Why Green IT Is Not An Election Issue

Green technology is supposed to be key to the transition to a new economy, but so far Britain’s politicians have scarcely mentioned it in the General Election campaign.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have said most about it, with manifestos that promise the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in green industries which, they say, will be a main lever to get Britain out of the recession. For their part, the Conservatives have had very little to say on the subject.

Big promises

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised that there will be 400,000 more green jobs by 2015, including technology posts, in a Labour green manifesto, ‘A green future’, launched this week, which promises “a high-tech, low-carbon economy”. Labour also promises that 40 percent of energy will come from low-carbon sources by 2020, creating a big market for low carbon and environmental technologies that simultaneously boosts the economy and cuts the country’s carbon footprint.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, have promised to make the UK carbon neutral by 2050, in their own Policies for the Environment document. They plan to spend £3.1 billion in the first year and expect to deliver 100,000 jobs.

The Labour pledges are backed by a £2 billion ‘Green investment bank’ announced in this year’s budget, and include a fair bit of technology. This includes a national network of electric car charging points, with half a million electric vehicles by 2020, and steps to help householders finance moves towards greener energy, and ways to entice low-carbon energy providers into the grid.

Labour also reiterated pre-existing promises to put smart meters in all homes by 2020. That promise is now extended to link the UK’s smart grid into a European ‘supergrid’.

It’s no surprise to find the Conservatives aren’t also making that promise, nor are they talking about the other European-level ideas which Labour is promoting. For instance, Labour is committed to talks with the EU designed to move the whole EU budget further in favour of spending on low carbon technologies.

It may be more of a surprise to find the Green Party laying into what sound like sensible environmental moves, but it seems Labour’s ideas don’t go far enough for the Greens.

“It’s classic too-little-too-late Labour policy,” said a spokesperson. The Greens reckon there’s a million jobs out there with enough investment put in, and say “Labour’s eco-policy is a pale shadow of this.”

But will they work?

Beside the party political points, there may be a bigger issue – the basic technological feasibility of it all. Some parts of the puzzle may be pushed out so quickly they go wrong, while others may run aground on user indifference.

At the Infosec event this week in London, security expert IOActive predicted that rushing a smart grid out to every home in the country is a security incident waiting to happen. IOactive’s CEO Joshua Pennell knows what he’s talking about: last year, IOActive created a worm which could spread from one smart meter to another using wireless networks.

Other objections may be more simple: do users actually want it? Given a smart metered house, will they make use of the chance to cut energy bills? Our experience suggests not. Fiddling with data from a meter, and switches through the house, is likely to be more work than most people want to do.

Business as usual

The same goes for data centres, which use a significant amount of the country’s electricity. Even the technically motivated managers of those installations seem to be reluctant to use the tools at their disposal. Last week in our Efficient Data Centres webinar, we found that the majority of users prefer to rely on their own knowledge in making their servers more efficient, instead of referring to other sources such as the highly-regarded EU Code of Conduct on Efficient Data Centres.

Previous comments on the subject have suggested to us that the Code of Conduct won’t get very far until it is mandated in some form – something which we can’t see any political party pushing through at the moment. Similarly, initiatives like a carbon tax are not likely to go further than the current CRC regulation, given the backlash since the Copenhagen summit.

With the parties focused on not fumbling in TV debates, and concerned with the spin cycle of social media and online canvassing, we don’t think there will be any more long term thinking coming out. In one week. we’ll be voting, and after that, Green IT will have to carry on as before.