PES Manifesto

Martina Preuss: Green IT and the climate

Publié mercredi 9 avril 2008 à 10h25
par martina dans Sauvons notre planète (vu 966 fois et 2 commentaires)

Climate neutrality, or, in scientific terms 'CO2 neutrality', describes processes by which the global CO2 balance remains constant (source: Wikipedia).

In my opinion this CO2 balance no longer exists – we need to bring back this balance before we can actually maintain it. In a time of increased environmental awareness, this worthy goal can nevertheless produce unusual ideas.

Our lifestyles are often careless: jetting off to remote countries, taking the car to go to the bakery around the corner, using the tumble dryer and all the other small things which makes life easy. These actions need no longer give us a guilty conscience. By spending a bit of money you can compensate for your polluting sins. For example, take a look at Atmosfair, Greenmiles, The Climate Company or My Climate. There are probably more such projects, especially outside Germany. Yet a study from Tufts University in Boston revealed that only three of thirteen such ‘compensation agencies’, including Atmosfair and My Climate, are actually recommended service providers.

When travelling by plane, Atmosfair can help you obtain a cleaner conscience. You can pay when you book, but also calculate and compensate for your CO2 emissions later. When typing in your flight route, for example Paderborn-Alicante-Paderborn, Atmosfair will calculate your emission (or rather the emission of the airplane!) – in this case around 840 kilos of CO2. In comparison my new fridge can cool for 8 years on the same amount of CO2. Do you feel guilty? Don’t be concerned; for only 20 Euros you can 'neutralize' this terrible sin: Atmosfair will spend the money on solar energy technology for catering centres in India.

At Greenmiles you can 'neutralize' all sorts of climatic problems. Since 'green IT' is currently on everyone’s lips, let me take the PC, laptop, printer or server: a much used laptop costs around 15 euros per year, a less frequently used PC around 17 euros and a little used printer approximately 13 euros. However, it seems odd to me that the compensation cost is calculated to the eurocent, but no technical specifications are taken into consideration – you can only choose whether your use of your PC or printer is 'little', 'normal' or 'a lot'.

Who cares? The important thing is that you do something for the environment, right? Or do they simply want to stoke a guilty conscience, only to offer up the comfortable possibility of absolving yourself of all responsibility? Should this responsibility be subordinated to economics, or can it even be replaced by the latter?

I still think that we are all responsible for each other and the environment – and we should not be buying our ways out of this responsibility. One can certainly support the assumption of environmental responsibility by firms as well as further progress in research and development. But please don't replace the one with the other; this is – with all due respect – bullshit.

Speaking of green-IT, a whole conference hall was devoted to this theme at this year's CeBIT (a large trade show for IT and telecom technology in Hannover). The exhibition was indeed quite green in colour, but the ultimate goal on the part of the companies is of course to sell their products. If one can increase the merchandise appeal of the latest developments with the new buzzword Green-IT, then this will be used for advertising purposes, no question.

Despite an obvious focus on marketing, the state could reinforce this development by introducing a 'climate label’, like the one we have on organic products. Organic products are experiencing a real boom – why shouldn’t this work with other types of products which are, for example, produced in climate neutral and energy efficient ways?

I suggest starting with computer hardware and the Internet: why don’t we offer a special climate label to internet service providers that introduce energy efficient servers – some were actually demonstrated at CeBIT – in their data centres and only use 'eco-electricity’? According to a study by the Öko-Institut in Freiburg, PCs, laptops, peripheral devices and the use of the internet & co. make up more than 6 percent of the environmental impact of private households in Germany. Up to the present time, there still has not been enough attention devoted to producing energy efficient devices. Therefore, the Institute suggests a classification of large household appliances with respect to their energy efficiency. At the same time, it would be possible to incorporate further energy saving scenarios that would guide the consumer towards energy saving techniques when he or she (for example) forgets to turn off the PC. One possibility would be to eliminate the use of stand-by mode.

Unfortunately, it seems that companies are not yet prepared to do this. The other day my internet provider asked me whether I usually disconnect my router. He was trying to fix a problem with my internet connection and informed me that switching off the router is interpreted as a disconnection. My answer was yes – I always turn off electric appliances when they are not in use.

Find a German-language version of this post attached as a PDF-file or read it on Martina's personal blog.

Tags: blogueur de la semaine, changement climatique, CO2, CO2, électricité, electricity, énergie, energy, environnement, green-IT

Dossier: IT_climate_DE.pdf