Green Scene on the end of "frou-frou environmentalism"
Skittish investors may be deserting green projects, but Andrew Donoghue says the underlying fundamentals of climate change remain – and so does the case for sustainable IT.
Fashion is fleeting. That’s the whole point. If it skulked around the house all day, getting under everybody's feet, it wouldn't be fashion, it would be something else - tradition probably.
Fashion can also be damaging if you forget that it’s fickle and flighty. Over the past couple of years, the pressing need to tackle climate change slowly accumulated a layer of fashionable attractiveness - a green gloss.
This varnish attracted attention from all levels of the financial food chain. From the Toyota Prius craze that swept Hollywood to the boom in renewable energy stocks, fashion decided that green greed was good. Then, along came the global downturn and spoiled the party.
“While the sustainability movement may have lost much of its short-term kudos, the underlying fundamentals remain intact.”
Despite green spending pledges by US President Barack Obama and European governments, many investors have decided that green isn't actually their colour after all. Yet while the sustainability movement may have lost much of its short-term kudos, the underlying fundamentals remain intact.
Fashion changes
Climate change is not going away just because the economy has faltered. Indeed, recent figures show that despite its moment in the spotlight, there have been no national reductions in CO2.
In fact, global levels are rising. Last May, scientists in Hawaii revealed that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40 per cent since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.
Unfortunately, human beings don't deal well with figures like that. It's much easier to tune into the attractive, short-term aspects of climate change. For consumers, that might mean buying a hemp shopping bag, while for businesses it might mean scattering some recycling bins about.
Thankfully, it's this kind of green tokenism that is going to be hardest hit by the downturn. A green marketing executive I interviewed recently described this kind of activity as "frou-frou environmentalism" - which I think sums it up perfectly (http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/analysis/2233385/opposite-greenwash).
Less thankfully, a flight of capital from green investments will be harmful to credible projects, too. But while there may be set-backs in the short term, in the longer-term good projects will be sustained by the inherent link between sustainability and efficiency.
Green means efficient
Nowhere is this link more obvious than in the arena of green approaches to IT. Jim Swartz, chief executive officer of software maker Sybase told last year’s Going Green conference: "The naked truth is that we didn't do any of this to be green, we did it because we want to be more efficient and cost effective.
"In my world... green IT initiatives are win, win, win everyplace you look." For large organisations - like the NHS - the need to realise the efficiencies offered by sustainable IT only become more acute as the economy deteriorates – and their funding is squeezed.
Global IT spending by businesses and governments is dropping slightly. It’s down by around 3 per cent this year, to $1.66 trillion, according to Forrester Research. However, the analyst says that interest in green IT initiatives that save money remains strong.
In a report called A Slowing Economy Won't Slow Down Corporate Green IT Initiatives, Forrester claimed that 52 per cent of respondents to a survey that it ran were creating or implementing a Green IT action plan, up from 45 per cent in June 2008.
Signing up the NHS
Meanwhile, the publication of Saving Carbon, Improving Health: a carbon reduction strategy for the NHS in England (www.sdu.nhs.uk), shows that the health service is well tuned in to the need to cut back on emissions and consequently costs.
The report was disappointingly short on detail about how IT could help to meet the NHS’ carbon reduction targets. But that has to change, particularly given the mounting pressure to focus on the next steps for the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
“Switching off lights and computers has one thing going for it during a downturn - it doesn't cost a penny.”
Technologies like virtualisation offer ways to slash hardware costs, while video-conferencing and other collaboration systems promise to help drive down spending on transport and facilities. The strategy also mentions telehealthcare as a way of keeping staff and patients closer to home.
Meanwhile, one of the direct references to sustainable computing didn't come from Prime Minister Gordon Brown or NHS chief executive David Nicholson, but from a portering team leader in the outpatient department of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. “I often turn off lights and computers in offices at night and feel there is a lot of potential for improvement,” said Karen Badcock.
Fashionable? Exciting? No, but switching off has one thing going for it during a downturn - it doesn't cost a penny. When it comes to green IT, thrift-store fashion is definitely back in.
About the author: Andrew Donoghue is a technology and business journalist with more than ten years experience of working on leading titles, including Computing, BusinessGreen, and CIO Magazine.
He specialises in writing about sustainable IT and technology in the developing world, and has both reported and volunteered on African aid projects, as well as working with charitable organisations such as the UN Foundation and Computer Aid.
Want to know more? Read more about the carbon reduction strategy for the NHS.