will CRC drive green IT?

As government’s compulsory CRC carbon scheme comes into play, will it affect IT? “The laudable aim of CRC is to bring a much wider group of companies into carbon trading than is covered by the European EMS scheme.”

“Any company using more than 6000 MWhours a year of electricity will be affected,” he explained. “If your electricity bill is above half a million a year you should be brought in. By my reckoning that will cover most commercial data centre operators, and a good number of enterprises.” (it looks to us as if Cambridge University will be on the borderline)

Companies falling under CRC will try to reduce their electricity to get to the top half of the league table. “If your data centre uses 500kW to 1MW, you will set out to decrease it – that will have quite a powerful effect on data centres and energy use.”

Some have suggested that the imminent arrival of CRC might some users delay their data centre upgrades till it is in place. “I’m often asked, because CRC ranks you according to improvements you make after the scheme starts, will it make sense to hold off making improvements?”said Lawrence. “The answer is that from a financial point of view, you are better off making savings as soon as you can.”

That is because, CRC penalties are way smaller than electricity costs. “The actual financial penalties with CRC are insignificant alongside the actual electricity bill: the cost of carbon is way smaller than the cost of electricity,” said Lawrence. The major effect of the law is to concentrate the minds – to make it worthwhile to account for your electricity use.”

Other impacts of CRC could include the possible cancellation of BT’s wind farm, but could CRC drive large users to outsourcing their IT into he cloud where it doesn’t count at all?

“CRC is very specifically aimed at your direct energy consumption, so it is perfectly practical to escape CRC by moving work outside the company or even abroad,” said Lawrence. This effectively cleans carbon off the company balance sheet and shifts it abroad. “There are people who think this will send the wrong message to the data centre sector – but I personally think the price difference isn’t great enough. You would not outsource just for CRC savings.”

Time for carbon management software

Are there any new opportunities in Green IT? “There’s clearly a major opportunity for carbon management software. That’s going to be something we will see emerge into the market,” Lawrence said. “There’s a debate in the software industry: is there room for a new category, or will it be part of ERP?”

Gartner has identified that UK companies are not prepared for carbon trading.

Next: Energy management. Where do you start saving power – servers or desktops?