With financial support from several other tech giants, Google has committed $915 million in new funding for carbon removal through the purchase of carbon removal credits.

Chipping in are Stripe, Google, Shopify, Salesforce, H&M Group, and Anthropic, which will contribute via Google's Frontier advance market commitment (AMC), made in 2022, to buy $1 billion of carbon removal by 2030.

The goal, Google said, is to spur innovation by sending a clear demand signal to researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors that there is a growing market for these technologies.

"Our renewed support helps scale novel climate solutions that benefit both ecosystems and communities – ranging from improving soil health through enhanced rock weathering to strengthening local economies through biomass carbon removal," said Randy Spock, Google's head of carbon credits and removals.

"These long-duration removals fold into our broader climate solutions portfolio, which includes restoring natural ecosystems and eliminating superpollutants. Together, these approaches are more than the sum of their parts; they can be combined to neutralize the warming impact of emissions over every timescale."

The company is focusing its efforts on two main areas. On the supply side, it plans to concentrate purchases on a narrower portfolio of companies where, it said, it's thoroughly convinced that the technology has gigaton-scale potential.

On the demand side, meanwhile, it will require every deal to have a clear line of sight to robust, long-term demand, be it compliance markets, industrial regulation, or direct government procurement.

The program includes methods such as enhanced rock weathering (ERW), inland water alkalinity enhancement (IWAE), ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), biomass injection, and waste-to-energy with carbon capture.

"Surficial mineralization and ocean alkalinity enhancement have the potential to be huge and low cost, but outstanding technology risks mean large error bars on both metrics," said Google.

"Biomass-based approaches and enhanced rock weathering are capped in their scale potential, and the cost of direct air capture is likely to remain relatively high, but these technologies are better understood and enjoy more existing policy support."

Currently, it's Microsoft that's the world's largest buyer of carbon removals by far: in fiscal year 2025, it signed agreements to remove a record 45 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide with 21 companies across the globe.

But over the last four years, said Google, Frontier firms have also made a great deal of progress. Last year, seven portfolio companies delivered around 23,000 tons – roughly twice as much as the year before, and broke ground on 1.4 million tons of new annual removal capacity. This year, Frontier portfolio companies are forecasting more than 50,000 tons removed.

"Hundreds of companies are being built, and tens of thousands of tons have been delivered. We have real-world data across most major pathways and growing confidence in which technologies could be a meaningful part of a gigaton-scale future. The major question now is whether demand will materialize at the magnitude required," said the firm.

"To get to gigaton-scale, companies and governments will need to work in concert. Policy takes years to develop, and governments are best served by a range of proven, derisked technologies. Corporate buyers bridge that gap, providing the reliable revenue companies need today to get their technologies to commercial scale."

Microsoft has revealed all of its global electricity consumption is now matched by renewable energy generation.

In 2020, the firm said it aimed to be carbon negative by 2030, setting a target of “renewable matching” by 2025, whereby consumption is offset by production of renewable energy.

"Since our carbon negative announcement in 2020, we have contracted 40 gigawatts of new renewable energy supply across 26 countries, working with more than 95 utilities and developers across 400-plus contracts and counting," the company confirmed in a blog post penned by chief sustainability officer Melanie Nakagawa and Noelle Walsh, president of cloud operations and innovation.

"To put that amount in perspective — that’s enough energy to power about 10 million US homes. Of that contracted volume, 19 GW are now online, delivering new clean energy supply to the power grid, while the remainder are slated to come online over the next five years."

From its first 110 MW renewable power purchase agreement in 2013, Microsoft has grown to become one of the world's largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy.

The tech giant has now contracted 40 GW of renewable energy, with 19 GW currently online and operational. The remaining 21 GW is scheduled to become available within the next five years.

According to Microsoft, environmental benefits include the reduction of its reported Scope 2 carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 25 million tons.

How Microsoft sources renewable energy

Microsoft has sourced its clean energy through multiple requests for proposal or information, bilateral engagements, and clean tariffs to evaluate over 5,000 unique carbon-free energy projects around the world.

"Today, Microsoft has six energy company partners with which we have over 1 GW of contracted renewable energy capacity, and more than 20 energy supplier partners where each partner has at least five separate renewable energy projects with Microsoft — evidence of the durable, repeatable relationships necessary to scale clean energy," said Nakagawa and Walsh.

"Our renewable energy procurement has mobilized billions of dollars in private investment, supported thousands of jobs across the communities where we operate and delivered meaningful co-benefits."

The company said it will continue with its carbon reduction strategies, adding to its portfolio of renewable energy resources. This, it said, will include nuclear energy, next-generation grid infrastructure, and carbon capture technology.

Microsoft revealed it also plans to build and leverage new AI-driven tools to design, permit, and deploy new power technologies. The company recently announced collaborations with Idaho National Laboratory and the Midcontinental System Operator.

According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) data, renewable energy generation has expanded nearly four-fold since 2000. In many markets around the world, clean energy is one of the fastest-growing sources of power and often the one with the fastest time-to-market.

"Corporate buyers like Microsoft continue to serve as an important catalyst in driving commercial demand for innovation and infrastructure across the power industry," said Nakagawa and Walsh.

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Making net-zero goals directly relevant to each individual could be the most powerful tool for encouraging employees to take charge and help IT organizations and their industry reduce emissions faster.

That's according to Chia-Huei Wu, professor in management at King's Business School, King's College London, who explains that research suggests developing personally relevant narratives that individual employees directly relate to and understand – as opposed to simply providing explanations or facts. 

"This can be based on a kind of storytelling," he says.

It makes sense to have all hands on deck where possible – the task is huge, after all. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average global temperatures must rise no more than 1.5°C (34.7°F) this century to avoid catastrophic climate change, which means slashing emissions 43% by 2030 versus 2019 levels and at least 60% by 2035. 

"The most important factor is motivation – it's about whether people want to do something, using their internal time," Wu says. "People may not think a fact (such as a figure from an emissions estimate) is relevant to them personally." 

A simple example might be developing a communication strategy that encourages employees to rethink sending emails, how much data they use, and the like. Even though these can be small things, the direct relevance to their own behaviors is more obvious than other initiatives, he points out.

Of course, organizations can help further by examining the potential for in-house mechanisms and initiatives that can foster greater efforts and provide routes to success, all of which should be embedded into daily work activities.

An example might be forming groups or "small clubs" that support each other to take action or suggest innovations or improvements. 

When employees can understand who is benefiting from an action or activity and why – understanding how everyone's work is connected across the whole organization – that can also increase the understanding of the meaning of their own work and how what they do can be influential, Wu points out.

"It sounds simple but has come out powerfully in organizational research" he says.

You might also consider that increasing focus on emissions can attract and develop more talent in the first instance, as Susan Kenniston, global sustainability head at Wipro, adds.

"Even knowing how to talk about it, even for recruiters and writing job descriptions and things, threading it into how you represent the company, it really starts there," she says.

Create a kind of "curriculum around sustainability that meets employees where they're at", she says.

Enabling education at executive and management levels that involves more junior employees can drive "faster feedback loops" on emissions over time, while rethinking metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) in relation to the overall business value framework, she says.

Jillian Moore, sustainability and global advisory lead at Avanade, agrees, adding that leaders need to accept and be comfortable with the fact they no longer have all the answers, while also communicating better and more consistently.

"We have a lot of people on the ground out there with clients, usually at slightly earlier levels in their career, who are hugely passionate and know more about sustainability," she says. "Sometimes we can be holding them back, not giving them the runway or space to actually act."

Get with the program

While it can be difficult to get consensus across every individual in a company, people involved at whatever level can often agree on the direction of travel. Then the task can become more about ensuring everyone can play their part and deciding what each individual can contribute, she says.

"You … need a program that helps take on board all these ideas," says Moore. "And you need transparency of outcome with everybody."

For example, if you're reducing travel and you show how the associated cost savings benefit a role it can feel like a win-win, encouraging people to bring forward further ideas, Moore says.

She also advises that organizations make emissions reduction part of people's objectives and appraisals, knitted directly into the job description; sustainability as indivisible from personal career progression.

"We're still at a point where people are prepared to do a lot of this altruistically and some people are very passionate about it. But I don't know how long that phase will last," Moore says.

Rajkumar Vijayarangakannan, leader of network design and devops at ManageEngine, emphasizes education and awareness initiatives as critical to sustainable practice for increasingly power-hungry machines, woven in right from the data center construction phase.

"Our team runs the bigger energy consumption areas, the data centers [which account for] 60-70% of our energy consumption," he says.  "Even five years ago, it was different. We have to optimize every space; even the smallest optimization helps us save a lot." 

Vijayarangakannan says he typically starts by talking to employees about switching off the lights. That might sound simplistic but actually it demonstrates awareness that every little action makes a difference, and that can very much be down to individual choices. 

The effectiveness of actions can be easily showcased these days with the use of temperature sensors, for example, he adds.

"Everything is involved with carbon emissions. So we started giving awareness programmes on which operations, methods and practices can give much better carbon emission control," Vijayarangakannan says. "Then they can, as employees, all be aware of it and then do their own individual things. Each and every one is part of a green program, and it starts from the level one employee."

In one small data center project, the vacuuming was consuming a lot of power; noticing this, the organization changed the method of cleaning, resulting in much lower ongoing emissions. "Every aspect of it is our individual responsibility," Vijayarangakannan says.

Every little helps

Sheryl Moore, head of sustainability at Stone Group, similarly favors getting buy-in from everyone to fully embed sustainability.

"Many people help me with this," she says. "A lot of it comes down to the values and the culture of the organization. If you encourage a more open conversation, that really helps."

People have to feel safe to voice their opinions and see that ideas also do get implemented, without necessarily needing to fully define, curate or present that idea in full themselves, Moore notes.

As James Robey, global head of environmental sustainability at Capgemini, says, tackling the climate crisis relies on collective action. 

"It’s vital for employees to be fully engaged," Robey says. "Our most far-reaching ... was a VP-led initiative to boost employees’ understanding of sustainability, while sparking new ideas and learnings for climate action."

The role of IT in saving the planet, and that of IT in general, is a complex one. Cloud computing, for example, has allowed many organizations to offer staff hybrid or fully remote positions, but increasingly the power demands of the data centers that underpin it are coming in for scrutiny.

Similarly, foundational pieces of IT estate from printers to laptops and even on-premises data centers are being targeted in an effort to reduce businesses’ impact on the environment.

Vendors are finding ways to answer these calls, from low-energy hardware, non-toxic inks, and refillable toner cartridges, to cloud data centers that run on renewable energy sources or make novel use of the heat from their cooling systems. The ability of IT decision makers to take advantage of this, however, isn’t as clear-cut as it’s often made out to be.

It’s not always easy being green

IT decision makers with an environmental conscience may wish to use their influence to make their own department and its responsibilities as eco-friendly as possible. This could include buying energy-efficient laptops or ones that are made largely from recycled materials, for example, or opting for public cloud services, which tend to be more environmentally friendly than self-hosted and managed data centers, where possible.

It’s not always as simple as just making a decision and running with it, though, as members of the ITPro Network explain.

According to Chris Madden, CTO of Kreston Reeves, company culture will have a big influence on what the IT department can and can’t do.

“Some businesses will simply want to buy the cheapest, most polluting and dispose of in the cheapest way,” says Madden. “Others will have [environmental and social] policies and possibly be looking at UN sustainable goals which means a more balanced approach.”

“IT teams can however make an impact by looking around the market, creating some benchmarks to score vendors against and dispose of via companies that actively recycle or reuse. Sometimes green can be a lower cost but there needs to be a willingness (and time) to put in the effort,” he adds.

Even if an agreement is made at an organizational level that allows the IT department to take a more environmentally friendly approach, time may not initially be on their side.

“There's sometimes an issue around timing, both for contracts and asset write-off,” says Liam Quinn, IT Director at Richmond events. “It's hard to adapt and change if contracts have a while to run, or finance isn't willing to write down existing kit.”

If this is the case, then it may be that you have to wait until the next time there’s a hardware refresh planned to make any changes or investments.

Dodging the greenwash

Even if you’ve avoided or overcome the issues set out above, there are still potential traps en route to transforming your IT operations into an engine of environmental responsibility.

Chief among these is greenwashing – when a supplier claims to be behaving in an environmentally friendly way while in reality doing very little or even nothing to back that up.

“Some organizations have the rigorous integrity to make ‘green’ a fundamental pillar of their operation, but I still see a lot for whom there is no commitment to sustainability in environmental terms when there is any effort required to measure environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) and the bottom line,” says Mark Evans, IT Director at Tilia Homes. “It seems reminiscent of ‘Stick a rainbow flag in reception during Pride Month to keep the pink pound; coming in.’ There still seems to be a lot of lip service.”

Madden has similar feelings, arguing that the idea of green business is getting “warped”.

“Businesses can say they are zero emission by buying credit for planting trees, many of which don't get looked after and quickly die so are of no benefit at all,” he says. “You can draw a box around a manufacturing process to claim green credentials, yet elsewhere in the production chain, there are very damaging processes. So it’s very hard for us to determine which manufacturer is better for the environment unless we have the capacity to look at the whole manufacturing cycle from mine of raw materials to finished, delivered product, to recycling.”

Depending on an organization’s stance, the due diligence for ESG can go even further – and become even more knotty.

Peter O’Rourke, assistant director of IT operations at the University of Sussex, explains: “I’m fortunate to work for an organization with global sustainability aspirations, which means we have to ensure end-to-end supply chain sustainability. This is embedded into our procurement approaches. This helps greatly, otherwise cost would become far too much of a single-issue focus. We frame it as demonstrating value for money; it needs to be competitive, though not at the expense of environmental sustainability aspirations.

“That said, trying to hold our suppliers’ downstream supply chain sustainability to account is an interesting challenge.”

For IT professionals, what they can do to effect change when it comes to ESG attitudes and goals is ultimately limited by the attitude of those at the top. That’s not to say nothing can be done, though. In the face of an organization that’s focused on cost above all else, advocating for low-energy units with a longer lifespan can be a winning strategy – especially when the cost of energy is high. More enlightened organizations that take their role in protecting the environment seriously can also up their game by ensuring suppliers they use – and the businesses that supply them – have a strong ESG ethos and act on it too. Due diligence can take more time and effort, but it can be a necessary burden.

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Data centre operators could be looking at a 40% increase in costs due to the looming energy crisis, according to Gartner, and there might not be a viable solution in the UK for years to come.

Data centres are set to face a similar fate as consumers and other businesses, Gartner senior research director Tiny Haynes told the IT Pro Podcast, with non-data centre operators and other organisations seeing their prices "go up by a factor of three". He also warned that similar price spikes could potentially happen in the data centre market over the next six to 12 months.

"​​I'm hearing people talk between 25 and 50%," Haynes said. "It really depends on the global gas price as we're now at the mercy of geopolitics. Unfortunately, it will take some time for the UK as a general rule to bring in additional capacity from renewable sources where you're not going to be subject to such price variance.

"We've had the announcement by the outgoing Prime Minister of new investment into nuclear power stations in Sizewell C. But that's probably going to be about ten years before it comes online. So as far as price rises go, I can only see them going up."

However, the impact isn't going to affect every data centre in the same way, according to Haynes, as it depends on the facility and the operators themselves. For those providing straightforward data centre space, Haynes suggests their margin is going to be exposed to power pricing, he said, whereas managed services providers, and those that add cloud or professional services, may be insulated from cost increases by larger margins.

So far, these increased costs are being kept away from customers, according to Haynes, with the bigger players - Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google - said to have no intention of passing them on. There isn't anything to suggest that will stance won't change over the next year or so, though it is highly likely that smaller cloud operators will have no choice but to pass the cost on.

"Some of these providers are making a lot of money and some of them are not," Haynes said. "So I think you're probably looking at those organisations which aren't making as much margin who'd be more likely to pass on the price raises."

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘How the energy crisis will impact data centres’. We apologise for any errors.

Adam Shepherd

Hi, I'm Adam Shepherd.

Zach Marzouk

And I'm Zach Marzouk,

Adam

and this is the IT Pro Podcast where today, we're taking a look at the current energy crisis.

Zach Marzouk

The UK is currently facing a serious power problem. A number of factors including the war in Ukraine, low gas storage levels and unusually high demand, have caused wholesale energy prices to skyrocket, and those prices are being passed on to consumers. With price caps on domestic energy bills rising at an alarming rate, many households are facing the prospect of their bills doubling within six months.

Adam

Domestic users aren't the only people who need power however, and while consumer energy bills are rising at an alarming rate, the situation may prove to be even more dire for the IT industry. Data centre operators in particular require enormous amounts of power in order to continue providing vital services, both to consumers and to other businesses, and rising costs could prove catastrophic for the continuity of the services. Joining us to talk about the potential risks posed by the current crisis, as well as how businesses can mitigate the potential impact of rising energy costs is Tiny Haynes, Senior Director of Research at Gartner. Tiny, thanks for being here.

Tiny Haynes

Thank you very much for having me.

Adam

So Tiny, the situation in terms of energy costs is not great at the moment, I think it's fair to say. But what role do energy costs typically play in the budgets of datacenter operators?

Tiny

Well, there's a number of different answers to that. For small colocation services, where energy costs are actually bundled into the price, then, obviously, the provider, the data centre operator is going to take the hit. And it's up to them to try to secure supplies for as long as possible. In fact, I was speaking to a customer this morning, and one of these providers has got a deal for the next four years at a set rate. So some of these guys are hedging and going quite well. The other side of things are going to be for those data centre operators who just simply pass through the energy costs. And of course, then that responsibility sits on the customer themselves. And it's used for bigger deals around about 500 kilowatts outputs, where you'll see a straightforward pass through, although there's always variants of that lower figure. So for a datacenter operator that's taking the risk, and if they do not have a capability of passing through the price rises, and normally contracts will have maybe a three or 5% annual inflation adjusted price rise, then they are going to certainly suffer in the short term. And if indeed if if these energy prices don't seem to be coming down over the next few years, then I think there's going to be a lot more distressed assets in this market.

Zach

Do you happen to know how much these costs are expected to rise over the next six to 12 months?

Tiny

Well, that's the big question, isn't it? So at the moment, I'm hearing people talk between 25 and 50%. It really depends on the global gas price. And we're now at the mercy of the geopolitics. Unfortunately, it will take some time for the UK as a general rule to bring in additional capacity from renewable sources where you're not going to be subject to such price variance. Interesting enough that we've had the announcement by the outgoing Prime Minister of new investment into nuclear power stations in in Sizewell C. But that's probably gonna be about 10 years before it comes online. So as far as price rises, go, I can only see them going up. I would not be surprised if they are looking to double in the same way that the consumer prices are doubling. In fact, I've seen non datacenter operators but other organisations seeing their prices go up by a factor of three, which possibly could happen in the datacenter market over the next six to 12 months.

Adam

Oof. That is big, big numbers that we're talking about then if it's a doubling of power costs. So for those data centre operators that on passing the power costs directly on to their customers, and charge a flat rate, all inclusive; what kind of margins do they have, generally speaking, to absorb these increases?

Tiny

it really depends on the datacenter. And the operator themselves. If I am providing straightforward data centre space, then obviously, the margin is going to be very exposed to the power pricing. And I would carry between a 15 to 40% margin on that service. However, if I'm providing managed services, so, putting in like cloud like services, or maybe professional services, there's more margin to play with. So a straightforward colocation provider who's in the retail space, so sub-100 kilowatts, and if they're just not doing any pass through, and there's no language in their contract, which allows them to make emergency payments, I think that there's going to be a lot of problems for them going forward. But if you're offering more managed services, which might be application management, and monitoring, maybe professional services on top, there's a bit more margin to play with and the data centre costs become less of a factor. And indeed, we're seeing that with the cloud guys. So Amazon, Microsoft and Google, what they're doing is they're not passing on the price rises in energy costs currently to the consumer. And when you ask them directly, they say no, there's no intention, will that change in the next six to 12 months, if we see a huge increase in pricing? Some of these providers are making a lot of money, a lot of margin, and some of them are not. So I think you're probably looking at so those organisations which aren't making as much margin who'd be more likely to pass on the price raises. But then you get into a whole different sort of conversation about which cloud provider do I go with? Are they going to be a going concern going forward?

