Green ICT
From RSCWMWiki
Contents |
The sustainable use of technology in education - Introduction
Whether you are a manager in an Adult Education Service, a lecturer in an FE College or an IT Manager, there is no avoiding the fact that matters concerning the environment affect everyone.
The government wants to reduce carbon emissions by 1.2 million tonnes of carbon per year until 2020 and to help it achieve this, it has introduced the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) - a compulsory trading scheme to encourage large businesses and public sector organisations to reduce their CO2 emissions. In any case, it is obvious that by reducing energy use and using ICT more efficiently, you also reduce your energy bills; and you may also be genuinely interested in how carbon emissions affect the world we live in.
On this page you will find information on green agenda government papers, green ICT events and other useful links for the education sector.
If you have a query about making your organisation's ICT greener, please contact either Colleen Romero or Jane Edwards
 planet |
 carbon |
 emissions |
 reduce |
 save |
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Some background
In December 2008 the UK Government passed the Climate Change Act 2008, C27, which committed the UK to reduce its overall Carbon Emissions by at least 80% by 2050 based on a 1990 baseline. The Act created powers to develop new policy which will encourage both Business and Consumers to reduce their carbon emissions / environmental footprint. This first piece of policy is The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) which will commence in April 2010. http://www.carbonreductioncommitment.co.uk/
Tools
Car Sharing
Are you encouraging people to car share in your organisation, either as part of their every day work or for people attending your venues for meetings and other events? This website might help get people to car share; it manages all the logistical organisation for you. Try it out: https://www.liftshare.com/uk/ NB Other car sharing websites may be available
Support for your organisation from the Carbon Trust
"The Carbon Trust's mission is to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy now and develop commercial low carbon technologies for the future." Two initiatives of particular interest are the Local Authorities and Higher Education Carbon Management Programmes. For HE the Carbon Trust aims to help the sector tackle the threat of climate change, and to achieve significant reductions in energy costs. For Local Authorities, it provides them with technical and change management guidance and mentoring that helps to identify practical carbon and cost savings. The Further Education sector can also use the services of the Carbon Trust: free on-site carbon surveys and expert advice from consultants; and an Action Plan Tool which helps you to create your own energy saving action plan, tailored to your sector and energy spend.
Have you tried this? An alternative to Google, powered by Google custom search, but reducing the energy output of your monitor everso slightly. Every little helps!
1. From the SusteIT Project, a tool to help you decide on what kind of client to use:
- Cost and Carbon Comparison Tool: Thick Vs Thin Clients
- The Beta version of an Excel tool designed to help Further and Higher Education Institutions estimate the costs and carbon emissions of thick (PCs) versus thin clients over a given evaluation period. The tool is designed to be easy to use and contains a number of default assumptions which can be easily modified. Based on the input assumptions, the results are displayed in a worksheet within the tool. This is an updated version of the tool (June 2009) which introduces a factor for airconditioning in computer suites in the thick client energy costs worksheet. The tool can be used freely, provided that the source is attributed, and that the whole spreadsheet, or its accompanying text, is not incorporated into other materials.
2. The SusteIT Project also produced a tool to help estimate the energy and carbon footprint of an institution's ICT estate.
- ICT Energy and Carbon Footprinting Tool Updated August 2009
3. Developed by Lisa Nelson from the University of Liverpool.
- PowerDown: Power-Saving for £0
- The Goal: We wish to enter a state of significant power-saving on computers that have been idle for a certain length of time. We want to do this without danger of loss of data, and without an unacceptable number of error messages or other unfavorable user interaction. Being a university, we would also like to do it at no cost.
Reading Materials
A Guide to Green ICT
Global Action Plan is an environmental charity that helps organisations take practical action to make substantial environmental and financial savings. It delivers environmental, social and financial improvements by working practically and creatively with people. This handbook is a good starting point for some ideas of what to do and how to go about making changes in your every day activities to cut your carbon footprint.
Greening Spires / Universities and the Green Agenda
This Universities UK publication showcases the contribution of higher education institutions to this ‘greening’ agenda. The range of initiatives, research programmes and projects from across the UK HE sector is such that only a few can be highlighted. This selection of case studies demonstrates the energy and vision that is going into scientific research into some of the most challenging and unknowable issues of our age.
