Copenhagen Summit Slammed For Ignoring IT

The UN Climate Conference in December is in danger of ignoring the potential of ICT to reduce our production of greenhouse gases, according to the ITU and ICT spokespeople.

Heads of state and officials will meet in Copenhagen on 7 to 18 December for COP15, the latest in a series of meetings that began in Kyoto in 1992, to define targets for greenhouse gas emissions. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will be going, following campaigns including a flashmob outside Parliament.

IT champions speaking through the ITU, have criticised the COP15 meeting’s meeting’s draft text, for ignoring the potential for ICT to reduce climate change effects.

“We need IT on the COP15 agenda,” said Catalina McGregor, founder of the UK government’s Green ICT delivery unit (pictured, right). “The funding door may close if it is not there.”

COP15 will call for massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and will agree on funding to help developing nations – and the rest of the world – to transition to a low-carbon economy. Without an awareness of the role of IT, these plans will ignore the actual methods we need to adopt to reduce emissions, said McGregor, at the Green IT Expo in London this week.

In talks before COP15 in Barcelona last week, Malcolm Johnson (pictured above, left) of the the ITU argued that IT should be given a leading role in driving a change in industrial activity: “ICTs are the only tool powerful enough to serve as the ‘circuit-breaker’ to our current climate-hostile strategies, and to effect the true paradigm shift needed to make a difference,” said an ITU statement which cited smart grids, universal chargers and videoconferencing as ways in which ICT can reduce the emissions of the whole of industry.

Others are looking for stronger regulations of IT itself: “There should be a campaign about this,”said Sumir Karayi,chief executive of power management company 1E. “With no clear directives coming from UK government on green data centre strategies, the EPA still finalising its Energy Star for Servers ratings and the EU Data Centre Code of Conduct still being a voluntary ‘opt in’ set of guidelines a year since its unveiling, it seems that organisations are lacking the direction that they are looking for in terms of green IT strategy and the road to low carbon business.”

McGregor and the other campaigners have booked a slot on 16 December in the COP15 teleconference programme, set up by Cisco to lobby for greater awareness of the power of IT in the COP15 proceedings

However, others commented that specific tools to reduce emissions may be beyond the scope of the Copenhagen talks. “Don’t you think they’ve got enough on their plate?” asked analyst David Tebbutt of Freeform Dynamics. Copenhagen is about negotiating the global targets, not about how to reach them, he said: “It’s about targets not solutions.”

Photo credit: Decisive Media/TelecomTV