"Greening our IT products, applications, services, and practices is both an economic and an environmental imperative, as well as our social responsibility. Innovations in environmentally sustainable IT will be the key to success now and in the future."

It’s a Greenwash

There’s more hype than substance behind green IT. Exploiting the call for environmental sustainability, many companies try to bolster their green credentials by exaggerating their products’ and services’ eco-friendliness in marketing campaigns. This is nothing but a greenwash.

IT Is Going Green

There’s great promise in the green IT movement. The IT sector has a responsibility to help create a more sustainable environment; luckily, adopting green IT practices can give organizations a competitive edge as well. Make no mistake — green IT is no passing fad.

Opening Statement

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

With increasing recognition that man-made CO₂ emissions are a major contributing factor to global warming, enterprises, governments, and society at large now have an important new agenda: tackling environmental issues and adopting environmentally sound practices. Though controversy still surrounds the scientific, political, and social aspects of global warming, there is growing acknowledgment of the dangerous consequences of not taking action now to address this and other environmental problems. As a result, a green wave is sweeping the world -- including the IT sector.

Use of IT has exploded in all areas of human activity, offering immense benefits and convenience -- and serious threats to the environment. IT is a significant and growing part of the environmental problem, a fact that most people don't realize. Computers and other IT infrastructure consume significant amounts of energy, and their use is increasing daily, placing a heavy burden on our electric grid and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, computers pose severe environmental problems both during manufacture and at disposal.

So a new spotlight has recently been turned on IT. As IT professionals, we are obliged to minimize or, where possible, eliminate the environmental impact of IT in order to help create a more sustainable environment. Calls to address the environmental issue are increasing -- IT is part of the environmental problem and therefore must be part of the solution. Greening our IT products, applications, services, and practices is both an economic and an environmental imperative, as well as our social responsibility [2]. Innovations in environmentally sustainable IT will be the key to success now and in the future.

GREENING IT REQUIRES A HOLISTIC APPROACH

Greening IT is not a trivial task. To comprehensively and effectively address the environmental impacts of IT, we must adopt a holistic approach and make the entire IT lifecycle greener by addressing environmental sustainability along the following four complementary paths:

1. Green use -- reducing the energy consumption of computers and other information systems as well as using them in an environmentally sound manner

2. Green disposal -- refurbishing and reusing old computers and properly recycling unwanted computers and other electronic equipment

3. Green design -- designing energy-efficient and environmentally sound components, computers, servers, cooling equipment, and data centers

4. Green manufacturing -- manufacturing electronic components, computers, and other associated subsystems with minimal impact on the environment

These four paths span a number of focus areas and activities, including power management; data center design, layout, and location; server virtualization; regulatory compliance; green metrics; assessment tools and methodology; environment-related risk mitigation; use of renewable energy sources; and eco-labeling of IT products.

FOSTERING GREEN IT

Whether driven by rising energy costs, regulatory mandates, or genuine concern for the planet, a growing number of businesses are "going green" [1, 3] -- or at the least claiming to be green. To foster green IT, we must address questions such as:

• What are the key environmental impacts arising from IT, and how can we make our IT infrastructure, products, services, operations, applications, and practices environmentally sound?
  
  
• Why are many users and system administrators reluctant to utilize power management features, and what can we do to reverse this situation?
  
  
• What types of green assessment tools and methodologies are available to assess the environmental sustainability of IT systems?
  
  
• What are the applicable regulatory requirements, and how can we comply with them?
  
  
• How do we go about IT asset disposal in a responsible manner?
  
  
• What should comprise an enterprise green IT strategy and policies, and how can we effectively implement them?
  
  

Greenwashing vs. Green Audits

In an attempt to cash in on the environment sustainability movement, some corporations seek to bolster their green credentials by making fictitious claims that their products and services are carbon-neutral, energy- or fuel-efficient, or otherwise environmentally benign. This practice of companies claiming to be environmentally friendly when in fact their products and processes are environmentally unsound is called "greenwashing." To address accusations of greenwashing, a new kind of corporate audit is emerging: the green audit. Green audits assess a company's environmental credentials and its green claims for its products and services to determine whether the company's supply chain and/or product line can be promoted as truly environmentally sustainable.

GREENING IT: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES

This issue's call for papers asked the question, "Can IT Go Green?" In an overwhelming flood of responses, practitioners and researchers from around the world not only declared that "IT can, and must, go green," but also provided different strategies for greening IT. In this issue, we present five of those responses. These insightful and practical articles collectively demonstrate the trend toward green IT, address some of the questions outlined above, and show you how to go green with your own IT systems.

