Goin' Green
January 8th and I'm walking across campus without any overcoat, and passed a couple of guys in shorts and T-shirts. Is this a sign of global warming? Maybe, maybe not, but there can't be any doubt about the need to reduce the total amount of carbon emissions we generate. One of the drivers that will affect our plans over the next several years is the need to do this.
And we're joining a growing list of others. This morning I heard that China is forbidding stores from using plastic bags for carrying purchased items and encouraging shoppers to use more permanent cloth bags which they bring with them.
In the IT area, HP just announced a goal of reducing the energy consumed with its new products by 25% over the next 2 years, and that by 2010 it will reduce its global energy consumption by 20%. Dell says its current line of PCs consume about $23 per year in energy vs $100 by its older products.
The EU has produced this report talking about how IT can aid in reducing carbon emissions,
http://www.etno.be/Portals/34/ETNO%20Documents/Sustainability/Climate%20Change%20Road%20Map.pdf
I've even seen a call to start measuring network capacity in bits per carbon rather than bits per second.
So, what can ITS do to aid this total effort? Seems to me there are at least 3 things we could do:
- make sure that all electronic equipment purchased is as efficient as possible, even if that means it isn't the lowest initial cost equipment; what's the total cost of ownership?
- look for ways to centralize services within ITS, eliminating equipment providing a duplicate or competitive service.
- make carbon emissions reduction a personal goal and effort.
What can you do through existing tools like audio and video conferencing (think Adobe Connect) to reduce driving across campus to a meeting. What can we do with these tools to reduce commuting to the office? What can you do to live a healthier lifestyle by walking more and driving less; did you know that OHR sells low cost pedometers?
Why not set goals for yourself? Reduce the amount of auto transportation you use by say 5% over the next year. Reduce the number of meetings you attend in person by 10% over the next year, and assess what effect this has on total productivity.
What ideas do you have on ways we can be better global citizens. I'd love to hear them.
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ITS may want to consider a more formal and more structured deployment of virtualization technology within ITS and across PSU.
Servers are critical to supplying computing services. In order to maximize availability, many organizations use multiple servers for the same (or closely related) functionality. Normally, these are left powered on with all other servers. Further, all servers must follow security update procedures, which require staff administration time.
Presently, the cost of a server is nominal, almost commodity, so services can more simply be provided by throwing more servers into racks. What gets lost in this simplification model is the support of that server (both the green and the staff) will be facing you tomorrow and as long as you have the server running on the network.
Especially disturbing is that many servers are grossly under-utilized. However, they continue to gobble green and staff resources regardless of their utilization.
Virtualization (e.g. VMware) is a technology which is mature enough to help reduce loss of green and staff resources. However, there is a learning curve cost to be paid. Normally, this learning is up to individuals, teams, or up to departments. A better practice may be to create a guided team of ITS virtualization experts that will work to minimize the learning curve.
I would like to suggest that we as ITS employees take responsibility for all the catalogs and junk mail we receive on a weekly basis. Contact vendors and have your name removed from mailing lists - most catalogs are online now and catalogs are not necessary. Or be sure only one copy is coming per department or building!
Many trade journals can be accessed online as well - investigate that possibility.
Recently I sent a suggestion to PSU HR suggesting that they come up with another way to more efficiently advertise their educational offerings (those colored, folded, sheets of paper in everyone's mail box). Beginning January 1 we seem to be receiving one sheet of paper in calendar format of HR offerings - KUDOS! (Kudos also to ITS Training for their 4-month format)
By encouraging departments and vendors to reassess their bulk mailings could result in less trucks (less gas, less emissions) being required to deliver and dispose of the unfathomable pounds of paper PSU handles each day!
Do this at home too!