Posts Tagged ‘green’

Tuesday 6th July 2010 may have gone unnoticed by many people as just another Tuesday (apologies to those for whom it’s a major anniversary!), but for the development of Digital Britain it was something of a milestone.

This date is when it became officially impossible to buy a new analogue TV set from a UK retailer. With the final analogue TV switch-off scheduled for 2012, clearly the change had to come some time and apparently last month (June) no sale of an analogue TV took place anywhere in the UK. (more…)

First, an introduction, I am Professor in Mobile and Converging Technologies. I have spent much of my academic career researching and teaching computer networks and performance measurement. I go along with Lord Kelvin’s view that measuring anything adds to our knowledge about that thing, and therefore my work aims to produce data and information to add to our awareness of systems and their behaviour.

About 5 years ago, these interests and my work in computer network management developed into a belief that one of the “things” we should start to measure was the energy consumption of our computer systems. From initial readings of books like Kuehr & Williams, Computers and the Environment, (published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003) I developed a view that this should form part of our academic curriculum. Late in 2005, I presented an internal seminar to colleagues at the University on the subject. The conclusion of which was “we should create a course or part of a course on this subject.”

We then ran a number of projects as part of our undergraduate courses, and 3 years later, in 2008, validated our MSc in Green Computing which accepted its first students in October 2009.

Alongside this, the projects have continued with undergraduate projects in low-cost low-energy Wireless LAN, Portable servers, thin client evaluation and an IT energy saving advisory team; with funded project developing both the wireless LAN and the thin client work; PhD work in cloud computing, network management in a power-saving network environment and efficiency of security for mobile devices. I have also worked on developing our Green IT strategy and undertaken consultancy on energy-saving IT matters. Other ideas will follow as they are developed.

In starting this blog, I hope to share the ideas and enthusiasm for the subject, and to widen the discussion about Green IT related matters.

Green IT is gaining momentum – but it is an area that is complicated by misinformation, tokenism (or ‘greenwashing’) from manufacturers/service providers and misperceptions among end users. At the moment the key driver for most organisations is cost saving, although the UK public sector has published carbon reduction targets for 2012 and 2020. Private sector enterprise now also has to make the choice between meeting carbon reduction targets or paying fines. (more…)

Green IT is gaining momentum, and already organisations are reporting a skills gap around areas such as the implementation of virtualisation and the building of a Green IT infrastructure. In response to the growing discussion facing Green IT, Old Broadcasting House hosted a Green IT mini conference on Monday 18th January. The day included guest speakers from Helen Harrop (Digital 20/20), Colin Coghill (formerly University of Leeds) and Leeds Met’s Innovation North Professor Colin Pattinson. The three main questions posed were, what does “green” really mean? Why be Green? How to be Green? Each was discussed in 15 minute presentations and a debate with the speaker panel. (more…)