Features

The electronic equipment that we use on a daily basis accounts for around 2% of global CO₂ emissions and is on a par with aviation. That industry is under increasing scrutiny to green up its act, but what of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector?

In the first move of this kind, the UK Government recently pledged to make its ICT energy consumption carbon neutral within four years. Its plans cover three key areas: switching off computers when not in use, reusing computer equipment and running data centres and servers at maximum efficiency.

Environmental groups and NGOs have welcomed the move, but have cautioned that the whole lifecycle of ICT equipment must be scrutinised.

“It is important to develop an effective understanding of IT energy use and best practice to improve efficiency,” comments Bob Harvey of the British Computer Society.

Louise Richards, CEO of Computer Aid International – a charity that specialises in the reuse of ICT equipment in the developing world – says that switching equipment off overnight is a good start, but that it will take much more than this to make any real difference to the energy efficiency of computers.

The problem with computers

The problem with computers is that most of the energy used in their lifetime is consumed during manufacture, according to research by Ruediger Kuehr and Eric D. Williams.

“Computers are peculiar and distinct from other electrical goods, where around 75% of energy usage occurs when they are in use in our homes and offices,” says Tony Roberts, founder and director of development at Computer Aid. “For computers, the inverse is true – 75% of their total energy usage comes during production because of their complex manufacturing process. By the time we switch on a computer for the first time, 75% of the environmental impact that it is going to have has already happened.”

Over the course of its entire lifetime, a typical PC consumes ten times its own weight in fossil fuels. Add to that the fact that a PC and a CRT monitor, which weigh around 25 kg, require around 2.5 metric tons of raw materials, and you get some idea of the problem to be tackled.

Switching off

Given the 75% problem with computers, is the Government’s pledge to turn off computers when not in use worthwhile? Yes it is, says Roberts.

“It is very important to turn off computers when not in use, but this only addresses 25% of the problem. To address the 75% problem we need to do something else and it’s the manufacturers – rather than the consumers – that have the power to make the necessary changes.”

In this respect, the ICT sector is very different from other consumer goods – such as fridges, freezers, washing machines, etc. – where individual consumers have the power to make energy savings by switching appliances off. To make computers more energy efficient across their entire lifetime requires action by manufacturers.

“What we need to happen is for manufacturers to redesign computers and the manufacturing process from the bottom up with energy efficiency and conservation in mind,” says Roberts. “But this is a big ask.”

Purchasing power

Governments – as one of the largest single purchasers of ICT equipment – can have an impact here as they are in a position to put pressure on ICT manufacturers to reduce the environmental impact of their products across the lifecycle.

“The Government is one of the few organisations that have the ability to bring about real change, which can be achieved by using its massive procurement leverage to reward those producers who have the ‘greenest’ manufacturing and production processes,” says Richards.

While there is an environmental caveat in the Government’s ICT procurement guidelines, this could go much further, suggests Roberts.

“What we need is increasingly sophisticated procurement guidelines that also cover the environmental cost during manufacture in terms of energy usage, processes that are less materials intensive and increased use of recyclable materials,” he says.

If governments and other volume purchasers of ICT equipment took a stance and made reuse a requirement or had targets for reuse against which progress was measured – even if only it their own procurement cycles – this would force manufacturers and producers to think seriously about the issue.

Reuse and recycle

Not only could ICT manufacturers reduce the energy usage during production processes, they could also make it easier to extend the lifetime of PCs through reuse and recycling.

“Given the high environmental cost of PC production it is imperative to end the short lifecycle and wasteful ‘replace and dump’ culture,” says Richards.

Currently, between two and five million computers become obsolete every year in the UK alone. Although there is legislation that requires manufacturers and producers to take responsibility for what happens to their products at the end of their lives – the European Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive – no targets have been set for reuse. In addition, the legislation only covers personal use equipment and, despite hints from Government, has not been rolled out to cover businesses as well.

“What is important is that the WEEE legislation does recommend reuse over recycling,” says Roberts.

According to Kuehr and Williams, it is 20 times better to reuse a PC than to recycle it in terms of recovering the environmental costs. What is needed, however, is for manufacturers to include an upgrade path in PCs so that its lifetime in its original occupation can be extended as far as possible and after that, when it is replaced, it can be donated to social reuse programmes.

“PCs should be built for longevity not obsolescence,” says Roberts. “These options can double the productive life of a computer.”

Computers could also be made to disassemble easily so that they can be readily recycled – something that is not currently done at all.

“A great deal of IT equipment is unnecessarily wasted and thrown away when it is functional and could still be used effectively by groups with more modest processing requirements,” says Richards.

It could be argued that donating older equipment to developing nations is merely transferring the problem and saddling these countries with a legacy of inefficient, energy-hungry ICT equipment.

In the short term, Computer Aid is confident that the educational, social and economic advantages of gaining access to computers outweighs the negatives. But the charity has moved from CRT to TFT monitors to reduce energy usage and is investigating the use of more energy-efficient laptops.

In the longer term, the charity has been working with ZDnet to research low-power computing options for the developing world.

“The big unanswered question here is, if manufacturers can produce a PC that run on only 10-20 W (instead of 150-200 W for a desktop and CRT or 70-80 W for a laptop), why aren’t we all using them?” says Roberts. “If the five billion PCs in use around the world were all this energy efficient, we would be talking about massive energy savings.”

Cordelia Sealy

For further information:

Computer Aid International is a charity that supplies professionally refurbished computers to developing countries. Since it was founded in 1998, Computer Aid has provided over 125,000 PCs to schools and not-for-profit organisations in more than 100 developing countries.
www.computeraid.org
Kuehr, R., and Williams, E. D. (Eds.) Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their Impacts. (2007) Springer, ISBN: 978-1-4020-1680-6
www.weeeman.org/
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/newsroom/news_releases/2008/080717_green.aspx
www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20274
www.energyefficiencynews.com/i/498/