Zach

Could this be an opportunity for the bigger cloud providers to snap up the smaller ones if they can withstand the costs?

Tiny

The problem with the cloud providers, if it's, let's take the example the hyperscalers, like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, they've built all of their infrastructure and services based on their own code. And the reason that they're able to innovate so quickly is because of the fact that they have open API's, everything's built to a certain style. And it's easy for them to continue to grow. If I start to buy cloud providers who use different source code, I'm gonna have to really re-engineer that code to work in my environment, and do I necessarily want to get involved in a market, which has been a bit more distressed when I'm having problems myself? Now saying that, you will find that Ireland has currently got a moratorium on new data centre build, because they just can't provide the power required for these DCs. I mean, some of these DCS, you're talking tens of megawatts of power requirements. So it might be worth some of these guys to say, Okay, what we'll do is we'll buy your datacenter for our own services, but we'll just trash all your systems and services, because we won't making any money out of that, or it might cost us too much to go and reengineer it for our own platform.

Adam

So speaking of trashing services, is there any capacity, as it were, for data centre operators to effectively try and mitigate their energy bills, by just saying, Okay, we're going to just switch off a bunch of racks and just radically limit the kind of headroom that we have on our services and on our datacenter and accept a bit of loss of kind of compute scale, in exchange for limiting the risk of kind of price spikes.

Tiny

If you're a straightforward data centre provider where you're offering space and power, there's gonna be limited scope for you to switch things off unless you get rid of the customers. Now we did see that happening with TelecityRedbus when they decided to go and do their amalgamation and we saw these half rack and quarter rack services being ejected by the new entity. So you effectively get rid of some customers because they are too small, they're not going to be giving enough margin, but if you're fundamentally just providing space and power, your hands are pretty tied. But if you say look, yeah, I can offer additional managed services and make more money then there's that conversation to be had to say, Okay, well, let's eat into that margin. I mean, a customer's going to be aware of the exposure that these colocation providers have today. We saw this year Sungard go into administration, that was part of that, not necessarily the only reason, but part of that was going to be because of the power price lock in. And with the power prices going up dramatically, and customers who are resigning with other data centre providers are getting a bit of a bill shock, because suddenly their power price had gone through the roof.

Adam

On that subject, then, who would you say is in a better position - If anyone - customers who are running their own kind of on premise infrastructure and running their own services off that, or downstream customers of cloud service providers and public cloud providers? Is there anyone that's kind of more insulated from these increases?

Tiny

I think the energy price is going to hit on premise data centres as much as it's going to hit colocation. Will your facilities guys have done the same sort of negotiation that the data centre's guys would have done? Would they have had the same sort of ability to negotiate megawatts of power? Probably not. So you're probably a lot more exposed. For the cloud guys. Currently, they are not passing on that price. So once again, we see that the attraction of cloud over on premises. Yeah, so I think that the only other thing is, is get away from the fossil fuels and go to Norway or Iceland, where the data centres are using renewable energy; 97% In Norway and 100% in Iceland, you don't get the same sort of bill shock.

Zach

How much of a potential problem is this for Europe, compared to the UK?

Tiny

Europe, the problem is doubled. Because you don't just have the issue with energy prices going up. And I'm thinking places like Germany, you also have the problem of actual energy availability. Speaking to some customers in Germany, they are predicting there will be blackouts. And therefore, yes, a datacenter should have UPS and generator and an on site diesel. But if you knock out an entire city, so for example, Frankfort, where it's one of the big data centre locations, power fails there for any certain amount of time, everyone's going to want to resupply their diesel at the same point. I mean, you've got lots of data centres there will be exposed. So I think that the European problem is even more than the UK. Not to say that we should be smug in any way, because obviously, because we do rely on Norwegian gas, if Norway as part of the EU, decides to prioritise the EU through some sort of agreement, then of course, what you'll then have is the UK losing out on gas and of course the pricing goes up even further. So I don't think anyone's really sitting pretty but I think the Europeans have actually a supply issue as well as a pricing issue.

Adam

So Microsoft's Project Natick, Natick, not entirely sure how you pronounce it, is its experiment to see if you can put datacenters essentially at the bottom of the sea. Is this something that's going to be a feasible possibility for leveraging kind of renewables and hydro and solar and wind and stuff like that, to kind of circumvent some of this reliance on fossil fuel based power?

Tiny

I always thought that project has actually been more for cooling. And you, it's not unprecedented. We do have data centres in Norway, which are taking water from the fjords and using that as a cooling source, hermetically sealing data centres and dropping them in the water. You can then plug in however you wish. But of course, you've got, there's a new data centre, you might be able to use some of the hydro electrical capability, which I mean, as I say, Orbital Marina are producing a one megawatts tidal system. You also have got a lot of offshore wind farms, which you could take a connection to, but it's not really a give you much more than a datacenter which says okay, I'm going to do a deal with Orbital or one of the wind farms. It's just the cooling is going to be a bit more efficient. Okay, you've reduced the PUE of the data centre and you might get some efficiencies in that. And, of course, you don't have to worry too much about the overheating that we've had recently with with the Google and other data centres. So there are elements that yes, that can certainly help. But I don't, don't think it's me that the absolute lifesaver, because you've got these huge, great big data centre requirements, we're talking megawatts of requirements here, and hermetically sealing them and put them into water is for certain use cases, maybe, but it's not going to solve all the problems. And how do you swap out a disk when a server goes down?

Adam

Yeah, that's, that's always the challenge. You can't exactly send a frogman down with a bag of bag of fresh drives.

Tiny

Exactly. Yeah.

Zach

What does the outlook look like for downstream cloud service providers and end user customers?

Tiny

As I say, the cloud guys aren't passing on the cost at the moment. So the customers shouldn't be affected - at the moment. And I keep on putting that proviso in because everything is unprecedented. We are in a situation where the short term answer is going to be they're swallowing the costs. But if over time, if you're not as a profitable cloud service, as maybe some of the real big guys are, then you're gonna start eating into your margin. And if it becomes to, how do I get some money to bail me out private equity might not necessarily want to jump in and save you if you're a distressed asset. So for the hyperscalers - well, definitely Amazon, Microsoft. I mean, Google, that that's always the question mark. But those two, I don't see much problems. Too many problems. Google is, it's an interesting organisation, that they're doing some very interesting things with GCP. They've got some really good deals out there and some good work they've done with distributed cloud. Do they continue running the GCP operations? Because we have seen them as they scale back on IoT. Will they start to scale back other services, just to focus on core, is is the question really to ask. And as this gets further and further along, and more pressure on margin, then I think people's hands will be played for them.

Adam

So we've spoken a lot about the the hyperscalers, and the sort of cushioning that they have to some degree from this. What about cloud service providers that are running their services on top of datacenter and hosting partners that maybe aren't as large as the hyperscalers, don't necessarily have as much insulation against those price increases? If their providers are passing the costs along to them, do those kind of downstream service providers then pass the costs on to their actual end user customers? Or are they also going to have to eat a portion of that cost for themselves?

Tiny

I think a mix of both, they'll try and resist it as much as possible. Because is this going to be a blip in the marketplace? With the new prime minister coming onboard, is there going to be rate relief for small, medium sized businesses, which might allow them to be a bit more flexible? So there's a lot of question marks here. So they might say in the short term, we'll swallow some of this margin because we know that longer term things are gonna get better? Or do they say, Look, we don't think that things are gonna get better, we're gonna have to pass on price increases to our customers. And the advantage, obviously, with a cloud contract is, is there's no commitment from either side. And so if your prices go up, you pay that price immediately.

Adam

And that, I think, combined with the kind of rising energy bills for businesses across the board, you know, outside of the kind of datacenter related costs, that could potentially be quite worrying for a lot of smaller businesses, as well, I think if they've got not just their own energy bills increasing but also the cloud costs that they're paying, increasing off the back of those energy price rises.

Tiny

Yeah. I certainly think that we do have a particularly nasty next few months until we see some resolution here, and yeah, if I was a small business, I would be certainly be very concerned about the exposure either my datacenter provider or my cloud provider has. So things like disaster recovery as a service where, unless you go into the major cloud providers, there's all sorts of niche solutions. If there's very niche solutions for verticals, I'd be quite concerned unless these guys are hosting with the big hyperscalers.

Zach

Are there any policies you would like to see introduced to help data centres?

Tiny

Well, I think that business rate relief is always going to be a handy one. The ability to get more stability in the energy prices, so negotiating contracts, longer term contracts with the energy providers to allow them to be a bit more stable. There's also going to be some opportunities to reengineer datacenters. We all talked about that this PUE rating, the power utilisation efficiency or effectiveness. But if you've got an older DC, it's going to be about 1.8, 1.6. The newer DCS come a lot lower. So there might be some government grants to be able to retrofit existing DCs for things like free air cooling, that might be useful. But it's going to take some capital and you know, getting access to that capital, you either get it from the private equity market or you get it from the government. The good news is that that private equity has been investing a lot in datacenter providers. So Black Rock have taken a big interest in QTS, DRT is just one big real estate fund. And I've seen EMAR do exactly the same in the Middle East that they're investing in data centres. So there's interest there. But I think if the government can obviously give out some sort of short term relief in this current climate, that will always be appreciated.

Adam

And speaking of which, you've mentioned things like the datacenter kind of modernization projects in terms of things like cooling and PUE, and the sort of greater stability that that customers can expect in terms of their energy bills from the large hyperscalers. But are there any other fallback or failover preparations that businesses should be putting in place now, to mitigate the impact of any potentially significant data centre energy cost rises?

Tiny

not just on energy costs, I'd make sure that the data centres have checked their failover. So they've done black building tests. So if we do have a catastrophic brownout or blackout, then all the systems have been checked. And black building tests are... the best way to describe them is a lot of panic from engineers, because you're actually switching off live systems and making sure things fail over.

Adam

Ooh.

Tiny

Yeah, exactly. So do you really want to be a lot harder on them to say, look, you know, a generator test once a week is not going to cut it, you need to show us a good failover, you want to show us also your resupply for diesel, if we have an extended period of time, or at least what we're going to do about that. As far as the energy costs themselves go, you can look at what infrastructure you've got in your current racks and see if you can switch things off or you can accelerate your migration to cloud. There are reasons why you can't go to cloud and where it's not be possible. So that's not always going to be the answer. But unnecessary equipment, if you can switch it off, power down servers when they're not needed at nighttime, I mean, this is how the cloud guys really make their money is they have this sort of shedule of switching things off, etc. And that you can do the same for servers, or at least bring them on to lower power or switch a PDU off then at least you're going to be sort of saving some money. So it's looking at the operational processes that you can do to only use what you need against also, the datacenter providers as well to make sure they're being efficient as possible, and also checking their failover systems.

Adam

I mean, it sounds a lot like the advice that kind of consumers and households are being given for bringing their energy bills down. It feels like the businesses equivalent of put on a jumper if you're cold rather than turning the heating on, but kind of writ large.

Tiny

Yeah, well, I think at the end of the day, let's take the mystique out the datacenters. I mean, they have a big bank of batteries, they have a generator and they have a lot of air conditioning, I mean they are fundamentally like your house, except you can't open a window in a datacenter; you have to use aircon.

Zach

The energy crisis isn't only going to affect datacenters, but it's going to affect every single person working in that data centre, do you think that businesses are going to increase their employee's salary to help them cope with the cost of living?

Tiny

Well this is just a general sort of cost of living question which I probably won't be the best person to answer. But I mean, each individual data centre operator will have their own employment policies. It's quite a specialist skill, which they're looking for. So you can't just simply employ minimum wage here. So you're gonna have to start paying people more to keep them. But I think what we all also are seeing is a lot of move to cloud and in cloud, costs, the skills are very difficult to find. So you might find even more pressure on engineers who are skilled in the hyperscalers, to be able to afford these guys because you know, there's even more demand for them.

Zach

During the water crisis that we went through during July and August, there was a lot of scrutiny around water companies. I think one of them opened a probe into a data centre scrutinising how it was using water. Do you think that data centres could become scapegoats in the next year or so due to how much energy they use?

Tiny

Well, the question is really, the data centres are just enabling the digital change. And if you want to do Facebook, and tweeting, and all those other things, you're living that digital life, they can't stop that service, unless the consumers stop that service. As far as water consumption in the data centres themselves go. I know a lot of the DCs are moving away from potable water to grey water, so rainwater and groundwater that they will use in their facilities, rather than using the straightforward pipe mains water. Data centres represent around about 1% of the world's electricity consumption. It's only ever gonna get more and more. They can certainly come under the gunsights of people, but I think you know that there are more lower hanging fruit like crypto mining, which is incredibly intensive usage of, of datacenter and power. So I think crypto mining might get hit before anything else does.

Adam

And I think that's a valid point to pull out is that data centres power a huge amount of not just kind of consumer services, but also critical infrastructure. You know, there's so much that we rely on as a society that is all powered by digital infrastructure, you know, healthcare systems, transport systems, all the key systems, I mean, the the energy grids themselves, are in large part powered by data centre platforms and digital infrastructure. And without that a lot of society just kind of grinds to a halt. So there's a limit to how much you can put a moratorium on that kind of activity, I think.

Tiny

yeah, I keep on trying to scare my girls by saying, just imagine your electricity supply doesn't work in the morning, you won't be able to tweet because obviously you won't be able to go online. Because there will be no mobile phone signal, or wireless when we go down, you won't be able to flush the toilet more than once because the pumps are are all consuming electricity. Your fridge is switched off, I mean, these these are apocalyptic sort of scenario. So you want to minimise that as much as possible. But yeah, we are incredibly reliant on an energy and to power our our lives. And I think that we have to be very realistic about energy security going forward. I've been talking to customers this week, more and more about data centre consolidation, seeing where the opportunities are going to be to the quick wins. The reality is a DC migration is a six to nine month process. So even if you start today, you're not necessarily going to see a way around the pain in the short term.

Adam

Well on that slightly bleak note, I'm afraid that is all we've got time for on this week's episode. But thanks once again to Gartner's Senior Director of Research Tiny Haynes for joining us.

Tiny

Thank you very much indeed for having me.

Zach

You can find links to all of the topics we spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website at itpro.co.uk.

Adam

You can also follow us on social media, as well as subscribe to our daily newsletter.

Zach

Don't forget to subscribe to the IT Pro Podcast wherever you find podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and a review.

Adam

We'll be back next week with more insight from the world of IT, but until then, goodbye.

Zach

Bye.

The global energy market is currently experiencing some extreme turmoil, with low availability resulting in steep price increases. The turbulence is particularly pronounced in the UK, where spiralling power bills are raising concerns for both consumers and businesses alike over whether or not they’ll be able to afford them.

The IT industry isn’t exempt from these challenges; in fact, thanks to the extreme power usage that data centre infrastructure requires, the risk of further price rises should be extremely worrying for cloud service providers, as well as the end customers that rely on those services. This week, we talk to Tiny Haynes, Senior Director of Research at Gartner, about what the current energy crisis could mean for the UK’s data centre ecosystem, the risk of potential outages, and how organisations can insulate themselves from some of the potential damage.

Highlights

“As far as price rises go, I can only see them going up. I would not be surprised if they are looking to double in the same way that the consumer prices are doubling. In fact, I've seen non-datacenter operators, but other organisations, seeing their prices go up by a factor of three, which possibly could happen in the datacenter market over the next six to 12 months.”

“Ireland has currently got a moratorium on new data centre build, because they just can't provide the power required for these DCs. I mean, some of these DCs, you're talking tens of megawatts of power requirements. So it might be worth some of these guys to say, Okay, what we'll do is we'll buy your datacenter for our own services, but we'll just trash all your systems and services, because we won't making any money out of that, or it might cost us too much to go and reengineer it for our own platform.”

“I've been talking to customers this week, more and more about data centre consolidation, seeing where the opportunities are going to be to the quick wins. The reality is a DC migration is a six to nine month process. So even if you start today, you're not necessarily going to see a way around the pain in the short term.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Going into the office won't save you on energy bills
• Energy as a service market poised to reach $147 billion by 2029
• Why is the energy sector so vulnerable to hacking?
• European energy company and gas pipeline hacked by AlphV ransomware
• North Korea-linked hackers target US energy sector by exploiting VMware Horizon
• Nvidia turns to liquid cooling to curb data centre energy consumption
• Singapore to resume construction on new data centres following energy efficiency review
• How do you build a green data centre?
• Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining to avoid nation-wide energy blackouts
• How UK businesses can use microgrids to dodge rising energy costs
• Singapore discourages cryptocurrency trading with new regulations
• Microsoft retrieves underwater data centre after two years
• Google shut down data centre due to multiple cooling failures
• Microsoft successfully tests emission-free hydrogen fuel cell system for data centres
• Singapore relaxes its grip on data centre industry with sustainability pilot
• Google and Oracle data centres hit by issues amidst hottest ever UK day
• The IT Pro Podcast: How Singapore became a data centre powerhouse
• Microsoft's new data centre will heat homes and businesses in Finland
• The IT Pro Podcast: Making data centres green again
• How to keep cloud costs under control
• Nine tips to improve your disaster recovery strategy

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Creating a more sustainable business has become a key priority for organisations – for instance, the majority (60%) of Fortune 500 companies have climate and/or energy efficiency goals. They’re looking at their operations, their supply chains, their offices and how they make and deliver their products or services and looking to see how they can make them more cost and energy efficient. Inevitably, the enterprise data centre has a huge part to play in this drive.

The intergovernmental organisation, the International Energy Agency, believes that data centre electricity use now makes up over 1% of global energy demand. By 2025, they could produce 3.2% of global carbon emissions. Adopting green data centres – where construction and operations minimise energy and water consumption and use alternative energy sources and cooling methods where possible – can help drive this environmental impact down.

Public awareness of the environmental impact of data centres is growing, and governments are also taking notice. The EU is expanding or reviewing legislation and initiatives, including the Ecodesign Regulation on servers and data storage products, the EU Code of Conduct on Data Centre Energy Efficiency, and the EU Green Public Procurement criteria. Its Proposal for a Directive on energy efficiency brings in new elements designed to improve the energy efficiency of data centres. In the UK, the UK Carbon Reduction Initiative sets out strict rules for data centre managers if their facility uses more than 6,000MW per year of power, while the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has described data centres as a ‘key area of focus.’

While data centres pose real challenges and opportunities for companies trying to operate sustainably, it is possible to make them greener.

Designing greener

How? Well, the ideal approach is to start from scratch, building sustainability into every aspect of the design and construction. This could even start with where you locate the data centre, selecting a position that’s already cool, not inclined towards humidity and more likely to benefit from a good, natural airflow.

Of course, this isn’t always possible, but every data centre can be designed with air and cooling management in mind. Cooling data centres can take up to 40% of their total energy consumption, and power usage efficiency (PUE) metrics already take this into account. By using natural airflows in cooling and avoiding the recirculation of warm air, data centre operators can reduce energy use and associated emissions.

Dividing data centres into hot and cold aisles can make a difference, managing intakes and exhausts to ensure that hot air can be vented from the hot aisle and cool air introduced through the cool aisle, for the most efficient configuration. Doors and walls can also direct airflow, while isolating the equipment that produces the most heat can help, particularly with measures to get that heat out of the building as rapidly as possible. New air-conditioning systems may be more energy efficient than existing ones, not just reducing their environmental impact, but their long-term operating costs.

What’s more, immersive cooling systems, like those designed and manufactured by Asperitas, transfer heat to a synthetic oil through natural convection, reducing the energy waste and costs of cooling and enabling the heat to be used elsewhere. They also make it possible to reduce the physical footprint of the servers and infrastructure, allowing data centres to be located where they would previously have been impractical.

