Education Business

A greener approach to education ICT
A green ICT strategy needs an overall sustainability agenda, says Terry Street, green ICT procurement product manager, Socitm Consulting

ImageAll over the country, new schools are being built under the Building Schools for the Future initiative. Several of my colleagues advise LEAs on their BSF programmes, and they frequently comment on the irony that new schools typically have extensive air conditioning, necessary in part to carry away the heat generated by all the new computer equipment.
    
Education is changing fast, and one consequence is a potential increase in its carbon footprint, despite modern buildings being inherently more energy-efficient. So what can be done to minimise the environmental impact of increased ICT usage?
    
Of course, some people may say, why do anything? If the planet saving arguments can’t sway them, then perhaps they should consider the potential savings in energy costs, longer equipment life, improved services and, finally, the fact that funding will increasingly be linked to your green performance. Schools will come under pressure via the local authorities, and FE colleges will find capital spending limits linked to carbon reduction targets.

What can be done?
The most generally applicable green ICT initiatives are:

  • Introducing an environmental sustainability policy and strategy
  • Purchasing environmentally-friendly equipment
  • Server virtualisation, consolidation and utilisation 
  • Using alternative computing provision models such as thin client 
  • Creating more energy-efficient data centres and sharing these among institutions 
  • Improving power management including power-down policies 
  • Making buildings more ‘intelligent’
  • Minimising paper use 
  • Reducing travel and the environmental overhead of face-to-face meetings and examining the potential for staff and pupils to work remotely.
How big is the problem?
National and international targets for carbon reduction recognise ICT as potentially a major factor, since its carbon footprint is conservatively estimated as 35 per cent of public sector emissions and rising. It is rising for three reasons:

1. The demand for processing and storage of electronic information is rising, and this is being accelerated by more use of digital images and high-quality video, especially in education.

2. As the carbon reduction commitment takes effect other causes of carbon will reduce.

3. ICT has a key role to play in enabling carbon reductions in other areas such as flexible working/distance learning and reduced travel to meetings. The extended school initiative is bringing more activities into schools over longer hours, including holidays, and many of these are dependent on ICT.

What creates ICT’s carbon impact? There’s the initial carbon footprint of the manufacturing process. Then there’s the primary energy consumption of the ICT equipment in use. And finally there is the secondary impact of removing the heat generated by electronic equipment. Once upon a time computers were mainly deployed in a specialist area where the heating effect was localised and its removal straightforward. Nowadays computers and switches are found throughout the buildings; the heat is dispersed and more difficult to extract, making bigger demands on the whole environmental control system.
    
As well as desktop and other classroom and office equipment, there will be a network connecting it to various services including e-mail and internet access, learning resources, administration systems and information storage. These all require servers and storage networks with their own carbon impact which depends directly on desktop usage and contributes to the carbon footprint of the establishment, whether they are located on or off site.

Developing a Green ICT strategy
As a starting point, a Green ICT strategy needs to audit current energy consumption and chart ways of making ICT more energy efficient. It needs to lay down policy and track a programme of actions. It will need investment, but many initiatives can be self financed and energy savings can be clawed back to finance further investment.
    
The strategy needs to recognise the full lifecycle of ICT equipment: starting from the environmental impact of its manufacture, delivery and installation, right through its useful life (including repair and upgrade) and ending only with disposal, the recovery of recyclable materials and the safe removal of toxic elements (in line with WEEE, the EU directive on the disposal of waste electronic and electrical equipment).
    
Printing is a key area for improvement. Targets need to be set for reducing paper and ink consumption as well as energy consumption. It’s no longer acceptable to leave devices switched on all day, overnight and during holidays – but ‘switch it off’ campaigns can still help.
    
The green ICT strategy should also promote migrating from many small or personal print devices to more cost effective multifunction devices. These offer reduced power consumption when idle, double-sided printing and other paper-saving features.
    
Many education establishments have introduced charges for student printing and departmental printing budgets, with targets for year on year reductions. This has encouraged responses such as photography classes printing mainly contact sheets and reserving full size and high quality only for exhibition material. Similarly electronic (as opposed to hard copy) student records are becoming increasingly acceptable.

Moving forward
So how should an approach to green ICT be organised?
  • Establish a baseline by measuring and/or modelling current carbon footprint, taking into account all desktop equipment – PCs, screens, printers, scanners, white boards – and back office equipment such as servers and storage, plus the carbon footprint of ICT services bought-in.
  • Promote greener behaviour via an awareness campaign for staff and students, making sure staff set a good example. 
  • Review equipment procurement to ensure environmental factors are being used to select suppliers and in the specification and evaluation of products.
  • Take advice on migrating to lower energy desktop technology. Some manufacturers offer solutions designed for education which combine low energy usages, reduced downtime, and high levels of security and flexibility to support workstation sharing. Such devices promise lower heat and noise levels and contribute to a better working environment. 
  • Talk to the provider of external ICT services about what they are doing or can do to help reduce carbon impact; for example, data centres can sign up to the EU code of conduct. Datacentres can be benchmarked for their efficiency 
  • Ensure that ICT’s potential to reduce environmental impact is maximised wherever possible; for example, deploying distance learning via video conferencing or collaborative working; allowing self service on-line in place of paper forms; electronic ordering and payments rather than paper-based. 
  • Look for sources of advice and potential funding. For example, JISC has just launched a three-year programme of activity to support colleges and universities with their decision-making process in green and environmental technology.
My colleagues and I have a broad range of experience in the education sector (particularly BSF) and in green ICT generally as well as ICT strategy development. If you would like to discuss any aspect of reen ICT in an educational context, I would be pleased to hear from you.

For more information
Web: www.socitmconsulting.co.uk
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