Green IT Support in Resolving Environmental Issues - Report Example

? Green IT support in resolving environmental issues The present global financial and energy crisis, coupled with an everincreasing sense of urgency by the citizens, have stimulated businesses, governments, and NGO’s worldwide to consider incorporating greener practices in all facets of the society. Overall, there has been an unprecedented increase on the scale of concern regarding climate change and environment sustainability issues. The increasing global concern regarding the environment has brought to the fore concerns regarding the carbon emissions and energy wastefulness associated with the IT systems. The adoption of Green approach to IT encompasses a broad range of activities that all possess the same objective: efficiency. Going Green has in recent years gained significance in recent years for diverse reasons, including revival in attention to environmental concerns and the confirmed cost savings that accompany green initiatives. This paper highlights the significance of Green IT in addressing the close connection between the environmental, economic, and social concerns, especially in reconciling the planet’s environmental needs with development needs. The paper concludes that, despite the rebound effects cited to downplay the effects of Green IT, Green IT is indeed a perfect means of resolving environmental issues that organizations face today. Green IT support in resolving environmental issues Introduction Environmental and energy conservation issues have recently gained topicality within the global business arena. This has largely been fuelled by the reality of increasing energy costs combined with growing concerns over global warming climate crisis, plus other environmental issues. Green IT may refer to three critical areas of research; IT efficiency in terms of energy, management of the lifecycle of IT that is eco-compatible, and IT as a phenomenon that enables green governance (Barney 1996, p.50). The design, manufacture, deployment, function, utilization, and disposal of information technology bear significant ramifications for the environment. Up to 70% of CO2 emissions form IT comes from data centers (Hart 1997, p.67). This can be minimized by virtualization altering from “always on” to “always available,” and minimal consumption equipment. Green Approach and Computing Green IT activities are directed at “greenization,” or reduction of emissions through the use of IT technologies. IT managers can play a significant role in aiding their companies’ implement a green approach towards the agency's computing since they bear a rewarding impact on both environmental and fiscal concerns. There are two critical roles played by the IT solutions, which include saving energy form IT devices themselves (of IT) and saving energy by IT (by IT). Green IT is characterized into two categories, namely: enhancing energy efficiency of IT equipment (PC, Server, Storage), datacenter, parts (semiconductor) and electronics (TV, DVD, Refrigerator); and enhancing energy efficiency of the society by employment of IT solutions in industries (enhancing the efficiency of a production process, in business (such as use of web meeting), in households (online shopping), and transportation (eco-drive) (Sharma 2000, p.682). The implementation of Green IT has been critical in mitigating the rising energy costs and environmental damage. Green IT solutions address a wide range of environmental issues targeted at gaining sustainability. Addressing Environmental Concerns by Use of Green IT In the contemporary society, the challenges to the environment are concise. They include the urge for clean water and air; reasonable and consistent delivery of energy; reduced fossil fuels supply; climate change and its inferences for future generations. As a result, energy and climate related issues have become top issues for some corporation’s strategic agenda (Molla 2009, p.2). Green IT solutions can aid clients to reduce costs and systematically minimize energy, water, e-waste, and carbon emissions. Climate change is increasingly becoming a topical issue of debate and lobbying within the political world. Issues centering on sustainability are increasingly getting associated with global warming. In the light of such concerns, there is an enhanced focus in corporations and governments to move towards embracing green strategies within their business processes. Green or eco-sustainability infers meeting the needs of present generations devoid of compromising the ability of future generations to have their needs met. This encompasses pollution prevention at the end of a product’s use to reduce the environmental foot print during the application of clean technologies, and development of environmentally friendly competencies (Uddin and Rahman 2011, p.70). IT, being a cause to the overall problem of increased carbon footprint (2% of the global carbon emissions), is now conceived to play an essential role in availing solutions to this challenge (Hart 1997, p.68). The immense power required to run and maintain data centers accounts to close to a quarter of global carbon emissions from IT. Moreover, the over-utilization of organizational energy resources has led to more carbon emissions. Gartner estimates that the ICT sector produces 2% of the global carbon emissions, which places the sector at a similar level as the aviation industry. Data centers, in this case, account for close to 23% of the ICT carbon emissions compared to 40% from monitors and PCs (Gartner 2008, par.2). An overview of Green IT The construct of IT is quite broad and can be approached from an IT infrastructure perspective. IT research distinguishes between the IT technical infrastructure and IT human and managerial capability infrastructure. The linkage between IT infrastructure and eco-sustainability perspectives yields the following definition of Green IT; Green IT infers an organization’s capability to employ environmental sustainability criteria such as pollution prevention, product stewardship, utilization of clean technologies) to the design, construction, sourcing, exploitation and e-waste disposal. Green IT (Green Information Technology) comprises of two things; minimizing the negative impact of IT on the environment and employing IT