Greener power

There are also opportunities to cut waste and consumption in how the power is supplied. Before reaching servers, network infrastructure and storage racks, the power typically moves through multiple uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and power distribution units (PDUs). What’s more, many data centres use multiple power sources and UPS systems in order to provide a level of redundancy. While these generally run at a high level of efficiency, this can vary; a modern modular UPS or PDU might achieve 96% to 99% efficiency under a full load, but older or less capable units might be closer to 94%, wasting significant amounts of energy over time. Units with energy efficient modes and intelligent management are more likely to push this up into the 98% to 99% range.

In some cases, shifting to an energy supplier that uses more renewable energy sources, or even connecting your own renewable sources, could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions (scope 2). Unlike Amazon, not every business can operate a wind or solar farm to power their data centre, but there may be a way to harness renewable resources in a more modest and accessible way.

Crucially, organisations need to make the most of tools and technology that allow them to monitor and measure power consumption, then optimise based on the data. Intelligent PDUs, data centre smart assistants and smart power and temperature controls all have their part to play. Obviously, Google works at the largest scales, yet it’s pioneered the smart approach with smart temperature controls and data-driven insights from its DeepMind AI tech. By combining the two, Google was able to reduce its data centre energy cooling power consumption by 40% over 18 months.

Going deeper

All these measures will help to build a greener data centre, but to maximise their energy efficiency, organisations also need to go deeper at the server hardware level. You can start by looking at how servers and racks are cooled, using variable speed fans that react to temperature or even liquid cooling for devices running more demanding, high-performance applications. You can integrate energy efficiency into your storage strategy, using SSDs, with their reduced heat output and power consumption, where you need performance, and slower, more efficient hard drives where you don’t.

Most importantly, you need to use the most energy-efficient processors and server hardware and optimise how and when you use them as much as possible. Again, using data and AI-based management tools can help by dropping servers into sleep states outside peak hours of demand, but the key here is really virtualisation. Consolidating workloads from physical servers to virtual servers reduces power consumption for the servers themselves alongside the power consumption of the systems that cool them. When the multinational bank, DBS, moved from virtualising 50% of workloads to 99% in its private cloud, it shrank the physical footprint of its servers in one data centre to a quarter of its original size, and reduced its power consumption by half.

Part of this success came down to a shift to AMD’s EPYC server CPUs. With more cores and a higher RAM capacity per server, DBS was able to run more virtual servers from a single physical machine. AMD’s own research has demonstrated that ten AMD EPYC 7713 can reduce energy consumption by 32% and save an estimated 70 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. What’s more, with more cores per socket and more cores per server, it’s easier to fit more processing power into a nimble dual or single-socket server, reducing server counts and footprints even further.

AMD’s current generation EPYC processors already produce exceptional levels of performance per Watt. Yet AMD has even bigger ambitions for the future, committing to a 30x increase in energy efficiency for AMD processors and Instinct GPU accelerators by 2025, representing a 2.5x acceleration of the industry trends from 2015-2020, and a 97% reduction in energy use per computation from 2020-2025. You only have to look at The Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier supercomputer to see what might be possible. Each of its 9.408 HPE Cray EX nodes combines an AMD 7A53 EPYC CPU with four AMD Instint MI250X GPUs and 9.2 petabytes of memory. It’s the world’s fastest supercomputer, with a theoretical peak performance of 1.686 exaflops, yet also the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputer, with 52.23 gigaflops of performance per watt. That’s 32% more efficient than the previous energy-efficiency leader.

And note the focus on accelerators. As more organisations ramp up investments in big data and AI applications, energy-efficient GPUs will be as vital as optimised CPUs in reducing power consumption and tackling climate change. If all AI and HPC server nodes matched AMD’s promised power reductions, billions of kilowatt-hours of electricity could be saved every year. As we move away from an approach to computing focused on the CPU to one that utilises a wider range of accelerators, adaptive compute engines, data processing units and FPGAs, we’ll see these more application or workload-specific processors deliver even more performance per watt.

Building a more sustainable data centre is a holistic enterprise, taking in everything from the physical space to how individual servers are configured, cooled and managed. But by building on the latest processor technology and optimising how it's used through virtualisation, organisations can put themselves in the best position to meet their sustainability goals. Businesses need to look beyond cores, threads and raw performance, and focus more on efficiency when making hardware choices, but with AMD’s technology, the architecture means you can have both – and reduce TCO.

If you’re looking for more detail on how, tools like AMD’s AMD EPYC bare metal server TCO estimation tool can help

Acer’s new TravelMate Vero is being pitched as a laptop that has a lower environmental impact than its peers and a product with a more responsible approach to its manufacture. What exactly are the Vero’s eco-credentials?

First, in the UK Acer has partnered with an organisation called Ecologi to plant a tree for every 100 units sold. Secondly, there's a fair amount of recycled material in the build and lastly, the packaging is made from recycled cardboard while the cardboard sleeve that keeps the charger in situ within the box can be folded into a triangle and used as a laptop stand.

Considering how hard Acer is pushing the eco line, some of you may be asking “Is that it?” To be fair, that’s probably as far as it can really go when so many of the core components are bought in from third-party suppliers - but for comparison, Apple’s laptops have cases made from 100% recycled aluminium.

Acer Aspire Vero review: Design

The Vero isn’t made from entirely recycled material. According to Acer, the body contains 30% recycled plastic while the keycaps are made from 50% recycled plastic. Acer claims this reduces manufacturing carbon dioxide output by 21%. As a result, the plastic case isn't quite as solid as it would be if it were made of metal – grab the sides of the base and apply some torque and it does flex a little – but it still feels reasonably robust. The lid feels no less stiff than a conventional metal-backed affair.

The unpainted body has a textured finish and an unusual speckled yellow-on-black colour scheme. We rather like it and we suspect that being unpainted, it will stay looking good for longer than some more conventional finishes. The rough finish also does a good job of keeping greasy fingerprints at bay.

The styling is rather industrial with square edges and very little in the way of aesthetic flourishes but, again, it’s a look that appeals to us. Rather than having unsightly stickers slapped all over the place, the keyboard deck has ‘Intel Core’ and ‘Post Consumer Recycled’ etched into it for a smarter look. The front edge of the chassis has the words ‘TravelMate Vero’ engraved into it, presumably in case you forget what sort of laptop you’re using.

The lid can tilt back to a maximum of 135 degrees and in doing so elevates the back end by around 5 degrees to present a more favourable angle for typing.

The Vero weighs 1.8kg and measures 363 x 238 x 18mm (WDH), which is par for a 15.6in laptop with no ultrabook pretensions and it’s reasonably easy to upgrade: Remove the base panel and you can easily access the M. 2 2280 format SSD, the Intel wireless card and the single SODIMM memory slot which houses one of the 8GB memory modules - the other being soldered to the motherboard.

Acer Aspire Vero review: Display

While the design is pleasantly engaging, the MateBook Vero’s matte-finish 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel is a frankly pretty mediocre affair. Brightness and contrast are respectable at 275cd/m2 and 1,302:1 respectively but it isn’t a very colourful affair, generating only 59% sRGB gamut coverage and 62% sRGB gamut volume. For the DCI-P3 colour space, those metrics drop to just 41.9% apiece. It’s not what you call colour accurate either, with an average Delta-E colour variance of 5.3, way above the ideal 1 or even the acceptable level of 3.

It’s worth pointing out that similarly priced competition like the Dell Inspiron 15 and the somewhat cheaper Acer Aspire 5 have equally workaday displays but that’s really no excuse. For the price, the Vero’s display should be better. For the record, the Vero’s display is not touch-sensitive.

The speaker system was more impressive with ample volume (a pink noise source played at maximum volume and measured at a distance of 1m recorded an average volume of 79dB), plenty of detail and definition and even a smattering of bass. Listening to music, podcasts and the like is certainly no chore on the Vero.

Acer Aspire Vero review: Keyboard and trackpad

The same is true of typing; the keyboard is perhaps just as little too bouncy in the middle but we can’t say it slowed us down and we found the 1.3mm key travel to be perfectly suitable. The white-on-black colour scheme is easy to read either with or without the single-stage backlight switched on, too.

Not all 15.6in laptops come with a numeric keypad but the Vero does, which is a definite tick in the plus column. If you look carefully at the pictures of the Vero you will see that the letters E and R are printed in reverse and in yellow. The RE letters represent the four key parts of Acer’s environmental philosophy: Review, Rethink, Recycle, Reduce. We found this to be something of a distraction but prolonged use may result in familiarisation.

The plastic touchpad is offset a little to the left but is usefully large at 125mm x 80mm, so there’s ample room to perform Windows 11 multi-touch gestures, and the click-action at the corners is well damped and clean.

Acer TravelMate Vero review: Specs and hardware

The Intel Core i7-1195G7 processor inside the Vero is the last hurrah of Intel's Tiger Lake mobile processor range. It’s a quad-core component with a base clock speed of 2.9GHz, a turbo boost clock of 5GHz and a maximum TDP of 28W and is accompanied by 16GB of dual-core DDR4 RAM mounted on a PCIe 3 mainboard. The Iris Xe integrated graphics can run at a maximum clock speed of 1.4GHz, up from 1.35GHz with the Core i7-1185G7.

The IT Pro in-house 4K media benchmark returned an overall score of 165 making it one of the fastest 11th generation Core i7 chipsets we’ve encountered. For comparison, the similarly-priced HP Envy 13 - which combines a Core i5 CPU with an Nvidia MX450 discrete GPU - scored 117 while the Dynabook Tecra A40 scored 166 with a 28W Core i7-1165G7 processor.

However, it’s a score well shy of what’s being delivered by the new 12th generation Alder Lake chipsets. A soon-to-be-released Huawei notebook with a Core-i7 12700H 14-core processor scored 366: That’s the size of the step forward that Intel has made with its new processors.

That said, the Vero is still perfectly serviceable for day-to-day productivity and office tasks but anything that requires serious graphics capability will be beyond its comfort zone.

The Kensington M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 512GB SSD, meanwhile, proved to be a somewhat mediocre performer, recording sequential read and write speeds of 2,271MB/sec and 1,141MB/sec respectively.

The Vero also comes with a bespoke control panel called Vero Sense that can be used to change the performance settings between Performance, Balanced, Eco and Eco+ with a view to either minimising power consumption or maximising performance. We ran the performance tests in the first and the battery rundown tests in the last.

The Vero has a 48Wh battery and this kept the lights on for 9hrs 48mins in our video rundown test. We were perfectly happy with that and with the fact that no matter how hard we pushed it, the Vero always got us through a full working day without recourse to a power socket.

Acer TravelMate Vero review: Ports and features

Acer hasn’t been mean-fisted with the ports either, finding room for a Gigabit Ethernet LAN port, an HDMI 2.0 socket, a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port and three USB Type-A ports (two 3.2 Gen 1 spec and one 2.0 spec). Rounding things out is a 3.5mm audio jack, a Kensington lock slot and a DC charge port. Sadly, you can’t get power in or video out via that Type-C connector. Wireless communications are handled by Intel's ubiquitous AX201 card which supports Wi-Fi 6 (but not the new 6GHz 6E wavelength) and Bluetooth 5.0.

The fingerprint scanner is the only means of biometric log-in and sits in the top left corner of the touchpad. The webcam is rather disappointing, being just another somewhat mundane 720p affair that produces images that are rather grainy and drab. In this age of virtual meetings, business laptops deserve better. Sound capture from the microphone array was more impressive though, thanks to Acer’s PurifiedVoice AI noise reduction system.

TravelMate Vero laptops also ship with the Acer Commercial BIOS, which includes a feature that allows corporations, governments, and users to personalize their startup logo, as well as Acer ProShield Plus, an all-in-one software solution which is designed to secure it against unauthorized access and intrusion.

Acer TravelMate Vero review: Verdict

Ignoring the environmental considerations for one moment, the TravelMate Vero is a pretty good laptop. We like the looks and, apart from the slightly weak display, it does its intended job well. Performance from the Intel Core i7-1195G7 processor is solid for the price and the speaker system performs very creditably.

Are its eco-credentials strong enough to make them a selling point? That’s harder to establish - but Acer does at the very least deserve kudos for trying. The Vero, then, can be recommended to anyone seeking a general-purpose 15in laptop and who isn’t oblivious to the tech industry's impact on the environment.

Acer TravelMate Vero specifications

With sustainability running through every corner of what the Fairphone 4 delivers, the eco-friendly company is back with the latest iteration of its planet-conscious line of smartphones. Built entirely from sustainable materials and with a focus on making devices that last, the Fairphone 4 aims to deliver rock-solid mid-range performance that minimises e-waste in the process.

Fairphone really has thought of everything when it comes to building the best eco-friendly phone on the market. From its modular, repairable design to minimise the need for total replacements, to choosing factories that pay a fair wage, the Fairphone 4 seeks to appease the right-to-repair purists, the eco-warriors, and the die-hard tech lover all in one breath.

Fairphone 4 review: Design

The Fairphone 4’s modularity really is one of the standout features on the phone, albeit not a new one. Fairphone proudly says that none of the device’s components are glued in place, making it easy for even a novice to replace components like the battery or display. Achieving a perfect 10/10 score from device teardown specialists iFixit is no mean feat and the company said the Fairphone 4 is “leagues ahead of most other smartphone makers” in this department.

Even though the phone is highly modular in design, the build quality feels solid, straight from the first attempt at prying open the phone’s case. Starting with the back of the phone, the backplate is secured with plastic clips that feel very secure, but don’t make it too difficult to remove either - we were able to get it off without any tools. Under the hood, each component is helpfully labelled with an icon that shows where the sound module is, for example, so you know you’re not pulling out the camera hardware or anything else you don’t need to be meddling with.

Available in three colours - grey, green, and speckled green - the Fairphone 4’s chunky design is symbolic of the compromises inherent to an environmentally friendly way of living. No, it’s not the most beautiful way of doing things, and some sacrifices have been made for the sake of sustainability, but it’s a solid effort and there’s nothing garish about it at all.

Some may even call the design ‘clean’. The colourful yet inoffensive housing options come in a matte plastic which makes for superb grip, and all tactile buttons are placed on the right side of the phone. There’s no getting away from the chunk of the device - it’s really quite girthy and weighty at 225g - but it’s a necessary price to pay for modularity which is ultimately much better for the planet and your pocket.

Fairphone 4 review: Display

The Fairphone 4’s 6.3in IPS display has a resolution of 1080 x 2340, one that’s not too dissimilar to the Google Pixel 6. The full HD+ resolution isn’t as visually striking compared to the better panels of modern times, but is by no means an eyesore. You might argue that you’re not buying the Fairphone 4 for the display, but Google offers a lot more in this department at a similar price, including a vibrant OLED panel and variable refresh rates.

The teardrop notch is an approach that also dates the phone a little, with many manufacturers opting for a hole-punch cutout for the front-facing camera nowadays.

Along with the Fairphone’s lack of modern display components and capabilities, this gives it a somewhat dated feel that isn’t especially redeemed with its maximum brightness score of 488cd/m2.

The display’s colours, on the other hand, were far more impressive. The Fairphone 4’s panel delivered 99.8% on the sRGB colour gamut, an almost perfect score, meaning it can display many different shades of the same colour. Its solid Delta-E score of 0.89 also means the colours appear on the display the way they should, making it a highly colour-accurate display, despite middling performance with brightness.

Fairphone 4 review: Hardware and specs

The Fairphone 4’s mostly-average display is joined by an equally average chip. Equipped with a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 750G, the Fairphone 4 produced some fairly substandard results when put through the Geekbench 5 benchmark. Scoring 594 on the single-core test and 1,491 on the multi-core, it came marginally behind the Oppo Find X3 Lite and considerably behind the Pixel 6.

The Snapdragon 750G is by no means a slouch but it’s being marketed as a “powerful processor” by Fairphone. Given that the chip isn’t exactly a world-beater, we’re not sure the phone is fully future-proof, although a positive sign was that we didn’t encounter any lag or other issues through normal browsing and use with business collaboration apps like Slack and RingCentral.

Depending on your business’ needs, there are two hardware configurations available for the Fairphone 4. The two configuration options are 128GB storage and 6GB RAM or 256GB storage and 8GB RAM - we tested the less powerful spec and for business use, you’re unlikely to need anything more weighty.

The Fairphone 4 underwhelms when it comes to battery life though, registering just 13 hrs 30 mins in our battery tests - a meagre showing that falls well short of competitors' scores, but in our experience, it was still more than enough to last us through the workday. Fairphone also says the device will keep 90% of its original capacity even after being charged over 547 full cycles - another win for longevity and sustainability.

Fairphone 4 review: Features

The Fairphone 4 is equipped with all the networking hardware you’ll need to take advantage of internet access on the move. It’s the first Fairphone to come equipped with great 5G connectivity that even supports mmWave frequencies - the fastest on the already souped-up mobile network. On the other hand, however, it misses out on the latest 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 standard, which means that its browsing speed is going to feel slower and slower as the technology becomes more widespread.

To prolong the battery life, Fairphone opted to limit charging to 20W, so there are no fast charging options here, nor is there any wireless charging support - a feature that could well have proven an incompatible engineering challenge with its modular design.

There are also no fancy facial recognition features - just a simple, yet highly accurate, fingerprint scanner located in the lock/power button. In our testing, the scanner worked every single time, despite the fact that our fingerprints are scanned incorrectly by most other sensors on the market.

Fairphone 4 review: Camera

As is the case with many mid-range smartphones, the cameras on the Fairphone 4 are decidedly poor. In our experience, we found that captured images were generally low quality and lacked clarity in finer details. For example, the keys on a keyboard were more difficult to read in images taken on the Fairphone 4 compared with other smartphones. We also experienced images looking somewhat washed out, which can be attributed to the low levels of on-device post-processing we observed compared to other smartphones.

The Fairphone 4 is a slightly better shooter than its predecessor though, having gained an extra camera in its array. It has two 48MP rear cameras (both shooting at a f/1.6 aperture) - one for regular shots and another dedicated ultra-wide lens, the newcomer. The two cameras at the rear are joined by a 3D Time-of-Flight sensor to finish off the three-part triangular array that protrudes slightly from the camera’s housing. The Fairphone 4 also has a 25MP front-facing camera shooting at f/2.2 and we found the shots taken from this to be slightly more vibrant in colour and sharper in clarity.

Fairphone 4 review: Verdict

From a purely technical perspective, there isn’t too much that’s impressive about the Fairphone 4. Most smartphone selling points can be found implemented better on rival devices and the phone’s mid-range price doesn’t reflect the performance of its hardware. However, if modularity, repairability, and eco-friendliness are at the top of your purchasing requirements, you’ll find nothing better.

Essentially, the Fairphone 4 is the phone to get if neither you nor your business really cares about getting the absolute best performance-per-pound. It’s the best eco-friendly device on the market and if your organisation is pursuing green initiatives, there’s no better device to represent your company’s values. What’s more, the modest price coupled with Fairphone’s five-year warranty makes it an attractive investment regardless of its perceived technical shortcomings. It’s a device for businesses that’s both as friendly to the environment as it is to your PR strategy.

Fairphone 4 specifications

CEOs and senior executives are changing the way they think about sustainability and inflation for 2022, a recent survey from Gartner has revealed.

The analyst house found, for the first time ever, that CEOs are placing environmental sustainability in their top 10 business priorities, while issues such as talent retention have moved up the list for the second year in a row.

Over 400 CEOs and other senior business executives were quizzed between July and December 2021, across North America, EMEA and APAC, and across different industries, and revenue and company sizes.

Announcing the findings, Gartner research vice president Mark Raskino described 2022 as “the year that CEO perspectives truly changed”.

