Greening Your Technolgy

Green Your IT and Use IT to Green Your Org

Steve Lippman of MicrosoftRobin Billings of the US EPA

David Deal of Community IT Innovators Facilitator: Anna S. Jaeger of TechSoup Global

1. To increase awareness of the environmental impact of desktops, servers and other ICT equipment

2. To provide guidance and opportunities to adopt technology practices that will help reduce that impact

3. To discuss select solutions that will help nonprofits, libraries and other social benefit organizations reduce the environmental impact of their ICT and use ICT to reduce their operational impact.

Take Aways

Agenda• Panel: 35 minutes

Greening Your IT: Hardware and Software

Greening Your Organization: How to Use IT to Reduce Operational impact

• Breakout sessions: 20 minutes

• Group presentations: 15 minutes

• Q&A: 20 minutes

Quick Audience Poll

Who knows what these things are? – Power Management– Virtualization– EPEAT– SaaS

What size is your org? <25 25-100 >100

Why Green Your IT?

• Decrease energy and carbon output

• Increase efficiency and collaboration

• Use compelling technology

• Happy IT people and users

• Happy board

• Save

Framing Stats

• 2% of global CO2 emitted by ICT – Gartner

• Some laptops consume 8.9 watts even when turned OFF. Lawrence Berkeley National Labs

• 50-70% of the lifetime energy consumption of a computer is used before it is ever turned on.

• Cars are responsible for 14% of EU CO2 emissions according to the European Environment Agency (EEA).

The Role of Software in Green IT

Steve Lippman, Director

Environmental Sustainability

Microsoft

Two Big Roles for Software

• Supporting Green IT– Power management– Centralized system management– Virtualization

• Enabling “IT for Green”– Telepresence/travel reduction– Online forms, paper reduction– Footprint tracking and dashboards– Smart grids, smart logistics, etc.

Power Management• Cut PC energy use up to 70%, save about $50

per desktop (NRDC)• Improvements in power management

• Better default settings and idle and active power management built in

• User Account Controls• Tools for IT administrators for remote management:

diagnostics, group policy settings,

wake on LAN

• Free resources: Climate Savers

Computing Initiative, Verdiem’s Edison

Emerging Issue: How Green is the Cloud?

• Do hosted services provide net environmental benefits?

• Potential benefits:– Higher server utilization– Data centers optimized for energy efficiency– Potentially greener energy sources – Avoided hardware

• Case study research ongoing

Robin BillingsUS Environmental Protection Agency

Region 4

Atlanta, Georgia

How to Green Your IT:Green Hardware

EPA Region 4

• EPA consists of 10 Regions + HQ

• Region 4 is the largest Region– 8 southeastern States– largest population– most states

- Promoting and practicing environmental stewardship for electronic products

- Computers and other electronics are the fastest-growing (and among the least recycled) components of the waste stream

- Two million tons of used electronics discarded yearly

Greening Electronics

- A tool, an environmental standard, a rating system, and a verification program

- System that helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select electronic products based on their environmental attributes

- www.epeat.net

Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT)

Meets all 23 required

criteria plus at least 75% of the optional

criteria

Meets all 23 required

criteria plus at least 50% of the optional

criteria

Meets all 23 required criteria

                        

    

                        

    

                        

    

EPEAT

EPEAT Criteria are known as (IEEE 1680) American National Standard for the Environmental Assessment of Personal Computer Products

Plug-in to eCycling

www.epa.gov/plugin

Federal Electronics Challenge (FEC)

FEC is a voluntary partnership program that encourages federal facilities and agencies to:

- Purchase greener electronic products

- Reduce impacts of electronic products during use

- Manage obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way

- www.federalelectronicschallenge.net

Energy Star

- Joint program between EPA & DOE provide energy efficient products and practices

- Energy management can produce twice the savings—both the bottom line and the environment

- EPA provides an innovative energy performance rating system which businesses

have already used for more than 96,000 buildings across the country

- www.energystar.gov

Robin Billings

US EPA Region 4

billings.robin@epa.gov

404.562.8515

Buying products made from recycled materials is a key step in supporting recycling programs and resource conservation. Resources are saved only when recycled products are purchased. This is referred to as closing the loop.

Virtualization & Green Practices

David Deal, CEO

Community IT Innovators

Green Practices

• Utilizing IT to green operations

• Examples: – Paperless processes– Smart buildings– Online faxing– Travel reduction– Working with distributed teams

Travel Reduction

• Reduce commuter and business travel• Travel contributes to 50% of CITI’s total

emissions– even with 75% of travel done via public transit,

biking, and walking!

• Remote & mobile access to ICT resources - data, voice, video

• Numerous studies confirming moderate to significant positive environmental impact

Remote & Mobile Data Access

• Remote desktop control– LogMeIn, GoToMyPC, GoToAssist

• Virtual Private Networks• Terminal Services, virtual desktops• Hosting

– SaaS: Exchange, Salesforce, Google Apps, DIA, Convio, etc.

– Moving servers (& desktops?) to the cloud

Server Virtualization

• Software: VMware, MS Hyper-V, Citrix, etc.

• Energy reduction up to 82% (Gartner)

• Small & medium-sized NPO’s (<100 seats) frequently virtualize 3-5 servers on 1 physical server

Server-based Desktop Virtualization

• PCs consume 3x the energy of the datacenter (The Climate Group)

• Energy reduction from 80-100W desktop or 20-40W laptop to 6-8W terminal

• Roaming access!

Working with Distributed Teams

• Web conferencing: – GoToMeeting, WebEx, Ready Talk

• File sharing– Drop.io, Dropbox, SharePoint, not so much Office

Live, Google Docs (yet)• Comprehensive:

– Hyperoffice, Zoho• Extranets/project collaboration:

– Basecamp, SharePoint• Consideration:

ad-hoc vs ongoing teams

Travel reduction: Voice

• Voice over IP & IP Telephony• Virtual/hosted PBX

– Lower startup costs, often lower calling costs– Cost-effective for smaller organizations– BUT: unless they also provide the data

connection (T1) they still don’t control call quality

– May not be for you: large number of users, high call volume, or if you need certain features (ACD)

Travel reduction: Video

• Peer-to-peer, small groups– Skype, etc.

• Hosted– WebEx, Ready Talk, etc.

• On-premises– Polycom, LifeSize, Cisco, etc.

Links

• WWF study on teleworking’s ability to reduce emissions: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/wwfteleworking.pdf

• Calculating emissions: http://www.carbonfund.org/site/pages/carbon_calculators/category/Assumptions

• McKinsey study (requires membership): http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_IT_can_cut_carbon_emissions_2221

Breakouts

• 3 Groups– Small <25 people - Steve– Med 25-100 people - David– Large > 100 - Robin

Report BackChoose one or two:• One green low hanging fruit that every

NPO of this size should be doing?• What is the stretch green IT solution that

you would implement if you had the resources?

• What are some tools to consider for your size organization?

• What was the big ah-ha from your group?

Questions

Conclusion• Going green doesn’t necessarily mean you have

to spend more money. It can often save money. • Changing the situation is easier than changing

behaviors. • Use greener software, buy greener hardware

and set up defaults to automatically stop waste rather than asking your staff to change.

• Talk with your board, staff, volunteers and/or consultants. Decide which is the best first step for your org.

• Spread the word

Contact Info

Anna Jaeger

ajaeger@techsoup.org

415-633-9433

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