to solve some of the environmental issues (Hart 1997, p.69). These goals can be regarded as two areas at opposite poles (Barney 1996, p.50). For instance, IT aids entities in aspects such as climate change modeling or solving environment issues in carbon sequestration. Energy Efficiency: The Core Goal of Green IT Energy efficiency programs pursue maximizing energy use and computing efficiency within the IT infrastructure and data center to minimize energy consumption, electricity utility costs, and associated green house emissions (Sharma 2000, p.684). Green procurement initiatives spotlight purchasing computing equipment that is highly energy efficient and environmentally friendly and incorporates programs directed at extending equipment useful life, recycle, and involving suppliers who manifest a commitment to minimizing hazardous materials within their manufacturing, packaging, and industrial waste management programs (Bansal and Roth 2000, p.718). Green IT mainly addresses issues such as the designing of energy efficient chips and disc drives; implementation of power management software; minimizing the energy consumption of data centers; utilization of renewable energy sources; minimization of electronic waste with the expiry of computing and telecommunications equipment, and the administration of computers remotely to minimize emissions. Majority of Green IT or Green ICT discussion seeks to address issues regarding energy efficiency grounded in the assumption that more energy-efficient technologies will significantly yield a minimization of energy consumption, and subsequently CO2 emissions (Molla 2009, p.3). However, this assumption is frequently challenged by historical evidence citing the rebound effect, whose occurrence and size differs significantly. Literature Review This paper explores the significance of shifting to Green IT support in resolving environmental issues and argues that Green IT is indeed a significant initiative critical to mitigating environmental issues. However, there is yet to be a dependable definition for the term “Green IT.” There are four critical elements to be put into consideration when defining Green IT, namely: 1) responding to the challenges associated with IT infrastructure; 2) IT contribution to minimizing environmental impacts of business IT activities; 3) IT support in pursuing environmentally sustainable business practices, and IT role in low carbon economy (Info~Tech 2008, p.2). Green IT can be defined as one of the most useful and effective employment of information and communication technology in guaranteeing the environmental sustainability of organizations supply chain and operations, and environmental efficacy of the organization’s related resources, products, and services, entirely all through the product's life cycles. Green IT (Information technology) has overtime emerged into an active research area within the information systems discipline. A significant gap exists within the Green IT research literature centers on the lack of an applicable, theoretical framework applicable to aiding entities in assessing their capability to embrace Green IT initiatives, and executing them through contemporary technological means such as virtualization. As the evidence centering on the growing climate change crisis mounts, organizations are presented with the option of having to attain more with limited supply of resources (Sharma 2000, p.685). This necessitates a growing need for practical information to aid organizations utilize their IT more efficiently. Green IT: Strategies, Practices, and Initiatives Green IT (revolving around green strategies, practices, and initiatives undertaken by various organizations) has recently emerged as an active area of research. However, the extant Green IT literature heavily relies on case studies, anecdotes, and surveys of present practices, which renders the literature to be fragmented and scattered. According to Info~Tech (2008, p.3), companies generate useful and lasting value through a number of measures such as cutting costs, minimizing risks, enhancing revenues, and creating strong brands, as well as by embracing environmental thinking into their business strategies. According to a 2009 Green IT report that surveyed 426 companies within North America and a sum of 1052 worldwide, close to 86% of the companies surveyed stated that it was essential that IT organization implements Green IT initiatives. The IT report also revealed that 97% of the sampled companies were at least contemplating on Green IT strategy. Similarly, the report also revealed that crosscutting and social responsibilities concerns shape two main factors driving Green IT initiatives (Info~Tech 2008, p.4). UN’s agenda 21 program, for pursuing sustainable development, avails a comprehensive blueprint of action to be implemented at the world stage, national level, and at a local level by organizations affiliated to the UN, governments, plus others to protect the environment. In 2009, the European Commission called on the IT industry to pursue enhancements of their efforts to cut emissions by 15% by 2020. This is meant to establish a shared platform for analyzing registered energy-efficiency metrics and industry-wide green house gas cutting targets (Uddin and Rahman 2011, p.72). At the same time, companies are evaluating how best to implement Green IT initiatives at a time when shrinking IT budgets and increased environmental compliance requirements (socially responsible, environmentally friendly, and fiscally IT investments and practices) are the norm. Green IT and Sustainability Sustainability is an ever-increasing theme within organizations and has gained topicality as organizations seek ways to enhance their ecological footprint while minimizing their operational costs. In pursuit of sustainability, organizations have adopted concise strategies for environmental stewardship and efficient energy utilization. Some of the environmental strategies include minimizing overall power consumption, pursuing extension of the useful life of their products and availing equipment recovery and recycling services (Molla 2009, p.4). It is estimated that IT contributes to about 2% of the overall challenge of high carbon footprint. The pursuit for green industry promotes sustainable patterns of production