“The pandemic gradually brought a number of deep societal trends to the surface, such as a desire to change the way we work and the fragility of long-distance global supply chains,” he said. “More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is amplifying macroeconomic factors that CEOs must now deal with, such as inflation.

“Simultaneously, however, CEOs’ digital business ambition continues to rise, unabated by the pandemic and related crises.”

Among these ambitions is the desire to become more environmentally friendly. For the first time in the survey’s history, environmental sustainability entered the top priorities for CEOs in 8th position.

In fact, 74% agreed that increasing environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts attract investors towards their businesses. Of the 80% who intend to invest in new or improved products over the next two years, environmental sustainability was cited as the largest driver.

The issue has even ramped up in importance to the same level as brand trust in terms of competitive differentiators, Gartner said.

“As business leaders feel the pressure from key stakeholders to do more on environmental sustainability, they are now treating the needed changes as opportunities to drive business efficiency and revenue growth,” Raskino explained.

In terms of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) topped the pile as the most impactful tech in the eyes of CEOs for the third year in a row – but the metaverse is seen as either not applicable or very unlikely to be a factor by 63% of those surveyed.

“In the past, some CEOs have embraced new technology ideas perhaps a little too enthusiastically,” explained Raskino. “In the case of the metaverse, however, it’s doubtful the respondents who think it very likely to be a key technology for their business are as confident as they appear to be.”

Elsewhere, 62% of CEOs said general price inflation is a persistent or long-term issue. The top response among respondents is to raise prices (51%), as opposed to focusing on productivity and efficiency (22%) – the latter not even registering in the top 10 business priorities for 2022.

“Clearly, there is some complacency around inflation impact,” Raskino continued. “When asked about the top two sources of competitive differentiation, only 3% of CEOs mentioned price. Gartner expects that may change quite quickly as inflation continues to bite.”

The IT sector has the potential to maintain global CO2 emissions at 2015 levels, by enabling a 20% reduction in emissions by 2030.

By investing more in IT across the global economy, total global emissions of CO2 could be cut by 12 gigatonnes by 2030, said Luis Neves, CEO of the Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSi) at an event yesterday.

It’s estimated the industry can reduce 3.6 gigatonnes of CO2 in the mobility or travel sectors, 2.7 in manufacturing, two in agriculture and building, and 1.8 in the energy sector, according to a GeSi report published in 2015. This represents 12 gigatonnes of CO2, meaning that the IT sector has the potential to maintain global emissions at 2015 levels, said Neves.

This is partly due to the falling emissions footprint of the sector itself. GeSi’s research stated that the sector’s footprint could fall to 1.97% of global emissions by 2030, due to a range of investments companies in the sector have been making to reduce their footprint and to the expected increase in efficiency of end-user devices.

One area the industry is looking to make more sustainable is data centres, which are at the very core of every single conversation, said Neves, and are the main concern of policymakers. This includes the European Commission (EC). Neves added that GeSi developed the code of conduct for data centres that exists today in the organisation.

He also pointed to a recent Huawei report that found that replacing HDD with SDD in data centres reduces energy consumption by 70% and occupied space by 50% under the same capacity.

“We are convinced that digital is fundamental to address climate change,” said Neves, addressing the audience. “The problem that we have though, and probably many of you in this room, you are only thinking about the money, which is good, it’s not bad. We need to think about money but we need to understand that sustainability is a cash cow. And you have not yet analysed that or many of you have not done.”

The report also analysed the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It came to the conclusion that seven disruptive technologies, like 5G, blockchain, or the cloud, can impact in a positive manner 22% of SDGs and reduce the downward trend of 23% of them.

GeSi has put together the "digital with purpose" movement which aims to bring the digital world together around a set of metrics that will be used to measure the impact of the IT industry so that covered collectively, it can show that impact.

“But the policymakers, they do not understand the overall impact of what we are doing,” added Neves.

He underlined that the movement is about helping companies address the problems they have about becoming more efficient, and communicating this better with the rest of the world. Neves emphasised the importance of connecting digital with every single sector to make people understand that the industry is part of the solution, and not the problem.

“The figures I’ve shown to you, they’re a clear demonstration that you can generate a lot of value when you become more efficient,” he said.

However, a rapid increase in the computing, broadband networks, and data centres will result in additional emissions from IT. Holding down the sector’s own emissions as the number of devices increases can be helped by switching from large hardware like PCs and printers to smaller and more efficient devices, like tablets and smartphones, and by bearing down on emissions from data centres, stated the report.

The switch to smaller and more energy efficient end-user devices is particularly important as nearly half the sector’s emissions, in the report’s analysis, comes from “end-user-devices”, rather than from networks or data centres.

GeSi split global IT emissions into three areas. End user devices, like phones, laptops, or PCs, accounted for 0.59 gigatonnes of CO2, 47.2% of the total. Data centres represented 0.36 gigatonnes of CO2, 28.8% of the total. Lastly, networks, comprising wireless, home, and enterprise networks, accounted for 0.3 gigatonnes of CO2, 24% of the total.

Although GeSi is encouraging users to switch to smaller devices, the industry will need to extend the lifetime of these products. Smartphones and laptops should be made to last longer to combat chip shortages, BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, said in February.

The ongoing issues with the production and supply of semiconductors has exposed the underlying problem of pushing customers towards upgrading their smartphones and other devices, said the IT industry body. It added that users wouldn’t need as many new devices if they lasted for ten years without grinding to a halt. However, this goes against the business model of most manufacturers.

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘Making data centres green again'. To listen to the full episode, click here. We apologise for any errors.

Adam Shepherd

Hi, I'm Adam Shepherd.

Zach Marzouk

And I'm Zach Marzouk,

Adam

and you're listening to the IT Pro Podcast, where this week we're asking, is it easy being green?

Zach

Our planet is on the path to a climate catastrophe as more than two centuries of growing industrialization continue to increase the amount of pollutants and greenhouse gases in the Earth's biosphere. This problem isn't just the result of factories and coal mines though, the tech industry is also responsible for a significant amount of carbon emissions.

Adam

Cryptocurrency mining has sustained major criticism for its devastating environmental impact in recent years. And according to some estimates, training a large AI model produces five times as much carbon as one car produces over the course of a human lifetime. In fact, data centres are believed to contribute roughly as much to carbon emissions as the entire global air travel industry pre COVID.

Zach

There are, however, ways to mitigate the environmental damage caused by IT infrastructure. And we're joined today by Matt Pullen, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of data centre operator CyrusOne, to discuss how to build a green data centre and the operational benefits that companies can expect from doing so. Matt, thanks for being with us.

Matt Pullen

You're welcome. It's good to be with you.

Adam

So, Matt, to start us off with, can you tell us a little bit about what CyrusOne does?

Matt

Sure. So CyrusOne is generally recognised as the third largest provider from a global perspective of colocation data centres. We operate approximately 50 data centres across the world, including 12 data centres in Europe in the key gateway markets of London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin.

Adam

So what does the environmental impacts of the average datacenter look like?

Matt

That's an interesting question. And I'd probably want to sort of set the scene by, if you like, challenging some myths around the the energy consumption and electricity consumption of data centres. So taking the UK as an example, data centres consume effectively 2% of the electricity, and about 0.5% to 1% of the energy of the UK. And if you compare that to the whole of the transport sector, for example, the transport sector consumes about 25% of the UK's total energy. So I do think there's a there's a little bit of a myth about the impact that data centres are having. The other point I would make is that the Internet doesn't run by magic. It, it does consume energy, and in terms of the energy consumption of the data centres, and the networks as part of the total energy consumption of data, networks and data centres consume approximately 50% with the other 50% being consumed by devices, including smartphones. And that's a really important point to make when people are concerned about data centres, yet they're getting in their car to go down to the shops, and they're, they're filming whatever they're filming on their, on their devices, and then streaming.

Adam

I mean, that's, that's a fair point, I would sort of counter that by saying there isn't that much that the average, say smartphone user can do to reduce the amount of energy their smartphone consumes. Whereas, you know, there are measures that can be taken by data centre operators to, you know, limit the amount of the amount of energy being consumed by datacenter operations.

Matt

And, Adam, I completely agree with that. And so, you know, the industry, particularly now that it's at a scale, where it's, it's becoming far more understood, and certainly far more on the radar, is doing everything you possibly can to improve its impact on the planet. And I can I can go into those into those things that we're doing, I'd probably again set the scene by saying data centres in the past have been very inefficient. I'll use some data centre vernacular for which I apologise but you know, on premises data centres in the past have been operating at PUEs of sometimes you know, four or five, which means that for every amount, amount of energy that's being used by a server in terms of compute or storage, there's another three, four or even five times the energy being used to run the facility, particularly run the cooling systems etc. At that level of inefficiency, you would find that data centres in terms of consumption of global electricity and global energy would scale very, very, very rapidly. So the main thing that the industry's been doing, partly by design, partly by circumstance, is that data centres are getting bigger, but much, much, much more efficient, and accelerated by the pandemic, but also just accelerated by technological advancements, what we're seeing is a movement from on premise data centres to the cloud. And the cloud, in this case is not a white fluffy thing up in the sky. Cloud effectively sits in data centres. And what we're finding is that as workloads move away from on premise data centres to big cloud data centres, those big cloud data centres are at such a scale, and they're using modern technology, whereby PUEs are falling and falling with, on average, the UK, recording that big commercial data centres' PUEs probably down at 1.7, on average. And then I can go into what we're trying to do as an industry to self regulate to push those P waves down to 1.3 in cooler climates and 1.4 in warmer climates. And that's that's a massive issue, because what it's meaning is that rather than seeing energy, and electricity consumption, increasing at rates of say, 25%, over five years, what we're actually seeing is the impact being closer to 4 to 6%, over a five year period, which is which is great news.

Zach

How can data centre operators reduce the carbon footprint of their facilities?

Matt

So that's, that's really interesting Zach, and I suppose what I do is go to, you know the framework of what the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact is doing. And just for reference, the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact comprises all the major cloud companies, all the major colocation operators, data centre operators, like ourselves, and also the national trade associations, about 20 of them. So there's over 100 signatories to the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, and CyrusOne was, was a founding member and a signatory. And what we're doing is we're, we're really following the European Green Deal, where Europe wants to be Climate Neutral by 2050, as part of that Europe wants data centres to be Climate Neutral by 2030. And what we're doing is we're pursuing really five pillars in that pursuit. So we're looking at energy efficiency, which is all about the PUE, and setting low PUE targets. Clean energy, which is all about moving to renewable sources of energy. A big agenda point around the third pillar is water conservation, and making sure that we're consuming far less water, then looking at the circular economy. So basically, recycling materials in data centres, and then looking at circular energy systems. And in particular, looking at using the heat that data centre produce to do things like provide heat to municipal heating systems. So heating houses.

Adam

Yeah, there's a number of really interesting elements to that, I think, in terms of the the steps that data centre operators are trying to take, in terms of things like bringing down the PUE numbers, and in terms of reducing of water wastage, and things like that - can you talk through some of the measures that organisations are taking in a kind of practical sense?

Matt

Yeah, so in a really practical sense, I'll kind of described what's happened over the last few years. So going back a few years, the major drive was to lower PUE. Because, as the industry scales so significantly, you know, it's, it's not just the impact on the planet, but also it's, it's a natural drive towards efficiency. And I kind of make the point that this is this this is a, an, the next phase of the Industrial Revolution. And interestingly, you know, it's been the private sector that's really been funding the infrastructure for the digital economy. So there's obviously a drive in the private sector to be as efficient as possible. So the focus was on PUE, but, of course, to bring PUEs down, quite a lot of new cooling technology emerged. Indirect adiabatic cooling technology for example, which which uses water basically, uses water mist to make the cooling process more efficient, and therefore bring the PUE down. Now, the problem with that is that, you know, water is such a scarce commodity. And, in parallel, technologies have been emerging, more standard cooling technologies, closed-loop chilled water systems, for example, that don't result in the net use of water. And so the industry has been moving away from those sort of water-inefficient systems to the technologies which still maintain very low PUE but don't don't impact in such a way water consumption, then obviously, there's all sorts of measures that you can take in terms of building design, to you know, to capture water to try and move towards almost a net positive water position, which you might find hard to believe. But we've managed to achieve that with one of our data centres.

Adam

Yeah, there's some really interesting technological developments that we've seen in in terms of cooling in particular, one of the really interesting things that we've seen is Microsoft unveiled last year, two phase immersion cooling, where they essentially dunked servers in boiling liquid in order to stop overheating, and kind of enhance the the cooling process, which was a really interesting concept. And there's a bunch of really out the box projects like that, that I've always found fascinating in the data centre market.

Matt

Absolutely, yeah. And, you know, we're all working with the big hyperscalers, who are, who are putting an awful lot of research and development investment into into seeing how, you know, we can just get more efficient with cooling. Absolutely.

Zach

About five years ago, I came across a startup that was trying to essentially put data centres into people's homes. So essentially, you would get, you know, like free heating by having servers in the walls, I wanted to ask if you've come across anything like that recently.

Matt

It'd be quite an innovative view of the edge. Do you know what it's not, it's not dissimilar from some of my thinking around the very beginning of the internet boom, back in the late 90s. You know, a lot of the points of presence for the telcos went into hotel rooms, in effect, because those those buildings just happened to be, you know, closest to the, to the main telecoms interconnect points. But goes back to what I said before, Zack, the problem is that small scale data centres are incredibly, incredibly inefficient. So if you were to do that, and then distribute, if you like, the whole requirement for data centre capacity across small data centres, the the carbon footprint, and the impact on electricity and total energy consumption would be enormous. Hence why there's this this move to data centres at significant scale to to ensure efficiency, but it then does lead to Okay, the challenge that the industry is going to have, as there will inevitably be a move to have more edge data centres. At the moment, what we're seeing is an aggregation of large data centres in urban and suburban areas to basically support GD, big GDP clusters. And because of latency, they have to be there. We're also seeing obviously very large data centres in remote locations where latency is not such an issue. As the digital world moves forward, driverless cars etc, we are going to see a need for more edge data centres - i.e. data centres closer to the action on a smaller scale. And we've just got to make sure that technology has evolved so that those small data centres are not inefficient. And really, to Adam's point about all this really interesting stuff that's going on around in-rack cooling, for example, don't those are the sorts of initiatives that are going to enable those little data centres, those edge data centres to be much more efficient.

Adam

Yeah, I just want to dig into that. Because you've you've mentioned the fact that smaller data centres are by their nature, less efficient than larger installations, just because of the you know, the way that cooling infrastructure typically works at the moment and all that kind of stuff. But what what's the kind of the lower limit for what counts as a data centre? Because if I've got a, you know, a server and a switch and maybe a storage array running, you know, in a, in a cupboard in my back office, does that count as a data centre? And does that come with the same kind of inefficiency concerns and power usage concerns that we've been talking about? Or does it need to hit a certain point before that starts becoming an issue?

Matt

You know, it's a fantastic point, Adam, because this has been in debate, particularly in the UK, as we move towards a scenario where, you know, the industry is gonna either be regulated or self regulate. And we'll need to report on the effectively the carbon footprint, electricity and energy usage of data centres. And there's a lot of debate about where do you draw the line. And generally, the view is anything less than 500 kilowatts in terms of power consumption would not be defined as a data centre. And in terms of, you know, footprint, you'd probably say that's around 2,000 square feet of raised floor.

Adam

Oh, wow.

Matt

I guess. I guess, you know, a nice size house is a couple of 1,000 feet of living space.

Adam

So we're not, we're not talking about, you know, a couple of racks in a machine shop somewhere.

Matt

We're not. Albeit, those couple of racks could be pretty inefficient. But you've got to draw the line somewhere, particularly, as it relates to, you know, a framework that is going to be put around reporting, to ensure that the industry is driven towards being, you know, more efficient, more friendly to the planet. But just just to give you some sense, though, of scale, you know, we're seeing data centre campuses moving from 10 megawatts to 20 megawatts to now, you know, 40 to 60 megawatts. So, you have to start to get your head around the sort of scale of facilities that are able to, to provide that sort of capacity, and they're, they're enormous.

Zach

Singapore is currently stopped building data centres for the past year or so, because the government is trying to bring in just legislation focusing on only building green data centres. So essentially, Singapore is quite unique in that, fact that it says city state, which has to be careful how it allocates land, and manages, manages resources as well. So I was wondering, should governments around the world be doing more to incentivize companies to make data centres greener?

Matt

Yes, is the simple answer. I mean, Singapore's initiative is interesting, we've seen sort of similar moves in Europe, we saw for a while Amsterdam, having a moratorium in terms of data centre build, whilst they considered where they wanted data centres to be. And that is now established. But a lot of the European cities have got real issues as it relates to the power infrastructure, and the ability to continue to provide capacity to the growing data centre sector within within timeframes that ensure that, you know, growing demand can be met by supply. But I think this is, this is the whole point Zac of where we're going, and Brussels wants data centres to be Climate Neutral by 2030. And if we, as an industry don't set out how we see the roadmap to get there will be regulated together. But we know we've been as the Climate Neutral data centre packet, in particular, we've, we've been getting to a point where we're ready to have our next engagement with Brussels, where we're going to put forward our proposals for, you know, what are the P E targets? What are the water utilisation, effectiveness targets, etc. And, you know, I'm hoping that aren't some of our proposals will be embraced, we can put a monitoring and reporting framework around it, and really start to show the world that we're driving towards that climate neutrality.

Adam

So are there any examples of organisations or geographic territories that you think are providing a particularly good example of how to manage the datacenter carbon footprint issue?

Matt

Yeah, and, of course, I mean, the most obvious is is going to be the Nordics

Adam

was wondering when we were going to get in this conversation,

Matt

but it's it's comes back to my point that data centres have to be you have to be in urban and suburban areas within the largest GDP clusters in the world, for latency reasons. So a lot of what goes on in the Nordics, if it's not serving particular GDP clusters is mainly platform stuff, bear in a bit better. Yeah, formerly Facebook or, you know, the search engine platform, etc. And the thing about the Nordics is that it's cold, and therefore, you know, the amount of cooling that's required is not as much as in a hot climate, therefore, you don't need as much energy to power cooling systems.

Adam

There's a lot of geothermal power use in Nordic data centres. Right, that,

Matt

that there is, there is absolutely. But also, what you're seeing in the Nordics, and I've seen some great examples is, particularly in Finland is the heat reuse. Because, yeah, the Nordics, you know, have had a history of, you know, state funded municipal heating systems, which then the data centres can plug into, and one, you know, one of the biggest challenges that we've had in other parts of Europe is that, you know, you've got to have customers for your excess heat, if, if you can't access those customers, because there hasn't been infrastructure investment to provide municipal heating systems, then it's very difficult for you to to use the heat. So, you see the sort of circular argument that come about, but part part of what the climate neutral datacenter pact is doing is also lobbying Brussels for a lot of investment in community systems like you know, municipal heating systems, where we can, we can provide our waste heat, but also investing heavily in in a move towards you know, green power grids, so that we can you know, move away from you know, carbon based power generation to you know, sustainable power generation.

Zach

Beyond the social responsibility aspect, are there any benefits for data centre operators in implementing some of these measures,

Matt

efficiency, efficiency, and I just talking from a commercial point of view, the there are a number of very large cloud companies that are dominating the global market. And they are becoming the key customers of data centre operators like ourselves. And, and as a result, you know, the commercial model is being challenged. And therefore, it's, it's really important for us to be efficient, to be able to ensure that the private sector, people are asking keep developing data centres to enable the digital economy. So, efficiency not only solves the planet, but it also it solves the longevity of business models that are enabling, as I said, the private sector to keep up with, with demand through the delivery of supply in the form of data centres.

Adam

Do you think we're likely to reach a point in which energy concerns starts to compel businesses to limit the amount that they're using their IT infrastructure and their data centres? You know, in the same way that most people try and switch off lights when they're when they're not in a room? Do you think companies will start to go actually, we don't need this particular application to be running as much as we do? Let's kind of shut it down. Let's really scale back on the amount of simultaneous processes and applications that we have running in our data centre.

