The concept of, and discussion on, the carbon footprint originates from the Green movement and has been on the political agenda for some time.
It has recently been picked up by economists as well, an not just because of rising energy coss. A carbon footprint is the total set of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organisation, event or product. The carbon footprint of an individual, a nation, or an organisation is measured by undertaking a GHG emissions assessment. Once the size of a carbon footprint is known, a strategy can be devised to reduce it.
The mitigation of carbon emissions through the development of alternative projects such as solar or wind energy represents one way of managing the problem. A carbon footprint can be efficient, and effectively reduced by undertaking a number of measures:
- life cycle Assessment (LCA) to accurately determine teh current carbon footprint
- Identification of hotspots in terms of energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions.
- Where possible, changing to another (renewable) energy source such as wind turbines, solar panels, or even nuclear power, however controversial this might be.
- Optimisations of energy efficiency and, thus, reduction of CO2 emissions and reduction of other GHG emissions contributed from production processes
- Identification of solutions to neutralise the CO2 emissions that cannot be eliminated by energy-saving measures.
Whatever the case, more and more businesses are going out of their way to show their Green face to the public. On the other han, the vast majority of businesses are only doing what they absolutely need to do in order to comply with regulations and reporting standards. 'Green' is still seen as a cost and not an investment. It is just part of the licence to operate.
Organisations are expected to include within their reports the impact that their business is having on climate change. This may also include how they are working to reduce this impact as well as justification when the impact ist large.
With carbon reporting high on the agenda, organisations need to look at ways of reducing their carbon footprint.
- In the future, carbon emissions will be seen as a potential asset. High emissions may be taxed, but low emissions could enable emission allocations to be sold on as carbon credits on a carbon-trading platform
- Organisations will need to look to carbon emissions in this way, monetising emissions as carbon credits and including these in their managerial and financial reports. Disclosure of emissions will become a standard reporting item for many busineses and effective carbon management will be required to maximise teh value of carbon assets.
- Key areas for improvement need to be identified with a planned course of action. Regular reassessment should b carried aout to ensure that targets are being met and to identiy new opportunities for improvement.
With the increaded focus on the impact of human activity on global warming and physical resources, there is greater scrutinity of the role IT is playing. Green technology is essentially focused around reducing technology's footprint
This means reducing energy usage and wastage, increasing recycling of redundant hardware as well as enabling collaboration so that the need for travel, particularly via air transport, is reduced.
Virtualization technologies are making it possible to host many virtual machines on a single server, which in turn requires less hardware and energy usage than the equivalent physical machines. This therefore reduces the energy and physical footprint in data centres.
See the appropriate site of VmWare that focusses on that topic.
Video collaboration / telepresence technologies will make collaboration and meetings so realisitic that the need for travel will be reduced, leading to cost savings as well as energy impact.
See for example the offering of TATA communications for Telepresence services across the globe and information about Telepresence Options in general.
Check out the CISCO Carbon Savings Calculator for Telepresence Usage your enterprises
After initial outlay, enterprises stand to make significant cost savings as highlighted in the previous two points, and they may well benefit from any tax breaks provided by their respect government.
Companies that embrace Green technology stand to get positive publicity in the media, gain new environmentally conscious customers and increase or sustain market share.
One Example of Enterprise power saving solutions can be found at JOULEX.
The recent research results on optimizing the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) factor for running datacenters can be found in the publications of the research lab documents of T-Systems and Intel: http://www.datacenter2020.de/
Forget every argument and industry lobby previously put forward regarding the evolution of green energy alternatives. For Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, if a technology doesn't meet the "Chindia test" - meaning that it is cheaper than the current status quo in China and India - then it is not a viable, scalable, and cost-effective long-term alternative. Anything that will uproot the global reliance on oil or coal must be less expensive, else it will never gain traction in the global marketplace. Vinods says the main problem that sustainable energy-production has to solve is to store energy safely and recall it on demand. See additional aspects from Stanford entrepreneurship series with Vinod Khosla on Energy:
The energy storage problem and possible solutions are clearly explained here.
Using Cars as energy storages of the future is currently under investigation in several joint research programs between energy and automotive industry.
See the information on IBM's initiative Smarter planet for smart grids in particular.
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