We begin with an article on building sustainable IT by Emily Jane Ryan, manager of client services in an international software company. Ryan outlines the main areas in which enterprises can benefit from green IT and shows how they can leverage green initiatives to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs, and provide competitive advantage. The article discusses policy modifications that can be taken immediately to reduce the environmental impact of IT's use in the company as well as cultural changes that take longer to enact. It then provides a helpful assessment and action checklist that enterprises can use to guide their green IT efforts.

Next, Joseph Sarkis of Clark University and Jacob Park of Green Mountain College explore the profound -- and often hidden -- environmental impacts of the procurement, manufacturing, and waste disposal stages of a typical IT supply chain. While "mobile phones, computer chips, and other new economy products may be symbols of 21st-century networked society," the authors write, "the manufacturing of these products still requires digging up the earth's surface just as the 'old economy' products did." They identify the important linkages between IT, global supply chains, and the environment and analyze how these relationships are being shaped by regulatory policies such as the European Union's (EU) directives on electronic waste and China's emerging "circular economy" strategy.

In our next article, Tom Butler of University College Cork in Ireland and Damien McGovern, founder and CEO of Compliance and Risks Ltd., discuss the challenges organizations face in trying to comply with the burgeoning number of environmental regulations being enacted worldwide. Given the sheer scope of the problem, it is not surprising that "high-tech firms are adopting software applications to inform their decision making" with regard to environmental compliance. Such environmental compliance management systems (ECMSs) can greatly assist IT manufacturers in dealing with the complex -- and growing -- thicket of environmental regulation and certifying their green status. The authors go on to outline the design and features of an ideal ECMS in order to help organizations make an informed ECMS selection and thus begin transforming their firms into green organizations.

Among some IT professionals and computer users, there is a perceived dichotomy between green IT initiatives (e.g., power management) and information security. In their article, David Biros, David Sikolia, and Michael Hass of Oklahoma State University (OSU) discuss how to meet the seemingly conflicting demands of both energy efficiency and security. They review some current green IT initiatives related to power management and virtualization and evaluate their impact on information security. Finally, using a case study of green initiatives being undertaken at OSU, they examine the challenge of achieving green IT while maintaining information security and recommend strategies for achieving a balance between these two critical goals.

In our final article, Bhuvan Unhelkar, an IT consultant and founder of MethodScience.com, and Annukka Dickens, an environmental manager for HP in Australia, advocate the strategic use of information and communications technology in minimizing the effect of enterprise business activities on the environment. While IT's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions tends to grab the headlines, the authors note that "controlling emissions due to hardware use within the organization is considered necessary but not sufficient in a comprehensive environmentally responsible business strategy." They propose a green architecture that large organizations can use to structure their green efforts and discuss the implementation of such a strategy within HP.

GOING GREEN: A CHALLENGE AND AN OPPORTUNITY

Green IT is a hot topic today and will remain a top priority for years to come, as environmentally sustainable IT is an economic as well as an environmental imperative. It also represents a dramatic change in priorities for the IT industry [1, 3]. To this point, the industry has focused on IT equipment processing power and associated equipment spending -- it's not been concerned with issues such as power usage, cooling, and data center space. Going forward, however, the IT industry will need to deal with all of the infrastructure requirements and the environmental impact of IT and its use. The challenges of green IT are immense, but recent developments indicate that the IT industry has the will and conviction to tackle our environmental issues head on.

Companies can benefit by regarding these challenges as strategic opportunities. The IT sector and IT users must develop a positive attitude toward addressing environmental concerns and adopt forward-looking, green-friendly policies and practices. By successfully greening your IT systems, you can out-compete your peers, harness new opportunities, and help create a sustainable environment that benefits current and future generations. You can, and should, jump on the green IT bandwagon and do your best to sustain the planet by making IT and its use greener.

I hope the articles in this issue present useful ideas and insights that will help you make smart green IT decisions. I invite you to share your thoughts on this issue, green IT in general, and your experiences in greening IT in particular by contacting me at smurugesan@cutter.com.

REFERENCES

1. "IT Leaders Share Green-Tech Predictions for 2008." Sustainable IT blog, 20 December 2007 (http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2007/12/green_2008_pred.html).

2. Murugesan, San. "Going Green with IT: Your Responsibility Toward Environmental Sustainability." Cutter Consortium Business-IT Strategies Executive Report, Vol. 10, No. 8, August 2007.

3. Samson, Ted. "Survey the Green-Tech Landscape." Infoworld, 21 November 2007.

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