Matt

Yes, I do. I mean, it's interesting, because we're seeing in certain high density clusters when whether you take Dublin or whether you take Frankfurt, we were seeing the issue that mainly that the we've talked about this earlier that the power infrastructure can't be upgraded quickly enough to keep delivering power to the growing data centre market. And what that's doing is it's it's making certainly the cloud companies and ultimately the the, the enterprise customers that the cloud companies think about the level of resilience that they really need. So, for example, do they really need to be in three availability zones within Frankfurt or could actually some of their workloads be dealt with on a slightly different latency basis by having, you know, access to an availability zone in Berlin to complement the two in Frankfurt? So you are so A lot of work going on to just try and, you know, forecast the amount of supply that could be delivered in certain markets or more to the point couldn't? And then how do you work around that issue by having a more distributed situation? It is, it is much more of a problem with the the very low latency applications. But, you know, there's a lot of work going into trying to solve for some of those issues. The trouble is you can't solve for the speed of light, the speed of light is the speed of light. It's as simple as that.

Zach

Are there any quick tips that you can share for organisations who want to take the first step towards a greener data centre?

Matt

Well, first of all, I'd suggest they sign up to the Climate Neutral datacenter pact. And I would be following the initiatives that are coming through from that pact, you know, around energy efficiency, looking at ways of lowering pu ease around, you know, clean energy thinking about, you know, how they can move towards, effectively, you know, 100% renewable, but like, you know, we've done in Europe already this year, I think the the water issue is going to become more and more of an issue, and really thinking about how they, they balance with technology, the drive towards low PUE, but but also the drive towards, you know, really conserving water. Because there are, you know, there are ways of mixing technology to achieve both aims. But I think other things like the circular economy, you know, making sure that they're recycling materials at the data centre. And then also things like the solar heat reefs that we've talked about. So it's, it's similar themes, but, you know, also also thinking about, you know, moving towards making sure that your data centres are Breann certified, you know, very good or outstanding, because, you know, by going through that process, there's, there's a lot of guidance that the process gives you just in terms of making sure that your data centre is green. And also that, you know, effectively you're not impacting the environment, in which you are developing a data centre, that at the end of the development, and during the maintenance, there is a net zero impact on the environment on which you've built a data centre. So, you know, there's, there's a whole myriad of things we we could point to in that regard, Zach.

Adam

What's the next frontier for the development of green data centre technology, do you think?

Matt

I suppose the only thing we didn't talk about is, is the big conundrum, which is what, what what is the solution to diesel generators, because at the end of the day, you know, the, the thing that people will latch on to as being nasty in relation to data centres are the diesel generators. And, you know, right, now we have a problem, because if you look at any, any solution, in the short term, those solutions are probably going to lead to a much bigger carbon footprint. You know, you look at lithium ion batteries, for example, I mean, the impact on the planet is horrendous. So, you know, I think what the industry is trying to do really hard, is get to a point where, you know, generators are no longer running on carbon based fuels, but also generators can sit there with zero runtime maintenance. And what I mean by that is that, generally, your diesel generators on site, you've got to, you've got to run them up once a month. So you are, you're burning carbon fuel, once a month. If you don't have to do that, that's great. Because to be honest, the the resilience of the grids in most, you know, the leading cities in Europe is such that, arguably, you don't need the generators. And so if you've got zero runtime maintenance, that's great. And then if you if you're migrating from carbon fuels to, you know, fuel, such as vegetable oil, etc, then you're on that journey. But I think that there has to be a sort of education and an understanding than until hydrogen becomes a usable energy source. And not just for data centres, but for homes and everything else. It's very difficult to see how we can move away from diesel generators without actually having a far far bigger impact on the planet and from a carbon footprint point of view.

Adam

Could biodiesel be a helpful stopgap for this, do you think?

Matt

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. I think a combination of biodiesel and zero runtime maintenance really does help to negate the issue. Whilst we're waiting. We're waiting whilst whilst we're really driving Brussels and Westminster around. Now how collectively the industry and government solve for deploying green power infrastructure, particularly hydrogen.

Adam

How far off do you think sustainable hydrogen based power technology is?

Matt

Well, it's certainly not in the next five years. But you've got to assume that within a five to 10 year period, we're gonna start to be able to get our heads around. I think it's more about what investment is required to develop hydrogen grids that can be accessed. In the meantime, everybody's working so hard on, you know, looking at, for instance, you know, converting hydrogen to gel form, so that it's inert, so that it can be transported and stored. But then the problem is, you've got to then turn it back to hydrogen, and, you know, what's the footprint that you need for for doing, you know, the processing to gel and back to hydrogen. But there's so much work going on, that I do see, over the next five years, there'll be some good tech nology breakthroughs, but it still doesn't solve for the issue, which is, you know, we're going to ultimately need a national hydrogen grid that to to be able to support data centres and homes and everything.

Zach

Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have for this week. But our thanks once again to CyrusOne's Matt Pullen for joining us.

Matt

I just want to thank you for inviting me to take part in the podcast.

Adam

You can find links to all of the topics we've spoken about today in the show notes and even more on our website at itpro.co.uk.

Zach

You can also follow us on social media as well as subscribe to our daily newsletter.

Adam

Don't forget to subscribe to the IT Pro Podcast wherever you find podcasts. And if you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and a review.

Zach

We'll be back next week with more analysis from the world of IT. But until then, goodbye.

Adam

Bye!

Climate change is one of the greatest threats that humanity faces, and it’s important for each of us to do what we can in fighting its impact. However, while pledging to use our cars less and turn off our appliances overnight is all very well, organisations and industries also need to enact policies to limit and manage their own carbon footprints.

One of the biggest sources of energy consumption within the modern business world is data centres, estimated to contribute as much as the global air travel industry in terms of carbon emissions. Ongoing efforts are being made to reduce the environmental impact of data centres, though, and there are a number of ways in which organisations can ensure their data centres are as green as possible.

We’re joined this week by Matt Pullen, executive vice president and managing director of data centre operator CyrusOne, to discuss some of these initiatives, as well as some top tips for reducing your data centre’s carbon footprint.

Highlights

“what we're finding is that as workloads move away from on premise data centres to big cloud data centres, those big cloud data centres are at such a scale, and they're using modern technology, whereby PUEs are falling and falling with, on average, the UK recording that big commercial data centres' PUEs probably down at 1.7.”

“The focus was on PUE, but, of course, to bring PUEs down, quite a lot of new cooling technology emerged. Indirect adiabatic cooling technology for example, which basically uses water mist to make the cooling process more efficient, and therefore bring the PUE down. Now, the problem with that is water is such a scarce commodity. And, in parallel, more standard cooling technologies have been emerging, closed-loop chilled water systems, for example, that don't result in the net use of water.”

“At the moment, what we're seeing is an aggregation of large data centres in urban and suburban areas to basically support big GDP clusters. And because of latency, they have to be there. We're also seeing very large data centres in remote locations where latency is not such an issue. As the digital world moves forward, driverless cars etc, we are going to see a need for more edge data centres - i.e. data centres closer to the action on a smaller scale. And we've just got to make sure that technology has evolved so that those small data centres are not inefficient.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Microsoft is submerging servers in boiling liquid to prevent Teams outages
• Microsoft lays out water-positive plans for next decade
• Cloud computing could cut a billion tons of CO2 in four years
• UK's first green data centre for AI launches in Cornwall
• Google hands over data centre cooling controls to AI
• Schneider Electric partnership to develop liquid cooling for power-hungry data centres
• What is green cloud?
• UK’s 'green industrial revolution' to create 60,000 jobs
• Microsoft and the Linux Foundation launch green software initiative
• Smashing green tech myths
• Google publishes green energy metric for cloud customers
• Could using blockchain kill your green credentials?
• Japan pursues green data centres to achieve carbon-neutral society
• Facebook achieves its goal of 100% green energy
• How UK tech’s environmental startup scene is growing in stature
• Microsoft wins contract to build Singapore's first sovereign cloud
• Curious Noses: Fighting climate change one garden at a time
• UK tech sector urged to commit to carbon neutrality by 2050
• What is a circular economy?
• Apple and AWS unveil sustainability commitments ahead of COP26
• Salesforce to trial green AI tools to help companies fast-track their journey to net zero

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WeSpire, a provider of employee experience solutions with an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability focus, has announced the launch of its Employee Carbon Management Solution.

Developed in partnership with Cox Enterprises and South Pole, the new solution provides enterprises with a comprehensive set of tools to measure, reduce, balance, and report on employee carbon emissions both on the job and at home.

“Until now, getting employee-based Scope 3 carbon emissions data quickly, accurately, and on-demand has been challenging due to a lack of workplace-specific tools to reliably capture and report the data,” explained WeSpire.

“The rapid move to hybrid and remote work environments and an increasing number of companies setting Scope 3 Net Zero goals has magnified the urgency of implementing a better approach.”

Employee Carbon Management Solution by WeSpire enables companies to establish a corporate ESG strategy across the workforce by providing employees with specific steps they can take to reduce their individual carbon footprints.

Through curated actions based on behavioral science, companies can promote continual, progressive reductions in carbon emissions without relying on offsets immediately.

WeSpire has also partnered with South Pole to provide high-quality offset opportunities as rewards to employees and employers.

WeSpire's Employee Carbon Management Solution will be available by Earth Day 2022 after it passes its testing phase.

“We’ve pioneered a data-first, behavior-change solution to drive much needed personal climate action in the workplace,” said Susan Hunt Stevens, founder and CEO of WeSpire.

“Our technology enables organizations to engage their employees to better understand their own impact, take targeted carbon reduction actions, and, when needed, the company or employees can balance what remains. This holistic solution will inspire further innovation as employees see their collective impact on their company’s ESG goals and will significantly simplify employee-related Scope 3 emissions reporting,” added Stevens.

Qualcomm has announced plans to achieve net zero Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 2040.

The company also pledged to support Business Ambition for 1.5°C, a campaign led by Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) in partnership with the UN Global Compact and We Mean Business coalition.

Qualcomm’s ambitious sustainability plans complement its existing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goal, including interim 2030 science-based emissions reduction targets across Scopes 1, 2, and 3.

"Our net zero goal and commitment to SBTi reflects our belief that environmental sustainability is absolutely imperative, with significant social and economic benefits that require collective action and leadership from Qualcomm and other corporate citizens," said Cristiano Amon, president and chief executive officer at Qualcomm Incorporated.

Qualcomm has set three long-term goals to reduce GHG emissions: reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 50% by 2030; cut absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions by 25% by 2030; and reach net-zero global emissions for Scopes 1, 2, and 3 by 2040.

The firm has already taken steps to meet these long-term goals by opting for 100% renewable energy at its San Diego headquarters.

In line with its strategy, Qualcomm will transition to renewable energy via long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs), decarbonize its operations, and use a minimum amount of renewable energy credits (RECs) and carbon offsets for residual emissions.

Qualcomm also underscored the economic and sustainability benefits of 5G, stating its increased adoption could reduce GHG emissions by 374 million metric tons, which is equivalent to taking 81 million passenger vehicles off US roads for a year.

“5G technologies and products will be instrumental in driving an environmentally sustainable future. We're working with our partners and customers to reduce emissions footprints, conserve resources and harness the sustainability benefits of 5G globally," added Amon.

IBM has unveiled its new Environmental Intelligence Suite, a collection of artificial intelligence (AI)-based software tools aimed at helping organizations prepare for and respond to weather and climate risks.

The suite, offered as a software as a service (SaaS) product, brings together AI, weather data, climate risk analytics, and carbon accounting capabilities. IBM said this would allow firms to spend fewer resources collecting such complex data and more on analyzing it for insights and taking action to improve their operations.

IBM said the suite delivers environmental insights via application programming interfaces (APIs), dashboards, maps, and alerts that can help companies address immediate operational challenges and longer-term planning and strategies. It also uses technologies from IBM Research, which apply natural language processing and automation designed to help companies estimate carbon emissions and identify opportunities to reduce them across their operations or with suppliers.

Among the examples IBM gave of the suite’s usefulness was the ability for companies to monitor disruptive environmental conditions, such as severe weather, wildfires, flooding, and air quality and send alerts when detected. The suite can also predict potential impacts of climate change and weather across the business using climate risk analytics.

Companies can also gain insights into potential operational disruptions and prioritize mitigation and response efforts. Other features measure and report on environmental initiatives while reducing this burden on procurement and operations teams.

For example, IBM environmental data and geospatial analytics are being used by Brazilian ethanol, bioelectricity, and sugar company BP Bunge Bioenergia. This data helps it better understand its agricultural sugarcane production and improve its market intelligence estimates regarding global sugar production. Agribusiness leader Cajamar also uses it to help Spanish farmers improve yields and reduce environmental impact via its digital Plataforma Tierra tool.

Kareem Yusuf, general manager of IBM AI Applications, said the future of business and the environment are deeply intertwined. “Not only are companies coping with the effects of extreme weather disruptions on their operations, they're also being held increasingly accountable by shareholders and regulators for how their operations impact the planet,” he said.

The suite integrates with IBM's broader software portfolio for additional efficiencies across business operations, including IBM Maximo Application Suite to help companies protect and extend critical assets’ life cycle and IBM Supply Chain Intelligence Suite to help build more sustainable supply chains.

Many startups dream of the day they get their Big Break, but not all of them pause to consider whether they will actually be able to handle the rapid increase in demand for their services.

For Currensea, their Big Break was delivered by their appearance on Channel Five’s long-running consumer technology series The Gadget Show.

“We didn't know how this was going to play out,” recounts Craig Goulding, who co-founded Currensea in 2018 with fellow former JPMorgan employee James Lynn.

“When it aired, things went absolutely berzerk, traffic to our website and application went through the roof. We were issuing one card every six seconds – totally, utterly insane,” he tells IT Pro.

Sudden influxes of traffic, often prompted by media coverage, are not a daily occurrence for many companies. However, when they do happen, many websites cannot handle the demand and buckle up under pressure. This means that the company can miss out on new orders and – most importantly – profits.

For Currensea, however, this moment was made possible by the elasticity and scalability of the cloud on which its website is built.

“The platform just handled that surge in volume,” says Goulding. He describes the appearance on the show, as well as the subsequent frenzy, as “an amazing experience” that was fully enabled by technology, allowing Currensea to sit back and reap the rewards.

“One of the great things about the cloud is that you don't have to worry about servers,” he tells IT Pro. “So you can concentrate on building and running applications and business logic, rather than having to worry about having to manage the infrastructure. Amazon Web Services just takes care of all that for you.”

Goulding adds that this was especially important for the small team of engineers that makes up Currensea, allowing them to focus on “building products and building differentiation, rather than having to worry about the kind of nuts and bolts of the service and goodness knows what”. The experience with The Gadget Show helped Goulding realise the importance of the ability to scale up and scale down on demand, especially when these kinds of peaks in traffic are rare. It also helps the company save money.

“If you're not using it in the cloud then you're not paying for it, so it's a very flexible and adaptable model as well,” he says.

The cloud offers more than just peace of mind, though.

“Another huge benefit is just the number of tools they have in their environments, which you just point and click and configure, then you magically get them, which is incredible. Again, if you're having to kind of build that up yourself, it would be a hugely conservative resource, so it's just a massive accelerator for us,” he says.

“Then you've got the resiliency as well. You're spread across multiple data centers and everything kind of fares over if there's any issues in one data center. So, you run a 24/7 operation with no downtime.”

Saving the oceans, one card at a time

The cloud has been hailed as a life-saver for many industries, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. For Currensea, however, it’s allowing the challenger bank to channel all its attention into its environmental efforts.

While many banks are undergoing a digital transformation, offering a brighter and more convenient future, what actually lies ahead might be rather more bleak. Extreme weather, food shortages, and pollution are only the tip of the environmental iceberg, with the gradual melting of ice caps and rising sea levels threatening to submerge coastal cities such as Miami as early as 2050. All of these issues could impact everyone’s long-term plans – but could something as small as a bank card help reverse them?

Whether debit or credit, banking cards are most often made out of polyvinyl chloride, more commonly known by the initials PVC, which is notoriously difficult to recycle, usually ending up sitting in landfills for centuries to come. This has prompted Currensea to opt for biodegradable cards that, when disposed of, will take about a decade to decompose. However, the challenger bank’s environmental drive isn’t limited to cards only: Earlier in 2021, the company launched a new feature that enables customers to contribute to cleansing the oceans of plastic waste every time they spend money abroad, with a pledge to remove 2.5 times the amount of plastic they produce every year.

“For each card that we're producing, we’re also extracting plastic from the oceans – more plastic than we're actually introducing to the world,” explains Goulding.

When asked about the problem of greenwashing – companies branding themselves as sustainable for marketing purposes, with limited positive impact for the environment – Goulding says he is “very conscious of that”.

“You either do it properly, or you don’t do it at all,” he says.

Microsoft has partnered with environmental groups to create an artificial intelligence (AI)-based tool that could help to stop deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

The tool, called PrevisIA, uses machine learning to spot possible trends in forest conversion from deforestation. It uses the Azure cloud to ingest and process data about the Amazon environment, ranging from topography to land cover and urban infrastructure. It also includes socioeconomic data.

The software also includes an AI algorithm to detect legal and illegal roads from European Space Agency satellite imagery of the Amazon. This came from the Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia (Imazon), one of Microsoft's partners on the project. The name translates to the Institute of Man and the Environment of the Amazon.

The other organization partnering on PrevisIA was the Vale Fund, a nonprofit civil society association established by mining company Vale.

Public agencies can use the data it produces via a dashboard that will help them to fight deforestation.

PrevisIA will hopefully protect the rainforest during the dry season by determining its vulnerability to fire, Vale explained. The upside for the mining company is it can use the results of the project as part of the UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) initiative, yielding rewards in carbon credits.

Deforestation is an ongoing problem for the Amazon, and reached a 12-year high last year, according to Brazilian space agency Inpe. The biodiverse forest lost an area equivalent to a third of Belgium's size in 2020.

Efforts to protect the Amazon seem to have little support from the Brazilian government under populist president Jair Bolsonaro. It has committed to bulldoze a 94-mile highway through the rain forest's Peruvian border territory.

The PrevisIA announcement reinforces Microsoft's environmentally friendly messaging. In January 2020, the software giant committed to becoming carbon-neutral by 2030. It also announced it would create a platform for collecting environmental data to help preserve biodiversity, mirroring other efforts in big tech. The company touted its AI for Good campaign, which allocated part of its $165 million in funding for the Vale and Imazon partnership.

However, Microsoft's AI for Good campaign doesn't extend to initiatives that contribute significantly to its bottom line. The company continues to sell AI to the US military, despite employee protests. It most recently signed a deal this spring to provide AI-powered HoloLens technology to the US army.

In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Rene Millman investigates the issues of unwanted office equipment and sustainable solutions business leaders should adopt to keep equipment out of landfills.

The Business Briefing is a new free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

Learn more about it and sign up here, or fill in your details below to read this sample feature.

Vodafone has announced that starting 1 July, its European network will be 100% powered by electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar or hydropower.

The operator originally aimed to go 100% renewable by 2025, but Vodafone this week declared that it has managed to bring the target forward by four years. The 2025 target will now apply to ensuring the same goal is met in Africa.

Vodafone’s shift to renewable energy is part of the company’s goal to achieve ‘net zero’ within its own carbon emissions by 2030, and across the company’s entire value chain by 2040.

Commenting on the announcement, Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read said that starting next month, “Vodafone’s customers across Europe can be reassured that the connectivity they use is entirely powered by electricity from renewable sources”.

“This is a major milestone towards our goal of reducing our own global carbon emissions to net zero by 2030, helping our customers reduce their own environmental footprint and continuing to build an inclusive and sustainable digital society in all of our markets,” he added.

