Briefing: Green information technology (IT) infrastructure

Two per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions are caused by the current information technology (IT) hardware in use at present. This includes equipment such as PC servers, cooling, power supplies, networks, printers and disk storage. Global IT spending is projected to reach approximately US$2 trillion in 2010, with a compound growth rate in spending of over 6% (IDC, 2009). If left unchecked, then with the continued expansion in IT spending, which is being used to drive commerce and industry, carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase or even accelerate. This, coupled with large increases in the cost of the power to run all this hardware, has now created two major problems for all IT infrastructure users: how to convince customers (who increasingly demand green credentials from their engineering partners) that they are running a green IT operation, and more directly, particularly in the current economic climate, how to reduce the size of power bills.