The Governance of Green IT: The Role of Processes in Reducing Data Center Energy Requirements

By George Spafford

This book’s message has nothing to do with greenwash. It is intended for people who are looking for hard, practical advice on how to fix a problem. Green IT needs to establish baseline data so that progress can be effectively tracked, and metrics are essential for that. Taking Green IT seriously also means coming up with a plan and making sure it gets delivered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: itgovernance
• Release date: Dec 11, 2008
• ISBN: 9781849282079

George Spafford

George Spafford is a Principal Consultant with Pepperweed Consulting, LLC, and an experienced practitioner in business and IT operations. He gives advice and provides training in relation to regulatory compliance, IT Governance and process improvement. He holds an MBA from Notre Dame University and is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA). George contributed to the article 'Grasping Green IT in tough times' as featured in itSMF UK's Service Talk magazine. You can read the article here.

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INTRODUCTION

The physical and digital worlds move on energy and when the cost of electricity rises, many dynamics come into play. Organizations faced with high energy prices may be forced to make short-term cost-cutting decisions that move them away from their goal and if they aren’t careful, can even permanently impede their ability to attain their goal.

Information technology (IT) occupies an interesting position in organizations. On one hand, it is an energy consumer and on the other, it can help organizations achieve objectives related to minimizing energy expenditures.

With the current public spotlight on the effects of global warming and climatic change, governments will increase their scrutiny of activities that release substantial amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the environment.

Given the skyrocketing demands for electricity from data centers and the resulting GHG emissions from electrical utilities trying to supply power to meet those demands, it is very likely that data centers will be regulated in some form in the future.

This threat of regulation presents a challenge for organizations because they consume a tremendous amount of energy – 61 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2006¹. This energy comes from many sources but most notably coal fired power plants that release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the environment. Given the projected growth rate, if left unchecked, 10 new power plants would be needed by 2010 to meet the demands of data centers. This will result in data centers actually surpassing airlines in the amount of GHG released due to the increased power generation