JISC Strategic Overview: Managing Sustainable ICT in FE and HE
"The benefits of ICT are partially offset by ‘hidden’ environmental, and, on occasion, social costs. A scaling up of findings at the University of Sheffield, Lowestoft College and City College, Norwich, suggests that UK universities and colleges as a whole:
- Utilise nearly 1,470,000 computers, 250,000 printers and 240,000 servers
- Will have ICT-related electricity bills of around £116m in 2009, and
- Are indirectly emitting over 500,000t of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from this electricity use"
JISC Green ICT: Managing sustainable ICT in education and research
"The growing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in further and higher education brings clear benefits of administrative efficiency and increased effectiveness in teaching and research. However, it is accompanied by an environmental and monetary cost."
socitm Green ICT?: current research into the environmental impact of ICT
"Whilst many think that ICT is the hero of environmental action and indeed, it has the potential to be so, currently it is one of the villains, since ICT-related CO2 emissions rival those of the aviation industry. This report provides a practical guide for ICT managers who want to know what can be done to change this situation." For a summary of the report, click here.
- UN Framework Convention for Climate Change Over a decade ago, most countries joined an international treaty the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable. More recently, a number of nations approved an addition to the treaty: the Kyoto Protocol, which has more powerful (and legally binding) measures. The UNFCCC secretariat supports all institutions involved in the climate change process, particularly the COP, the subsidiary bodies and their Bureau.
- http://unfccc.int/2860.php
- Zero Carbon Data Centres - a new briefing paper is available from http://www.susteit.org.uk
- This webpage has a list of presentations from a host of different agencies and organisations,that have been shown at Higher Education Environmental Performance Improvement (HEEPI) events
- http://www.heepi.org.uk
- The Open University has a free Climate Change course that explores the topic of climate change and global warming.
- http://openlearn.open.ac.uk
CRC Timeline
Click here to see the entire CRC Timeline
Links to agencies, people and other useful websites
- The JISC has funded some projects on the sustainable use of ICT in education. There are many incentives for educational institutions to address green issues in the use of information and communications technologies (ICT): While ICT accounts for around 2% of global carbon emissions it can also play a key role in saving time, energy and money. Furthermore, the new Climate Change Act has set out legal obligations relating to environmental issues and students are increasingly attracted to environmentally-conscious institutions.
- Department of Energy & Climate Change - leads in tackling energy and climate change issues.
- AEA (the Atomic Energy Agency) is the principal technical adviser to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) as they develop the regulations for the Carbon Reduction Commitment.
- Go Green is People & Planet’s campaign to transform the environmental impact of the UK’s schools, colleges and universities.
- The low-carbon ICT project team developed tools and techniques to reduce IT-related greenhouse gas emissions at the University of Oxford.
- British Computer Society (BCS) The BCS is addressing Green issues by working with industry, government and charitable agencies through its Ethics Forum (Carbon Footprint Working Group) and Data Centre Specialist Group. The BCS offers a Foundation Certificate in Green IT. The website has many articles on IT and green issues.
- Global e-Sustainability Initiative The Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) is dedicated to information and communication technologies (ICT) sustainability through innovation
- Proprietary product solution: Cisco. See their tutorial: 'Technology Tutorial Green Office Design'
- Denton Wilde Sapte - specialist energy law firm. Advises on climate change and alternative energy industries
- Salix - an independent, publicly funded company set up to accelerate public sector investment in energy efficiency technologies through invest to save schemes. Salix has public funding from the Carbon Trust and is working across the public sector with Local Authorities, NHS Foundation Trusts, Higher and Further Education Institutions and Central Government.
- Arup - an independent firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists offering a broad range of professional services, work across the whole energy chain, from supply to demand, providing strategic advice, and engineering expertise
- The Climate Group An international, non-profit organisation that acts independently, with no political agenda or vested interests. The Climate Group’s goal is to help government and business set the world economy on the path to a low-carbon, prosperous future. Read their report: 'SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age'
- Forum for the Future - helps businesses and public service providers to understand and manage the risks that changes to how they operate will bring, to find new opportunities in tackling global challenges, to implement their commitments to social and environmental responsibility, and to work with others to overcome barriers to action. They then share what they learn to help others work towards a more sustainable society.
- Higher Education - Environmental Performance Improvement HEEPI aims to improve the environmental performance of universities and colleges by: Developing environmental benchmarking within further and higher education, running events to share best practice and build networks and providing an information resource
- The Smith Institute. This publication follows work that the Smith Institute has undertaken over recent years on the environment and the world of work.
- Green Energy Report by Don Krysakowski. Download the pdf from here
RSC Contacts
To find out more about Green ICT, please use the contacts below:
Colleen Romero or Jane Edwards
For more information about the RSC West Midlands, visit our website at http://www.jiscrsc.ac.uk/westmidlands