Over 2020, Vodafone managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30% year on year to 1.37 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent), and instead increased the proportion of renewable electricity purchased in Europe from 33% in FY20 to 80% in FY21.

Vodafone’s announcement follows a similar one made by Facebook, which in April also declared that it had achieved its goal of powering its global operations on 100% renewable energy. The social media company also managed to achieve the ‘net zero’ goal it had set three years ago.

Meanwhile, AWS Ireland is set to switch over to 100% renewable energy by 2025, which will be accomplished thanks to a new 115-megawatt wind farm in Ardderroo, Galway. The announcement builds on existing sustainability projects in Meenbog, County Donegal, and Esk, County Cork, with all three expected to make Amazon the largest single corporate buyer of renewable energy in Ireland.

The next decade is expected to be revolutionary in terms of sustainability among tech giants, with Google, Apple, Microsoft, O2, Netflix, and IBM all having launched plans to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Bitcoin mining company Blockstream has partnered with Square to build a solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility.

Square will provide $5 million in funding for the project, which will be a proof-of-concept for larger renewable mining operations. Blockstream will provide infrastructure and expertise.

Blockstream, which also develops Bitcoin wallets and financial products, already runs a mining operation on what it says is 80% renewable energy. It began mining using its own purpose-built data centers in 2017 and now has a hydroelectric facility in Quebec, Canada and another facility in Adel, Georgia. In 2019, it launched an enterprise colocation service for Bitcoin miners.

The partnership with Square will go beyond Blockstream's existing projects to provide a reference model for renewable mining facility designs, Blockstream said in an announcement on Saturday. It vowed to make the project open and transparent by publishing regular economics reports. It will also offer a dashboard that will display real-time information on the project's power output and Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin's proof of work-based consensus mechanism consumes vast amounts of power that increase as it becomes more popular. This has drawn criticism for its effect on the environment.

New York lawmakers recently proposed a law banning cryptocurrency mining operations that affected its greenhouse gas emissions targets. The seminal cryptocurrency, first launched in 2009, has suffered other setbacks of late, including signals of a major government crackdown on mining in China, which dominates the Bitcoin mining space.

In March, Blockstream also partnered with Aker, a specialist Bitcoin investment company created by Norwegian holding company Seegee, which operates in energy and construction. The two companies will work together in the Bitcoin mining space, they said.

Blockstream has a stated goal to use "orphaned" renewable resources in areas that would otherwise be problematic to transmit power from. The company has developed a satellite-based network for propagating Bitcoin blockchain information to remote areas.

In 2015, Akamai set targets to reduce emissions by 30%, power its edge platform with 50% renewable energy, and recycle 100% of e-waste by the end of 2020.

During the five years, the company reduced its energy consumption tenfold for every unit of capacity while also achieving its objectives.

Continuing its commitment to environmental sustainability, Akamai has announced five new goals for 2030.

The new goals surround Akamai's intelligent edge platform, the communities it lives, operates and works in, and its global supply chain.

"Akamai believes that corporations share the responsibility to protect the earth's natural resources. These 2030 goals reflect our commitment to this belief," said Nicole Fitzpatrick, deputy general counsel and chief ESG officer.

Akamai meets over half of its energy needs via renewable sources. Akamai's first goal will prioritize the implementation and procurement of renewable energy to power 100% of its global operations by 2030. If Akamai operates in an area without an adequate renewable energy supply, it plans to use attestable and traceable sources of renewable energy certificates to meet its goals.

Akamai's most energy-intensive operation involves managing its intelligent edge platform that includes over 325,000 servers across 135 countries. As part of its second goal, Akamai plans to make its edge platform 50% more energy efficient.

The third goal focuses on 100% platform emissions mitigation. To achieve this goal, Akamai will work with data center providers and landlords to build attestable renewable energy sources that equal Akamai's footprint. Both scope-one and scope-two emissions are included within the net-zero emissions target.

Akamai has set responsible supply chain management as its fourth sustainability target. For a measurable reduction by 2030, the company will collaborate with its top suppliers to benchmark and quantify scope three emissions.

Lastly, the global expansion of 100% electronic waste recycling program is Akamai’s fifth sustainability goal. Akamai will recycle all electronics at the end of a product's lifecycle per the e-Stewards program guidelines. Furthermore, over the next 10 years, the company plans on making partner programs more efficient by disposing of e-waste in the country of origin where feasible.

All the major tech giants are going green. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, and IBM have all launched plans to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the next decade.

Now, just in time for Earth Day, Facebook has announced it’s achieved its goal of powering its global operations on 100% renewable energy. It’s also reached net-zero emissions, a goal it set three years ago.

The company has achieved this by investing $8 billion to build a network of 63 new wind and solar plants, all located on the same power grids as Facebook’s data centers.

“Although we’ve reached our latest goal, the work isn’t over,” the company said. “We will contract new solar and wind projects to remain at 100 percent renewable energy, even as we continue to grow.”

“We’ve already set a new goal that in 2030, we will reach net zero emissions across not only our own operations but also our value chain — our suppliers, as well as items like business travel and employee commuting.”

To reach that goal, the social media giant is working with its suppliers to invest in high-quality carbon-removal projects and continue to find innovative ways to reduce emissions.

In the meantime, Facebook has become one of the world’s largest corporate buyers of renewable energy. Today, it has contracts in place for more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar energy across 18 states and five countries.

In 2020 alone, Facebook contracted for 1 GW of new renewable energy and brought 2 GW of renewable energy projects online to support its operations.

Virtually all the major players in the American tech world have launched large-scale green initiatives in recent years.

Netflix recently announced that it’s pursuing a net-zero carbon strategy. The streaming giant will join IBM, Apple, and Microsoft in their green initiatives, which they aim to complete by 2030.

“We believe that climate change is an urgent issue facing the world today,” Facebook said, “and we are committed to doing our part to address this challenge.”

Cloud computing could save a billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2024, according to an analysis from IDC.

IDC made the predictions for four years covering 2021-2024, analyzing its data on server distribution and on-premises software use. It also looked at third-party data on data center power usage and emissions per kilowatt-hour, comparing this data across cloud and non-cloud data centers.

Cloud computing has an innate energy-saving capability, thanks to the aggregation of computing resources, the company said. Larger facilities can increase server usage rates more effectively, leaving fewer computing resources idle.

The kinds of hyperscale facilities common in cloud computing are also good at using the most power-efficient servers. Cloud datacenters also excel at shifting workloads to the most appropriate location. IDC said this also encourages greater use of renewable resources, such as wind and solar power.

The predictions depend heavily on green data centers, where owners take extra steps to reduce energy consumption. These steps include locating facilities in environments with relatively cold temperatures and using free air cooling. Cooling costs represent a significant chunk of data center energy consumption as companies try to keep tightly packed computing equipment cool.

Other emerging measures include using artificial intelligence (AI) to better control cooling. Google saved 40% in cooling energy costs by introducing its DeepMind AI into some data centers, and other companies are exploring the possibility commercially.

The forecast assumes that 60% of data centers will adopt green technologies in the next four years. If there’s no more green tech adoption, then simple cloud migration will save 629 million metric tons of CO2, it said. If all data centers in the cloud used sustainable designs, the savings could extend to 1.6 billion metric tons.

Microsoft recently reported progress on its pledge to become carbon neutral by 2030. Google has been carbon neutral since 2007, as it buys enough renewable energy to offset its energy use, but it committed to becoming carbon-free by 2030 after pressure from employees. Most recently, IBM also vowed to become carbon neutral by 2030.

Opportunities to save emissions depend on renewable power use in key areas. IDC pointed to areas that use more fossil fuels per kilowatt-hour as the biggest opportunities because using more efficient facilities will directly affect fossil fuel usage.

The Asia/Pacific region is a tremendous opportunity given its heavy reliance on coal, the company said, predicting that over half of the emissions savings would come from there. Conversely, the EMEA region could expect to see a 10% reduction in emissions by 2024.

The world is running out of fossil fuels and the little it has left can only be accessed at increasingly high costs. Alongside this, countries and organisations are committing to net-zero carbon targets in a bid to offset fossil fuel use.

A large reason for the net-zero carbon pledges is consumer pressure, with the general public far more aware of their own impact on the environment than ever before. This has seen the rise in certain lifestyle changes, such as electric cars or solar panels added to homes, to reduce carbon footprints.

These green-friendly consumers are looking to work and do business with like-minded companies and tech firms can speed up their own pace towards zero carbon emissions with green cloud technologies.

The complexities of green cloud

The colour green has become synonymous with environmentally friendly things and in the context of cloud computing, it's about running data centres with low-carbon output. However, there are more components in the equation than just the power being used to keep a facility operational. The materials used to make the building can also be sourced and produced in ways that don't damage the environment, and that even includes the maintaining of the structure, the whole lifecycle matters.

Even looking at just energy consumption paints a complex picture; renewables are key sources of energy, but other factors, such as how energy efficient a data centre is, or how it distributes energy around the building are also key considerations.

All of this means that understanding how green a green cloud provider is can be complex. Subhankar Pal, assistant vice president of technology and innovation at Capgemini company Altran, tells IT Pro: “Firms can discover their green-ness by establishing a way to evaluate green KPIs during tests and in production. Green KPIs will be derived from metrics like energy efficiency, cooling efficiency, computing infrastructure performance, thermal and air management metrics.”

Prioritising sustainability matters

Consumers are increasingly adopting sustainability models in their everyday life, and are often prepared to pay more for items that meet environmental credentials. The principles that lead people to look for green energy providers, reduced and recyclable packing in purchased goods, and ethically sourced clothing are the same principles that drive them away from companies that lack green credentials. Firms that add green cloud into their mix stand to gain in reputation, regardless of whether their clients are consumers or other businesses.

As Emma Roscow, Intelligent cloud infrastructure lead for Accenture UKI explains: “Business strategy is increasingly focused on sustainability, with many companies making commitments to reduce their carbon footprint. In fact, 99% of CEOs from large companies now agree that sustainability issues are important to the future success of their businesses.”

It’s not just about good PR, though – the real environmental gains matter too. Roscow adds: “Accenture recently found that public cloud migrations could reduce global carbon emissions by 59 million tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent to taking 22 million cars off the road.”

Lead the way and keep a clear head

Given the depletion of fossil fuels and push towards renewables, the move to green cloud is ultimately inevitable. For Pal, the time is right to make the move. “The reason to do this now is because some firms are already experiencing higher cost pressures, and they could be more cost implications in the long run. There could be stricter government regulations, penalties, and higher operational costs for managing non-green data centres,” he says.

But the move should be made with a clear head. Nick Mcquire, vice president, enterprise research at CCS Insight tells IT Pro: “We are seeing the cloud providers posturing over ‘my cloud is cleaner than your cloud’ as they commit on the one hand, to massive infrastructure build-outs to sustain demand and differentiate their platforms, and the ability for this infrastructure to be friendly on the planet on the other.” He advises, “customers should push their cloud providers hard on providing energy data around where they place their cloud workloads and for innovation in areas that can cut their energy emissions.”

Roscow highlights some additional factors to be taken into account including, within any firm, “the current hardware’s lifecycle, approach to application development, their sustainable business models and processes, and how they use the cloud to create circular operations”.

There is no easy, off the shelf, method of deciding when and how to make the move to green cloud. Each firm will need to do its own research on both cloud services and its wider use of IT – and that research might be much more in-depth than you think. Roscow puts this plainly – if surprisingly – when she reveals that “Accenture Labs’ research found that even the choice of coding language can impact energy consumption by as much as fifty times, depending on the programming technique”.

Despite these twists and turns, there is no doubt the move to green cloud is coming for tech firms as for all others. Making the move sooner rather than later might be better financially and reputationally – as well as for the planet.

Welcome to IT Pro’s weekly News in Review, a new way for you to discover some of our award-winning content in just one minute, for the week of 15 February.

This week’s top news stories:

• 1,000 engineers were behind the SolarWinds Orion attack
• IBM has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to meet the targets laid out in the Paris Climate accords by 2030
• Apple fixes a bug in macOS Big Sur that could lead to irretrievable data loss

We hope you enjoy this continuing video series. You can find more videos like this in the Video section of this website and even more on our YouTube channel. Let us know what you think of this week’s video – you can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

IBM announced it’ll honor the Paris Climate Agreement and achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

The tech giant plans to launch its carbon-neutral plans by procuring 75% of its electricity from renewable sources and cut its greenhouse gas emissions 65% from its 2010 emission levels by 2025. By 2030, IBM plans to reach its carbon-neutral goal by obtaining 90% of its electricity from renewable sources and implementing feasible technologies to neutralize residual emissions.

"I am proud that IBM is leading the way by taking actions to reduce emissions significantly," said Arvind Krishna, chairman and chief executive officer at IBM.

"The climate crisis is one of the most pressing issues of our time. IBM's net zero pledge is a bold step forward that strengthens our long-standing climate leadership and positions our company years ahead of the targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement."

As part of its commitment to solving major societal challenges, IBM Research has unveiled the “Future of Climate” initiative. This initiative will introduce new solutions to counterbalance the impact of climate change.

IBM is also working with its clients and partners to address climate issues, including the growing carbon footprint of cloud workloads and data centers, modeling and assessing the risk of changing environments and climate patterns, and developing new polymers, membranes and materials that capture and absorb carbon its origin of emission. It’s attacking these climate issues using a novel combination of sustainable hybrid cloud, climate-smart artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, and quantum computing.

“In combining our Future of Climate scientific agenda, the AI expertise across IBM Research including focused work within the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and the wealth of experience from our partners and clients, our participation in the MCSC will translate into valuable scientific contributions and industry solutions,” said IBM.

“Strong collaborations with commercial partners, academia, non-profits, and government are critical for prioritizing, validating, and piloting our innovations and enabling a fast path for scale and impact.”

Microsoft released its first sustainability report since announcing a “moonshot” program to combat climate change in 2020. The report admits there's a long way to go, but the numbers show Microsoft's commitments are more than just hot air.

The company began making good on its sustainability goals with a 6% carbon emissions reduction, bringing it down from 11.6 million metric tons to 10.9 metric tons. That’s a reduction of around 730,000 tons, said Microsoft president Brad Smith in a blog post detailing its climate achievements over the last 12 months.

Microsoft used various techniques to cut carbon emissions, including fulfilling a 2020 commitment to expand its internal emissions tax. It now includes what it calls “Scope 3” emissions from external sources — namely suppliers and customers.

Its internal divisions pay $5 for each ton of carbon emitted by its suppliers or when customers use its products and services. The Xbox division responded to the tax by lowering the power draw on gaming consoles from 15 watts to just 2 watts, Smith said.

Microsoft complements its carbon-reduction strategy with another effort to remove existing carbon from the atmosphere. To that end, Microsoft has paid to remove 1.3 million tons of carbon across 26 projects operated by 15 suppliers.

The company published the data about its environmental progress in its sustainability report, which revealed that renewable energy amounted to 95.2% of its overall energy usage. Most of that energy came from renewable energy credits and power-purchase agreements, such as a 500-megawatt deal it signed with Sol Systems in June 2020.

Microsoft is encouraging more executive-level commitment by using sustainability progress to determine executive pay beginning in 2021, including CEO Satya Nadella’s compensation.

The company launched the sustainability initiative last January to be carbon negative by 2030. So, within the next nine years, Microsoft must remove more carbon from the environment than it puts into it.

By 2050, Microsoft aims to have neutralized all of its historical emissions, negating its past carbon footprint.

Smith called for more innovative solutions than simply buying carbon credits that effectively offload carbon reduction onto other organizations. "It’s imperative that we move away from paying for carbon avoidance and focus on paying for carbon removal," he said, adding: "Paying someone not to emit carbon is literally paying someone to do nothing. And we know we won’t solve the climate crisis by doing nothing. We need to do something, and it needs to be big."

Accenture and Salesforce have expanded their partnership to help companies embed sustainability into their business, meet growing end-user demand for data-based insights and accelerate towards United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The new partnership also focuses on providing the C-suite with true visibility into their company’s historical and real-time environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. Organizations will track, measure, and act on a range of sustainability initiatives, including reporting on carbon usage, supporting customer engagements, creating positive consumer experiences, meeting regulatory requirements, and developing new business models.

“Every CEO is recognizing their responsibilities don’t stop at the edge of the corporate campus or Zoom,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at Salesforce.

“By integrating sustainability deep into the fabric of our companies, our businesses will become more successful, our communities more equal, our societies more just and our planet healthier. We’re incredibly proud to be working with Accenture to help customers more readily drive sustainability programs that benefit all stakeholders and create business value.”

Salesforce Sustainability Cloud helps businesses measure and manage their carbon footprint by offering a 360-degree view of their corporate environmental impact. It also helps organizations transparently report their investor-grade climate data. As part of their new collaboration, Accenture will leverage Salesforce’s Sustainability Cloud to develop sustainability insights that can scale across organizations and their ecosystems.

“Climate change continues to be one of the most critical challenges facing business and the broader planet,” adds George Oliver, CEO of Johnson Controls.

“We are pleased to be working with Salesforce and Accenture in accelerating sustainability activities for JCI, for our customers and our communities, especially as momentum for action continues to grow.”

Later this year, Accenture and Salesforce will work together to expand their combined platform and services to track and analyze broader ESG metrics, from water and waste management to diversity and inclusion.

IBM is building a new data platform hosted on its cloud to track plastic waste and recovery globally. The news comes as Big Blue becomes a supporting member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste.

The platform, which the Alliance calls Plastics Recovery Insight and Steering Model (PRISM), will serve as a single data source to help spread how organizations have improved their waste-management decisions and programs.

PRISM will enable users to review and combine various datasets to tackle waste. It’ll initially focus on plastic consumption and collection; plastic waste generated and leaking into the environment; and waste management and recycling solutions in place. Additional data sets will be available as the tool expands.

PRISM aims to enable users to integrate and scale disparate datasets without compromising existing security. Development began with the support of IBM Garage.

Nick Kolesch, vice president for projects at the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, said a very significant obstacle in combating the plastic waste challenge is “how to bring together the multitude of data that exists in a way that's verifiable, flexible and actionable”.

"IBM Cloud provides the flexibility to convene stakeholders and value chain participants to securely contribute data, with an easy path for migration, hosting, and user access. We are pleased that IBM has joined our efforts, and look forward to their contribution of solutions, advanced technologies, and capabilities in pursuit of our mission,” Kolesch said.

Manish Chawla, global industry managing director of energy, resources, and manufacturing at IBM, said plastics play an “essential role in our global economy, from simple packaging and shipping, to critical, life-saving materials for hospitals and healthcare workers.”

"By harnessing the power of cloud and artificial intelligence we can bring together valuable and disparate pieces of data in a secured and flexible environment where everyone from Alliance members to governments and regulators can collaborate to address this global challenge,” Chawla said.

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste was formed in January 2019, comprising more than 50 member companies, project partners, allies, and supporters with a commitment to help end plastic waste. It aims to raise $1.5 billion over five years to fund programs to deal with waste and support creating a circular economy that reuses plastic and other waste materials.

Google announced today it aims to run on carbon-free energy by 2030.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai called the carbon-free target a “stretch goal” in an interview with Reuters. He explained it would force Google to move beyond offsetting its carbon emissions and require technological and political breakthroughs.

“The problem is so immense, many of us need to lead the way and show solutions,” Pichai said. “We’re one small player in this, but we can set an example.”

Last year, wind, solar and other renewable energy sources accounted for 61% of Google’s global hourly electricity usage. The percentage varied by facility, as carbon-free sources fulfilled 96% of hourly power needs at Google’s Oklahoma data center, while its gas-reliant Singapore location had only 3% carbon-free power.

Pichai says he’s optimistic Google can bridge that gap by using emerging sources such as geothermal reservoirs, batteries to store solar power overnight and managing its overall power needs better.

“To plan 24/7 hourly being carbon-free in our data centers and campuses around the world, we see an enormous logistics challenge, which is why we’ve been hard at work modeling the last year how to get there,” Pichai said. “And we feel confident we can get there by 2030.”

