Virtualisation can help with the green debate

It is a Friday, which in terms of doing this job has no special significance, except I must do my time-sheet and submit it. Anyway, today is a tidy up day, by that I mean get those small outstanding things complete, sort out my e-mail and plan the next week. Because next week will start early for me, I am flying out of Manchester at 10.00 am to Orlando so that I can attend IBM Pulse analyst sessions. So expect my posts next week to be a different times. I have no intention of getting up at 4 am just to post for UK readers at 9 am.

The Green debate is still rumbling on

According to recent scientific reports there is now an added urgency for a more comprehensive international climate agreement post-2012. According to the most stringent scenario outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global average surface temperature can still be limited to an increase of 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. Staying within this limit means a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions of at least 50% below the 1990 level by 2050.
Currently all the media attention is focused on the aviation and transportation sector as the villains, however, the IT data centre, and the computer in general, wastes a significant amount of energy every day. UK Government figures quote that an organisation can save UK£50 per PC per year in energy costs by simply ensuring PCs are switched off after work and at weekends. The data centre represents an even bigger prize for organisations that address the issue of under-utilisation of servers.

In fact rumours from the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRSEG) report that post 2012 the EU Emissions Trading Scheme will be extended, and this extension will inevitably affect more organisations than the current scheme. One possible approach will be for a carbon emissions cap on organisations, which will force organisations to look at its energy consumption, and I believe that IT can offer solutions that will enable a reduction in energy consumption. In fact I have been advocating the need for organisations to consider the power and cooling impact that IT data centres represent, and to adopt new technologies that can significantly reduce their energy consumption, and hence an organisation’s carbon footprint. I am a firm believer that virtualisation is one such technology that organisations should be actively investigating: because as the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali stated, action is needed now; therefore I recommend that organisations assess the impact that IT computing resources contribute to the overall organisational energy consumption, and that this should be addressed before legislation is introduced forcing organisations to report on and then reduce its energy consumption, or face penalty charges.