and consumption to guarantee that corporations institute patterns that are resource and energy efficient, non-polluting and safe, low-carbon and low waste, and which produce products that are responsibly managed throughout their lifecycle. For a majority of enterprises, green IT strategy is concerned with the greening of the IT infrastructure whereby newer and better technologies are controlled to minimize energy requirements. Environmental considerations can be established within the established policy frameworks, amid the operational routines, outlined by the in IT design features and information systems (technical infrastructure), in addition to conventions revolving around IT, human infrastructure and administrative deliberations and practices (Molla 2009, p.6). The Transformative Effect of Green IT The suggestion that IT and the related telecommunications have transformed the way in which businesses operate and individuals lead their lives is not an exaggeration. In fact, Green IT encourages and facilitates Greener behavior by the organization’s employees, clients, and suppliers. This is attained through diverse initiatives such as awareness campaigns and continuous education, as well as legislation. Implementing a Green IT policy can aid organizations in guaranteeing the sustainability of the resources utilized by the organization’s IT systems (Hart 1997, p.71). In their zeal to minimize their carbon footprint, enterprises are rigorously implementing green initiatives such as paperless offices, e-commuting, introducing intelligent energy management systems, installing energy efficient devices, and making buildings intelligent. E-waste management is also another significant component of IT. Presently environmentally- aware enterprises are increasingly engaging themselves in lifecycle assessment of all their products vis-a-vis environment concerns. The constant assessment of IT resources aids enterprises to gauge carbon footprint of the products that the organizations consume and own (Nunn 2007, p.2). Green IT: Energy Efficiency and Power Management Practices A number of companies, today, are pursuing Green IT programs to attain the set objectives such as enhancing energy efficiency and power management practices, enhancing hardware utilization, minimizing life-cycle costs, and pursuing means to cut down on computer waste. The significant areas of activity fall mainly into three categories; energy efficiency programs (maximizing energy use and incorporating efficiency in the IT infrastructure and data centre levels aimed at reducing energy consumption), power consumption (this category encompasses efficient approaches to power conservation by a combination of solutions, approaches, and  processes designed to avail solutions power and cooling efficiency) and cooling, which encompasses leveraging local climates and employing chilled loop and free cooling strategies (Bose and Luo 2011, p.39). IT organizations can minimize energy consumption via cooling strategies. These solutions encompass energy efficiency programs, minimizing electronic waste, virtualization, telecommuting, remote administration, and green power generation (Nunn 2007, p.4). Green IT: Enhancing Competitiveness The greening of corporations has over the years become an essential determinant of economic competitiveness and sustainable growth. Most competitive-minded organizations are presently seeking to create a dynamic infrastructure that congregates business and IT infrastructure to work concurrently to attain enhanced levels of productivity and business value. One of key facilitators to attaining this end is the virtualization process. Software virtualization shapes one of the common options that companies adopt to enhance server utilization and minimize energy costs (Melville 2010, p.3). Virtualization aids enterprises to lower power and cooling consumption by reducing the number of physical machines server it needs. Virtualization platforms can also be fashioned to run across multiple collections of interlinked physical computers, and storage gadgets devices designed to generate an entire virtual infrastructure. Automated power management solutions are presently available that can implement corporate strategies by reporting and automatically structuring of power management across diverse settings as per the established criteria. In creating dynamic schedules for either powering up or down workstations, information technology administrators can successfully minimize power consumption (Melville 2010, p.3). Reducing the servers central processing unit (CPU) time via cache management applications also contributes to the reduction of server’s energy consumption. There are also diverse energy management applications that contribute to efficient power consumption to minimize the temperature of high-end server rooms. Such applications avail visual heat map of the data centre availing insights on energy and information of complex and virtualized data centre environments (Nunn 2007, p.4). Virtualization and Consolidation The potential and availability of virtualization technologies coupled with the present economic conditions is the driving force towards this movement. The process of virtualization is conceived as the employment of intelligent, network-enabled automation within and across the corporation’s boundaries geared towards leveraging its people, capital, technology, and knowledge resources so as to attain significant enhancements in competitiveness, value, and productivity (Bose and Luo 2011, p.39). Despite the often cited complexities associated with virtualization such as regular maintenance and support tools, the process of virtualization can be cited as the core driver of Green IT implementation within organizations that seek to build environmental thinking into their business strategies. First, virtualization aids to consolidate resources, which in turn, guarantees efficiency of the organizational resource utilization. Secondly, virtualization presents flexibility in terms of time and space in order for organizations to undertake their business processes. This contributes to cost savings and enhancing the overall process of effectiveness (Bose and Luo 2011, p.38). Process virtualization pursues enhancement of efficiency and reduction of overhead costs. The