To reach its goals, the tech giant is investing in technologies to help its partners and people make sustainable choices. For example, Google is committed to helping 500+ cities and local governments globally reduce 1 gigaton of carbon emissions annually by 2030.

Google is also working with a network of environmental organizations on a science-based approach to reforestation and restoration. It’s launched a €10 million ($11.9 million) Google.org Impact Challenge in Europe to support sustainability ideas and projects.

Google estimates its commitment to carbon-free energy will generate more than 20,000 new clean-energy jobs by 2025.

“We’re optimistic that by harnessing new technologies, investing in the right infrastructure and tools, and empowering partners, nonprofits and people, this can be the most decisive decade for climate action yet. We’re proud to do our part, and to help move the world closer to a carbon-free future for all,” Pichai concluded.

Apple unveiled plans today to go carbon neutral across its entire business by 2030. The company’s global corporate operations are already carbon neutral, but this new pledge means every Apple device sold will have net-zero climate impact.

To support its efforts, Apple is establishing an Impact Accelerator to invest in minority-owned businesses driving positive outcomes in its supply chain and communities disproportionately affected by environmental hazards.

Apple will also provide other companies with details on its approach to carbon neutrality.

“Businesses have a profound opportunity to help build a more sustainable future, one born of our common concern for the planet we share,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

“Climate action can be the foundation for a new era of innovative potential, job creation, and durable economic growth. With our commitment to carbon neutrality, we hope to be a ripple in the pond that creates a much larger change.”

To kickstart its efforts, Apple will continue to increase low-carbon and recycled material use in its products. In its announcement, Apple cited one of its latest recycling innovations, Dave, a robot that can better recover recyclable materials like tungsten and steel when disassembling the iPhone’s Taptic Engine.

Meanwhile, the company’s material recovery lab will focus on innovative electronic recycling technology and has partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to further develop engineering solutions.

Apple is also working on ways to assist its supply chain as it transitions to carbon neutrality. Last year, 92 facilities participated in Apple’s Supplier Energy Efficiency Program, offsetting 779,000 annualized metric tons of supply-chain carbon emissions. The company has also partnered with the US-China Green Fund, which will invest $100 million in accelerated energy efficiency projects for Apple’s suppliers.

Apple will remain at 100% renewable energy for its operations and has commitments from over 70 suppliers to use 100% renewable energy for Apple production. Once completed, Apple says these commitments will avoid over 14.3 million metric tons of CO2e annually.

The tech giant also announced the development of the first-ever direct carbon-free aluminum smelting process, which Apple is already using in the production of the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple is investing in forests and other nature-based solutions too, as it announced a first-of-its-kind carbon solutions fund to invest in the restoration and protection of forests and natural ecosystems worldwide. Through its work with The Conservation Fund, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, Apple says it’s already protected and improved the management of 1 million acres of forests in China, the US, Colombia and Kenya.

Apple isn’t the only tech company to pledge going carbon neutral. Just last month, Amazon announced a $2 billion fund to invest in companies building sustainable and decarbonizing technologies. Microsoft also announced earlier this year that come 2030, the company will be carbon negative.

According to assessments by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as part of their Exponential Climate Action Roadmap, expanding the use of digital technologies could reduce carbon emission by at least 15% – almost a third of the 50% reduction needed to curb climate change by 2030.

The onward march of the fourth industrial revolution, which leverages the burgeoning 5G cellular network, internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence AI to create intelligent spaces and environments that better manage their resources, is a key element of the digital push to reduce the impact of climate change.

As masses of data are collected from the vast arrays of connected devices within the IoT ecosystem, can these insights lead to tangible positive impacts on climate change? With this data available, businesses can better manage their processes, supply chains and waste management.

Here, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays a critical part in mitigating the effects of climate change. By monitoring every facet of processes from farming (for example, methane emissions from livestock) to intelligent control of street lights, it helps build a digital ecosystem that delivers the data needed to make fully informed decisions.

“The deployment of smart technologies and the use of smartphones has shown real environmental benefits as they have resulted in efficiencies that reduce carbon emissions,” says Steven Moore, head of climate action at GSMA. “There is a big opportunity for data to play a greater role in protecting the environment and to support enhancing biodiversity. That doesn't mean we need sensors everywhere, and we should be conscious of data privacy considerations too.”

The IoT is not a panacea for preventing or reducing the impact of climate change and must also be placed into context. “Crudely put, if I apply IoT technology to a coal-fired power station, I will end up with a more efficient, less polluting power station, but it will still be burning coal,” says Tim Stone, co-founder of specialist IoT investor Breed Reply. “Using IoT and AI to reduce congestion in a city will reduce carbon emissions, but not as much as using more electric cars, or making everyone cycle! On its own, it is not the solution, but will play a significant role.”

Connected environments

The Ericsson Mobility Report estimates the number of cellular connections will reach four billion by 2024. The rapid expansion of sensor technologies in factories will be joined by smart cities that will generate intelligent environments. The use of the IoT in mass transit is a good example of how technology can be used to reduce harmful emissions. Shenzhen in China now runs a fleet of 16,000 fully electric buses, which have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by 48%.

Moving goods around the world is also a significant contributor to climate change emissions. When applied to logistics, the IoT has massive promise: According to the WEF, transport alone accounts for 21% of global emissions. IoT technology, when applied to individual packages, could revolutionise global logistics by establishing shorter journeys to each destination and driving up efficiency. It's when the whole transport sector is using IoT as an integrated data source that real change becomes possible.

IoT and IIoT are essential technologies for changing the course of climate change, but they won’t be enough by themselves. Stephen Mellor, chief technical officer, IIC (Industrial Internet Consortium), says: “AI, including machine learning and deep learning, is an essential enabler for IIoT so it can deliver improvements in our climate. Other technologies are needed too, such as network slicing to create isolated private networks, distributed computing to bring computing closer to the edge, trustworthiness, which expands security into safety, resilience, reliability and privacy are all needed.”

Saving the world one sensor at a time

If the effects of climate change are to be mitigated, an aggressive program of technological development will be needed. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for reductions of carbon emissions of up to 70% and practical solutions will require more use of IoT on a global level.

For businesses and consumers alike, focusing on what they can achieve today with existing technologies is a good place to start – the continuing rollout of smart meters is a useful example of this. The University of Salford and The Energy Saving Trust concluded this initiative alone could deliver 11% of the UK’s target for carbon reduction.

The information landscape that IoT can deliver can't be overestimated. At the moment, insights which could provide real-world benefits are out of focus or even hidden from view. As Brendan Mislin, managing director and global IoT lead of Accenture’s Industry X.0 unit explains, more information is key to fighting climate change.

“The saying 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it' applies perfectly to the situation of IoT and climate change,” he tells IT Pro. “IoT solutions allow climate change programmes to gather a vast array of data – levels of pollution, traffic, temperature – almost anything that can be measured, even in real-time if needed.”

Mislin concludes: “Having access to these data streams, programme owners can establish baselines and measure the effects of the different initiatives they undertake. This is relevant whether they try to optimise the energy consumption of buildings, or reduce pollution on busy roads, or change shipping and deliver routes to reduce fuel consumption.”

Even on a micro-level, IoT when applied to everyday life such as using an app to quickly locate a parking space when amplified across a city or country can have a profound impact on emissions and, therefore, climate change. Businesses across every sector will be able to innovate to reduce their impact on the environment.

And consumers armed with a range of tools and services to interrogate their data will enable them to take practical long-term actions to reduce their impact on the environment. While it can’t operate in isolation, coupled with high-speed networks such as 5G, the IoT could usher in a connected and intelligent landscape that also protects our environment

The changes the coronavirus pandemic has forced upon us are leading many to take a long look at the way we live and the effect it has on the environment. We’ve seen dramatic improvements to air quality thanks to so many people staying home, and there’s a lot of talk about how we might do things differently as lockdown restrictions ease and we create a “new normal”.

When it’s safe to go back to the office, we may find more people choose to continue working remotely for example, as many have discovered that they’re able to work productively from home.

Removing the daily commute is obviously good for the environment, but there is another issue that we need to consider: going digital does not equate to going carbon neutral. In fact, the Paris-based Shift Project says that “digital technology is currently doing more to fuel global warming than prevent it”.

What is digital pollution?

Dubbed ‘digital pollution’, the greenhouse gases that come from building, delivering and using digital technology currently make up 4% of global greenhouse emissions – double that of the global aviation industry.

Millions of physical servers in data centres around the world are running 24/7 in order to transmit all our data, and every year energy consumption from digital technology increases by 9%.

While consumer use is a big contributor – streaming services represent 20% of greenhouse gas emissions from digital devices – business also has a role to play in reducing our digital carbon footprint and needs to look towards more efficient ways of working and storing/sharing data.

Every time we use the Internet a small amount of carbon is being emitted. Searching for something on Google has a price, as each internet request represents 7g of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Sending or receiving an email emits 4g of CO2e and even unopened spam emails pollute, as they still use 0.3g of carbon dioxide.

”Whilst that may not sound like much, the average office worker sends 120 emails a day, meaning that a business housing 50 employees generates 6,264kg (6.2 tonnes) of carbon emissions a year,” says James Harper, marketing manager at manufacturing firm Viessmann. “This is almost the equivalent of taking two return plane journeys a year from London to Hong Kong, which emits 6,800kg (6.8 tonnes) of CO2e between the four trips.”

Why should businesses care?

Taking responsibility for and lowering digital carbon footprints goes beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR); it’s good business sense.

Customers and employees alike are now very aware of the climate crisis, notes Vaughan Lindsay, CEO of ClimateCare, a profit for purpose environmental and social impact company. Most of all they’re very aware of the environmental responsibilities of the firms they work with, buy from and the organisations they are employed by.

“As such, they’re selecting organisations that fit with their own purpose-led principles. This ranges from organisations seeking to use greener data centres and communicating to their customer base through their CSR communications, to individuals who are increasingly buying on a matter of principle,” he says.

“Ultimately, as Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, recently said; ‘Firms that align their business models to the transition to a carbon-neutral world will be rewarded handsomely; those that fail to adapt will cease to exist’.”

Steps you can take

Many businesses are already recording their digital pollution. The Climate Change Act 2008 set out a legally-binding commitment for the UK to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels by 2020, and under Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR), large businesses have a legal requirement to report and reduce their energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

Research by digital marketing agency Sustainable Results Labs found that many small businesses are also reporting on their annual carbon footprints as part of their commitment to reduce their environmental impact.

By collecting this information, businesses of all sizes are able to see what’s causing the most digital pollution and act accordingly. And there are many tools available to provide support in this area. For example, Microsoft recently launched a sustainability calculator to help businesses analyse the carbon emissions of their IT infrastructure, and applications such as Cleanfox remove unwanted and unnecessary emails from your inbox.

Ruth Smith, director of Sustainable Results Lab, has seen several IT services management departments aim to reduce their digital pollution through greater use of automation to reduce manual, inefficient ways of working.

“If you can automate a workflow you can reduce the number of emails you send, which not only saves time and money; it also reduces your digital carbon footprint. Ensure systems and processes are as efficient as possible. It’s about making sure that you make as much impact as possible through an evidenced-based approach to everything you do,” she notes.

Some businesses are going as far as to make management of digital pollution part of a role.

“We have a head of operations who’s responsible for managing how efficient we are and as part of that role is looking at our digital carbon footprint. When we’re looking at renewals, or coming to the end of contracts, there’s a big focus on finding sustainable solutions,” says Luke Tobin, commercial director of marketing agency Digital Ethos.

All steps make a difference, and there are a few simple changes businesses can make to start reducing their digital carbon footprint. These include advising staff to unsubscribe from spam/junk emails even if they don’t open them, use Wi-Fi over 4G and look towards – where suitable – using USB sticks or external hard drives to store files rather than in the cloud.

This is something implemented at Housebuyers4U, where staff continuously look for new ways to manage their digital carbon footprint.

“We do a few things such as encouraging workers to talk to each other rather than sending mass emails and use USBs to transfer some files rather than storing them digitally – this limits our use of the cloud,” says Paul Gibbens, marketing executive. “We also remove unused apps and software we don’t need, try to download rather than stream and focus on improving our SEO so we only attract the people who need or want our service.”

The role of data centres

Power hungry data centres are unlikely to become obsolete, but Lindsay points out that they do have a real opportunity here to raise the bar – highlighting Microsoft’s move to offset all its past and current emissions. He also notes that end users should ensure they only use ‘green’ data centres.

“Businesses will need to do their due diligence and research here. When speaking to data centres they should ask for efficiency certificates and green credentials, and find out whether they offset residual emissions.”

Businesses have a responsibility to educate their staff on digital pollution and instigate culture changes that will help manage and reduce digital pollution. Many might not be aware of the cost of sending that unnecessary ‘thank you’ email, but small changes across the board will help us move towards the UK’s net zero goal by 2050. It’s possible to meet it – but only if we start to take responsibility for the digital pollution we create today

O2 is aiming to become a ‘net zero’ company in the next five years by executing a plan designed to reduce carbon emissions in addition to cutting supply chain emissions by 30%.

The company has committed to using more renewable energy sources to power the calls, texts and data usage over its networks, ramping up the ambition outlined more than ten years ago to reduce emissions.

The UK network also says it’ll implement more ambitious targets within its supply chain, which includes handset manufacturers, to achieve a 30% reduction by 2025.

“Today, we’re putting a stake in the ground. We want to go further and faster, setting the bar in our industry to tackle climate change and build the greenest network for our customers,” said O2 CEO Mark Evans.

“Every office, every store, every mast. We will get the changes done to be a Net Zero Business by 2025.

“Mobile can play a pivotal role to make our country more sustainable. From smart metering to smarter working. O2 will work with suppliers, partners and customers to ensure that this industry plays its part in delivering a greener country for us all.”

O2 has joined a string of companies in recent months that have made green commitments in efforts to reduce their negative impact on the environment.

Amazon, for example, has committed to becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2040, while Google achieved its 100% renewable energy goal in April 2018.

The phrase ‘net zero’ is different from ‘zero carbon’, however, in that emissions are still produced by a ‘net zero’ company, but are offset using technology like carbon capture and storage, and certified greenhouse gas removal.

Microsoft has gone far further than the rest of the pack in its recent commitment to become a ‘carbon negative’ company by 2030, planning to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it contributes.

O2 plans on achieving net-zero status by switching third-party landlords that support the O2 network over to renewable energy while creating technical and energy transition tools across its business where appropriate.

The firm will also work with the wider Telefonica Group to reduce supply chain emissions, as well as encourage suppliers to raise their efforts to reduce emissions. There are, however, no concrete steps as to how the company will achieve this.

Progress against both these ambitions are set to be reported on an annual basis and will be independently assessed.

With the rollout of 5G networks underway, meanwhile, building out the infrastructure will undoubtedly contribute to a company’s carbon footprint. Research published in October last year, however, suggests that the rollout of 5G technology could reduce global carbon emissions by half a billion tonnes.

Do you know what your personal data footprint is? At the time of writing, I’ve got 16GB of data stored in my main Google account, 7GB in a secondary account and 12GB in my Dropbox. My external hard drive, largely occupied by my digital photo collection, has 1.6TB of data backed up to a Livedrive account. That’s not to mention all the photos I’ve uploaded to sharing sites such as Flickr, 500px and Amazon Photos over the years. I’ve largely abandoned Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and other accounts with who knows how much data sitting in them. In short, I don’t know what my data footprint is, but it’s well into the terabytes.

How much of that data do I actually need? How many of those files have I even accessed once in the past five years? It would be a very small proportion – certainly less than 10%. That photo collection, for example, includes all the RAW images from shoots, photos that might or might not be good enough to become a final edit. If I’m taking photos of an awards ceremony, I’ll shoot up to a dozen images of the same group getting an award, so I can be reasonably sure of getting one where nobody is blinking. All of those are kept, just in case, and I never get around to deleting the files I don’t need because… well, life’s too short.

We’ve been lured into building data mountains as a consequence of ever-improving storage technologies and free or cheap cloud storage. Every time I buy a new hard disk to house that overweight photo collection, it’s at twice the capacity of the old one for roughly the same price, letting me put off that clearout for another couple of years. When Gmail first launched, its whole pitch was “never delete an email again” because it was offering so much free storage. And the fact that I can backup my entire photo collection on Livedrive for a fiver a month means there’s little financial incentive for me to spend hours and hours deleting the files I don’t need. There’s no way of writing this without sounding like an entitled you-know-what, but in the time it would take me to clear the cruft from my photo collection I could earn more than the £60 per year it costs me in storage.

But, of course, all that wasted online storage comes at a much greater cost than merely the cash being dinged out of my bank account. All of that unnecessary data has to be stored and then backed up (potentially multiple times) on the cloud provider’s servers.

Take Google. The company has 19 different data centres dotted around the planet, according to its website. The company is a tad more reticent about giving out precise details of the size of these facilities, but you can see from the photo gallery that they’re enormous – factories the size of several football fields (my go-to point of reference), in many cases.

Google claims that in 2018, it purchased “100% renewable energy to match our annual electricity consumption for global operations”, and I’ve no reason to disbelieve that stat. But even leaving aside the sheer volume of energy required to maintain all that unnecessary data, there’s the physical server hardware, often made from rare minerals. And what happens to all that kit when it reaches end of life?

The problem is exacerbated by Google and others making it difficult to clear out the stuff you don’t need. Why are there no tools in Gmail that let you delete messages that haven’t been accessed in, say, the past two years? Why, when my Google Drive is warning me that I’m running out of free storage – and, by the way, would I like to pay for a hundred extra gigabytes? – are the tools that let you identify the space-hogs in your Drive tucked away in a settings menu? I’ve answered my own question there.

The same accusations could be aimed at Microsoft with Windows, Apple with macOS, Adobe with Lightroom, and so on. Nobody is giving any serious thought to helping people clear their data detritus. They’re complicit in the creation of huge data mountains, most of which wouldn’t be missed. And if I’m gathering terabytes of unnecessary data as an individual, imagine just how much is piling up inside companies, where compliance regulations and the threat of legal action over missing data trails mean almost everything is kept.

It’s not as serious as the plastic swilling around our oceans or the enormous piles of landfill, but it’s much easier to solve than either of those problems, too. My hope for this new decade is that tech firms start taking this problem seriously.

At its first annual Sustainability Summit, hardware giant HP set several goals it hopes will see it use more recycled hardware in its supply chain.

Talking about the concept of a circular economy, in which new products use as few fresh raw materials as possible, Judy Glazer, global head of sustainability and product compliance, said: "While it's quite a familiar concept in some ways, with impressive potential returns for the global economy, it's not easy to do - if it were, we would already see it in action."

"We really need to focus on practical ways to move from circular economy concepts to circular economy reality," Glazer continued, "because I believe we can do that and we are seeing success in finding practical and scalable, long-term ways to implement circular economy concepts in our business. I think there's a real benefit for our customers for our business and for society at large."

Circular economy refers to the concept of reusing what would once have been considered 'consumables' - toner cartridges, for example - to reduce waste. This is in contrast to the the 'linear' model of consumption, described by HP's UK & Ireland MD, George Brasher, as "take, make, consume and dispose". It also incorporates other elements of corporate social responsibility, such as using recycled materials in the initial production of plastic components.

"The circular economy is regenerative by intention - you have to plan for it - and we're using this so that we can create operations that continually recover and reuse materials," said Brasher. "It allows you to decouple growth from the reliance on increasingly scarce raw materials, which benefits the environment. We can also help our customers reduce cost by gaining more value from each raw material."

Asked by IT Pro if a fully closed-loop system will ever be possible, Glazer said the circular economy "is as an organising principle that can help us enhance our business and increase the sustainability performance of our business".

"It's a journey, more than an end point and one that can benefit society," she added.

Markus Laubscher, director of sustainability at Philips, one HP's partners, also told IT Pro: "So far, it's the only model that holds the potential. Will it be ever 100% circular? Well, history will show - I'm not sure.

"It depends a lot on the manufacturers, but also on the technologies and how far can you design them, ultimately, in such a way that everything can be reused. For now, there will be a lot of situations where there might remain some consumable elements that you have difficulty in bringing back, but it's a great area for innovation to get those elements also under control."

The relationship between technology and the environment is rarely perceived as harmonious. For quite some time, it's been argued that technology does more harm than good for the planet, whether it be the destruction of forests for the creation if cities or the extraction of fossil fuels to power our cars, homes, and the like. Such consequences often prompt various conservation and sustainability efforts.

As these efforts are typically responses to technology's harmful impacts, we tend to view it as environmentally damaging. Our negative connotations, however, often get in the way of us understanding the various ways certain technologies can actually improve our planetand how they already have.

Internet of Things

In 2014, HydroPoint Data Systems used an Internet of Things (IoT) approach to assist water conservation efforts. The company formulated a machine-to-machine (M2M) solution that would connect irrigation control points and sensors to the system it used for analysing climate and determining water needs.

Each control and sensor had its own SIM card, so each could be individually contacted for control and data collection. AT&T provided the company with the wireless network, customised network, and self-service management program necessary for the solution's success.

Detailed maps were generated at the beginning of each project, including information about soil, terrain, and locations of the controls, which were identified by the controls' SIM cards, valves, and water meters. Information obtained from these maps provided property managers with information they often hadn't seen before.

According to a case study put out by AT&T, HydroPoint's solution not only saved customers $137 million in expenses, but also 15 billion gallons of water that year alone.

"We used to say our system is all about putting the right amount of water at the right place at the right time," said HydroPoint CEO, Chris Spain. "Now it's about getting the right data to the right person at the right time."

HydroPoint isn't the only company using the IoT as a response to water conservation, either.

IBM recently announced a collaborative project with Dublin City University's Water Institute that aims to conserve natural resources and address environmental management issues, including water quality in both marine and freshwater environments.

By using DCU sensors equipped with IBM IoT technologies, researchers are able to discover trends or early detections of changes in the environment that are essential for both public health and safety and remediation efforts.

Although this project is currently only being tested in one lake in the United States, it highlights the fact that big-name technology companies are stepping up to play a role in conservation and sustainability efforts.

Big Data analytics

Organisations use Big Data analytics to uncover trends and patterns that would assist in making decisions beneficial for business. Conservation and sustainability groups have been using Big Data analytics for this exact same reason, but to benefit the environment.

In 2013, Hewlett-Packard (as was) teamed up with Conservation International to create HP Earth Insights: a collaborative program using HP's Big Data solutions to create an early warning system for endangered species in tropical ecosystems.

The program used climate sensors and camera traps to collect and analyse data related to species, vegetation, temperature, humidity and more. HP's Big Data solutions allowed the collected data to be analysed nine times faster than before.

By September 2014, HP Earth Insights managed more than 3TB of biodiversity information. As a result, the program was able to detected which populations were being threatened. For example, results found that 33 of the 275 monitored species had significantly decreased in population.

The information collected by the program was not only shared with scientists, but also made public so more people and organisations could access it. This way, threats could be responded to as soon as they emerged, rather than after the damage had been done.

"It's time that we have the power of Big Data and the power of monitoring to help us actually make a better world," said Dr Jorge Ahumada, executive director of the TEAM Network, in a video put out by HP.

Big Data analytics are also being used in an attempt to revolutionise conservation management globally.

Vulcan, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's private philanthropic company, has been developing technologies for various projects aimed at aiding wildlife conservation efforts over the past decade.

One of the company's most notable projects is the Great Elephant Census, which was a collaborative effort led by Elephants Without Borders, a charitable organisation dedicated to conserving wildlife resources. Between 2007 and 2014, the initiative worked to accurately monitor and determine African savanna elephant populations.

As much of the data was collected by flying over various African regions, Vulcan developed a flight data logger tool. This system allowed census data to be counted, stored, visualised, and shared. Without the use of this Big Data technology, it would have taken much longer and been more inefficient to collect and interpret such an extensive amount of data.

Vulcan has also recently developed the Domain Awareness System (DAS) to assist anti-poaching organisations. DAS works as an interactive map-based management system that uses GPS, camera traps, and more to monitor animals in protected areas. By integrating data from technology used in these protected areas, the system is able to alert rangers when a threat is detected.

The company has also been designing and developing technologies aimed at improving ocean conservation and marine life management.

Artificial intelligence

Although artificial intelligence hasn't been as prominent as IoT or Big Data analytics in supporting conservation efforts, it has been gaining some ground recently.

Earlier this year, biological anthropologist Rachel Jacobs and her colleague, Stacey Tecot, came up with an idea to identify and track endangered lemur populations in a noninvasive way: using facial recognition technology.

Jacobs and Tecot teamed up with Anil Jain, who teaches biometrics at Michigan State University, and his students to come up with a solution. Jain and his students collected hundreds of photographs taken by Jacobs and Tecot and put them through facial-recognition software. As a result, the system was able to identify each individual lemur and a new computer-assisted recognition system was born.

The system, known as LemurFaceID, will ultimately help to build a database that allows for long-term research on endangered lemur populations.

"The ability to consistently study individuals over long periods of time, as well as integrate data across different studies, are some of the challenges we face when studying wild animal populations," Jacobs explained.

The scientists behind the project hope that this method of tracking will change how researchers track species in the future.

Other conservation groups, such as those tackling the issues of illegal fishing or poaching, have also been considering ways to incorporate artificial intelligence into enhancing their efforts.

With global biodiversity succumbing to a speedy decline, conservation and sustainability efforts are arguably more important than ever. While it's easy for us to simply blame technology as a major cause of this, it's essential that we shift our focus towards a solution instead of remaining stuck on the problem. Although technology has clearly played its part in damaging the environment, we should recognise all it can do and has been doing to repair it.

Main image credit: Bigstock

There's no denying that the world faces a plethora of difficult challenges, from poverty to terrorism. One of the most pervasive, however, is pollution. Over the past few decades, the world has become infested with waste, gases and substances that pose a grave risk to life and this planet.

According to Pure Earth, toxic pollution affects more than 200 million people worldwide, and millions of people die annually as a result of this. The fact is, pollution of this kind is entirely manmade. Industrialisation has seen the world become increasingly less green, and there's been a lack of response from governments and other important decision-makers.

That said, more and more people are identifying the threats posed here. You only have to look at 2015 Paris Agreement, which was signed by more than 190 countries to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, there's still a long way to go, and there's a general consensus that businesses should do more to see change made.

The technology industry has prestige in economies all across the globe, responsible for a large chunk of the world's manufacturing efforts and it's beginning to be proactive towards the topic of pollution. Tech giants like Google and Apple have already made stark commitments to become more environmentally friendly, and many other firms are also looking to kickstart change.

Greener tech giants

Over the years, many of the world's biggest tech companies have come under scrutiny for the negative impact they're having on the environment. Apple happens to be one of them. In 2011, Chinese environmental groups accused the firm of working with environmentally unfriendly manufacturers which were disposing of harmful pollutants inappropriately.

Apple's response was predictable, with it claiming that these accusations were untrue at the time. Since then,though, it's begun to change the way it manufactures goods in a bid to become a greener company. In 2015, it launched a programme to help partners reduce their energy use, power their facilities using renewable power sources and build more environmentally conscious products.

Many of the initiatives Apple has announced since then have been focused on China, mainly because its products are manufactured there. The company's already building solar facilities in the country capable of generating a combined 200 megawatts of energy, including a 170-megawatt facility in Mongolia. According to the firm, these actions will help it offset its manufacturing emissions and in the foreseeable future, it hopes to be running off 100% renewable energy.

Google has made similar commitments. In December 2016, the search giant announced plans for its data centres and offices to be powered by renewable energy from 2017. It's already the world's biggest corporate purchaser of renewable energy, with more than 40% of its power coming from green resources.

Turning to science

There's increasing pressure on companies to do more to help tackle climate change, and IT services and consulting company Capgemini is one example of the companies rising to this challenge. Its UK operation recently announced a new science-based target to cut carbon emissions by 20% per employee by 2020, growing to 40% by 2030.

Capgemini UK has become the first IT services provider to publish an actionable report backed by leading scientists and it's one of only 28 worldwide companies to have targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative. The latter is an organisation that works with companies to set emission reduction targets that coincide with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to keep temperatures below the 2C threshold.

James Robey, global head of corporate sustainability at Capgemini, says sustainability is an important part of the company and that it's managed to cut carbon emissions by 21 per cent since 2008. However, he thinks the company can do a lot more. "As a global technology, consulting and outsourcing services company, Capgemini is committed to enabling a positive future for all," he tells IT Pro.

"Our Positive Planet programme forms part of this commitment, aiming to reduce our environmental impact, while working to enable our clients, suppliers and people to do the same. We've reduced carbon emissions by 21% since 2008, a figure we aim to cut by a further 20% by 2020, focusing on reducing our travel emissions and energy use."

Capgemini isn't just making big claims for marketing purposes. It's actually out there pushing for change. For instance, it's helped set up an initiative to promote sustainability worldwide and it owns one of the world's most sustainable data centres. "Our greatest opportunity for sustainability lies in the digital solutions we deliver to our clients through the development of new technologies. We're a founding member of the Net Positive group and have committed to reducing three times as much carbon emissions in our ecosystem as we generate through our own operations," adds Robey.

"Our Merlin data centre, for example, is one illustration of the innovations we have employed. It's recognised as one of the most sustainable in the world, powered by renewable energy and constructed on a brownfield site with 95% recyclable materials. Projects such as this and TravelWell, our award winning holistic approach to reducing travel emissions, demonstrate our commitment to addressing sustainability issues for our clients and business."

Giving tech a new lease of life

Manufacturing electrical items isn't only an expensive process, but it can also have a negative impact on the environment and, of course, devices only last for so long; once a piece of tech has reached the end of its life, it's normally rendered useless and sent to the landfill. That's never a good thing, but 3 Step IT UK is looking to make things right.

The company is supporting the circular economy - an industrial concept that promotes sustainable resource productivity - through IT lifestyle management. Instead of seeing devices sent to landfill, it refurbishes them so they have a new lease of life. This initiative was recently commended by Business Green as IT Project of the Year.

Jason Skidmore, CEO of the firm, believes that all tech can be refurbished or used as parts for new products. "To manufacture just one computer and monitor takes roughly 530lb (240kg) of fossil fuel, 48lb (21.8kg) of chemicals, and 1.5 tonnes of water. Despite this resource hungry process, the United Nations estimate that we discard 20-50 million metric tonnes of e-waste every year," he explains.

"While there is no doubt that more needs to be done to recycle IT hardware responsibly, it's also vital that we extract as much value as possible before sending equipment to its grave. 3 Step IT is a firm believer that one man's trash, is another man's gold and its business model is designed to ensure that IT equipment remains in circulation for as long as it's useful."

The company has so far refurbished more than 300,000 devices and it hopes to continue on this journey over the next few years. "By refurbishing and remarketing over 95% of the devices that its clients return, it ensures that equipment is reused, rather than recycled. In 2016, 3 Step IT handled 360,000 devices and its programme was highly commended by BusinessGreen in the 'IT Project of the Year' category," he continues.

Technology plays a huge role in modern society and life would probably feel odd without devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers. But the fact is, as an industry, technology has been somewhat unsustainable in the past. Luckily, companies are beginning to see the threats posed by pollution and are putting mechanisms in place to help create a greener planet.

A consortium of tech magnates led by Bill Gates is investing $1 billion (800 million) in a venture capital fund backing green energy sources, in order to stave off global warming.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures is also supported by Sir Richard Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Alibaba boss Jack Ma, and will focus on long-term investments rather than short-term profits. The group's capital will reportedly be invested over the next 20 years.

The group will look at four criteria when examining potential investments: whether they can attract additional sources of capital, whether they have an existing scientific proof-of-concept, whether they need the firm's expertise, and whether they have the capacity to reduce emissions by at least half a gigaton.

The fund's investors have a collected wealth of 135 billion, and many have previously invested in, or donated to, environmentally-friendly projects. Gates in particular has been famed for his charitable efforts since ceding control of Microsoft in 2000.

"Our goal is to build companies that will help deliver the next generation of reliable, affordable, and emissions-free energy to the world," he said. "I am honored to work along with these investors to build on the powerful foundation of public investment in basic research."

The new initiative marks the first official act of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of 28 environmentally-conscious investors formed at last year's Paris climate talks.

Notably missing from the group is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In addition to the electric car company, Musk also heads up renewable energy company Solar City and is one of the most prominent and active environmentalists in Silicon Valley.\

Picture courtesy of The Henry Ford/Michelle Andonian

With shiny new devices appearing semmingly almost every ther day, our old mobile phones are getting chucked aside more frequently. Indeed, some 77 million phones are lying around unused in the UK, enough to pollute over three trillion litres of water, or 1 million Olympic swimming pools.

Instead of throwing them into pollutant landfills, they can be easily reused and recycled. Up to 80% of a mobile phone can be recycled -- metals and plastics can be recovered and valuable components, such as memory and circuit boards, can be reused.

But if you loathe the idea of losing an investment, you could make back some of the money locked inside an old handset. A drawer full of old mobiles could be your own personal goldmine.

To make any money though, it will need to be in a good working condition, still have the charger, and relatively new to the market, as it will typically be refurbished and resold in developing countries.

If you've just bought the latest iPhone to replace your old dead brick, you're unlikely to make any money from it -- but you could still earn some funding for a charity.

So gather up your old phones, or better yet, hold a handset amnesty and round up those belonging to friends and family, while you're at it.

But no matter what method of disposal you choose, remember to clear any personal details first you don't need the new owners dropping you a text.

Sell it

If your mobile phone still works and is new enough to be in demand, you can always chuck it up on eBay. There are rules against selling a phone that's still locked into contract, however, so be sure you're not breaking any laws.

But if you're not up for the hassle of online auction houses, there are other ways. Websites such as FoneBank, Envirophone and Mobile Phone Xchange all offer cash for your old phones and some good cash too, up to 150 on some sites, if it's a high-end phone.

On Envirophone, a Nokia N95 would return 139.94, but many phones aren't worth more than a few quid.

Sell it for food

If you can't be bothered dealing with such middle-men, just head to Tesco and trade it for food. The supermarket giant which also has its own mobile service has a handset recycling service. Like the aforementioned trade-in sites, you get a different amount of money depending on the handset you have, but you're paid in vouchers for the store or airtime on their network and you get Tesco GreenClub points, too.

A Nokia N95 would come out to 145 in vouchers, plus 300 points. That's a lot of budget ready meals, that is.

Donate it

Pick the charity of your choice anyone from Oxfam to schools take phones for recycling, keeping the cash they make from reselling or recycling the gadget to fund their good work. If you're not sure who to send it to, Recycle Your Mobile and Recycle Appeal will handle the work for you.

Many charities will take the phone even if it no longer works, as they forward them on to companies which strip them for parts and materials. And, many take them via freepost, so you don't need to pay a thing.

Return it

If you're not bothered about making money or picking a charity, just take it back from whence it came: the shop. Most retailers run recycling schemes and donate some proceeds to charity. If your phone is too old or damaged to make any cash out of, this is one easy way to get rid of it.

Carphone Warehouse will take phones in its stores or you can request an envelope via its website to ship it. Carphone will recycle the handset and donate 10 to its own charity for every phone received.

Re-gift it

In these dire, dire economic times, Christmas is probably going to suck. If you've splurged on a shiny new handset for yourself and are left with no cash to shop for your friends and family, just re-gift your old phone.

Okay, that sounds cheap, but with a little effort, it could be personal.

Just chuck some music on it, take a few family photos, add your phone number into the contacts and give it to your not-so-tech savvy grandmother she'll either thinks its sweet or really, really cheap. But make sure you take the drunken pics off it and add the number into your new phone so you can dodge her calls if you need to

Apple is continuing on its quest to embrace renewable sources of energy by announcing a $850 million investment in the development of a new Calfornia-based solar farm.

The tech giant has agreed to pay green energy experts First Solar, who will operate the site in California, as part of a 25-year power purchase agreement.

Apple CEO Tim Cook fleshed out details of the deal during a talk at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference yesterday, revealing the solar energy will be used to power some of its retail sites and datacentres.

"We at Apple know climate change is real. The time for talk is past and the time for action is now," he said, according to a report on MacRumours.

"We're partnering with First Solar to build a new 1,300 acre solar farm in Monterey, California. Enough renewable energy for all of our Apple Campus 2, every other office we have in California, all 52 Apple retail stores in California, and our datacentre in Newark, California.

"It's the right thing to do both socially and financially," he added.

The solar farm's construction is due to start in the middle of this year, and is on course for completion before the end of 2016.

The deal has also been hailed as the largest of its kind to centre on the provision of clean energy to a commercial end user, and has won the backing of environmental campaigners Greenpeace.

Gary Cook, senior IT sector analyst at Greenpeace, said news of the deal further proves that Apple is certainly not all talk and no action when it comes to embracing renewable power.

"It's one thing to talk about being 100 per cent renewably powered, but it's quite another thing to make good on that commitment with the incredible speed and integrity that Apple has shown in the past two years.

"Apple still has work to do to reduce its environmental footprint, but other Fortune 500 CEOs would be well served to make a study of Tim Cook, whose actions show that he intends to take Apple full-speed ahead toward renewable energy with the urgency that our climate crisis demands."

News of the deal coincides with the announcement that Apple's market value now stands at $711 billion, making it the first US company in history to achieve a market cap of more than $700 billion at close of trading on Wall Street.

Inside the enterprise: Everyone in IT loves personal gadgets. We're even fonder of them in the holiday season, when personal devices from smartphones to tablets and laptops help to free knowledge workers from their desks.

Instead, they can set up shop in France, Tuscany, or almost anywhere where there is power, and bandwidth. The idea, or the ideal at least, is that you can go away more often, and stay away for longer, and still keep in touch.

But those two requirements, power and bandwidth, also demonstrate the downside of personal technology's growth. Each and every portable device needs power.

Of course, they use less power than a desktop workstation or a high-end laptop, but the power demands from personal technology are already significant.

Although the amount of power used by each single device is small, we tend to have several of them. In a business context, CIOs often complain that staff issued with a tablet or a smartphone don't usually give up their laptops in return. The result is more devices, and more power use.

To put this in context, analyst firm Juniper Research predicts mobile device chargers will generate more than 13 megatonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e).

And it is part of a wider trend for us to use more power for technology. Previous industry reports have suggested that IT now accounts for 10 per cent of worldwide energy use, though it remains hard to find accurate and up to date figures for IT energy use and CO2 emissions.

Juniper's research, meanwhile, suggests that a large proportion of mobile device power consumption comes from "dirty" supplies, mostly coal. Coal-fired electricity grids in Asia will produce half the 2019 levels of emissions, equivalent to the emissions from 1.1m cars.

The long-term solution is to move to greener power sources, in Asia and closer to home. But in the short term, there are two steps that need to be taken, by industry and by consumers.

IHS Technology, another research firm, sees continued growth in demand for both mobile phone and tablet chargers up to 2018, although demand for power supplies for laptops will fall. And new chargers are, at least, more efficient than the models shipped with older phones. Nokia, for example, did a considerable amount of work on creating "zero load" chargers that use little or no power when they are plugged in to the wall, but not charging a device.

Not all chargers are that efficient, though, and aftermarket power adapters may well be less efficient than own brand units, a significant factor as manufacturers are starting to sell phones, in particular, without bundled chargers.

But the surest way to reduce power use from mobile devices is to unplug the chargers when they're not being used.

It's worth spending a few minutes to check for stray chargers under the desk, before packing for this summer's holidays.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT Pro.