application of powerful computer platforms, coupled with enabling software and high capacity networks can avail a platform on which virtual business infrastructure of Green IT initiative implementation will be created. Impact of Virtualization and Consolidation on Organization Efficiency and Resource Utilization Most organizational design practice manifests flattened organizational structures, larger spans of control, and an extensive geographically dispersed work. Virtualization allows IT to respond quickly and effectively to the changing business demands. The consolidation of resources via virtualization enhances the efficiency of organizational resource utilization (Fuchs 2008, p.291). The advances in technology coupled with increased degrees of automation avail more opportunities for consolidation that it would have been possible. IT virtualization minimizes costs for hardware, enhances software testing and deployment, minimizes energy and physical space use and enhances the flexibility of hardware investments. Moreover, the automation of business processes through virtualization (such as e-commerce) allows increased utilization of business resources, space, and time, which in turn, avails flexibility for the participants together with the operations (Fuchs 2008, p.292). This is accompanied by reduction cost and enhanced service delivery to the customers. As such, it thus follows that virtualization shapes one of the possible means by which organizations can employ to respond to the sustainability approach for reuse, reduce, and recycle. Virtualization shapes one of the prominent forces by which organizations can employ to integrate environmental sustainability within the business and IT practices. Impact of Green IT on ROI Energy efficiency avails the greatest possibility for quick return on investment, straightforwardness in implementation, and financial justification. There is growing body of evidence demonstrating the potential impact of implementation of Green IT on Return on Investment (ROI) (Bose and Luo 2011, p.44). The core objective of environmental education for green growth is to pursue environmental education programs that respond to environmental matter within companies in order to enhance cutting edge technologies, and enhanced environmental awareness. As a result, leading companies are now implementing Green IT as an innovative initiative towards reducing utility bills and greening the organization’s procurement practices. Critique of Green IT The critique advanced to counter Green IT details that progress in IT efficiency does not simply yield individual work efficiency, organization productivity, or envisaged socio-economic sustainability. This is informed by assertions such as software design and implementation possesses rebound effects on the part of software developers, the miniaturization rebound effect, goal displacement on the part of user, the information work rebound effect amid the organization, and absence of policies that embrace a differentiated perception of IT impacts and systematic employment of IT for sustainable development (Fuchs 2008, p.294). Conclusion Green IT is expected to become one of the most significant strategic technologies in the looming future. However, there lays IT value paradox detailed in the notion that Green IT has become not only an indivisible tactical weapon supplementing organizations’ business sustainability, but also the critical force behind social, economical, and ecological sustainability attributes. Adopting green applications will aid the company to attain enhanced energy efficiency, besides inculcating a sense of optimizing and hence developing applications that contribute to the green development. A global integrated IT system can allow organizations to launch enterprise-wide sustainability initiatives and leverage IT as a tool to drive the sustainability initiative. It would be naive to assert that investments in IT-related energy efficiency will by design yield energy savings. This translates to ignoring all systematic impacts of IT emanating from the rebound effects. This necessitates the urge to use energy efficiency enhancements devoid of creating rebound effects. For it to be effective, Green IT demands a strong commitment from senior IT management within organizations so as to ensure that organizations pursue policy issues relating to Green IT. References Bansal, P. & Roth, K. (2000). Why companies go green: A model of ecological responsiveness. Academy of Management Journal, 43 (1), 717-36. Barney, J. (1996). Looking inside for competitive advantage. Academy of Management Executive, 9 (4), 49-61. Bose, R. & Luo, X. (2011). Integrative framework for assessing firm’s potential to undertake Green IT initiatives via virtualization. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 20 (1), 38-54. Fuchs, C. (2008). The implications of new information and communication technologies for sustainability. Environment Development and Sustainability, 10 (3), 291-309. Gartner Research (2008). Gartner's Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2008 and Beyond: Going Green and Self-Healing, Gartner Inc. Hart, S. L. (1997). Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World, Harvard Business Review, 75(1), 66-76. Info~Tech (2008). North America Underperforms in Green IT Attitudes and Actions. Info~Tech Research Group, January 2008, pp.1-15. Melville, N. (2010). Information systems innovation for environmental sustainability. Management Information Systems Quarterly 34 (1), 3. Molla, A. (2009). The extent of Green IT adoption and its driving and inhibiting factors: An exploratory study. Journal of Information Science and Technology, 6 (4), 1-21. Nunn, S. (2007). Green IT: Beyond the Data Centre How IT Can Contribute to the Environmental Agenda Across and Beyond the Business. Accenture, pp.2-7. Retrieved from: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/126677_ATC_GreenIt_USUK_8_A4.pdf Sharma S. (2000). Managerial interpretations and organisational context as predictors of corporate choice of environmental strategy. Academy of Management Journal 43(4): 681-697. Uddin, M. & Rahman, A. (2011). Virtualization implementation model for cost effective and efficient data centers. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2 (1), 69-74.   Read More