What a load of drivel (Imagine a new global leader, www.computing.co.uk/2219896).

Demographers have been repeatedly and massively wrong about future population trends. If we cannot predict human numbers a few decades hence, what hope do we have of predicting the Earth's climate? Anyone who seriously believes we can predict the Earth's climate - and what impact humanity has on it - desperately needs to be kept away from sharp objects and matches.

And the only way we're going to get an 80 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 is by a forced de-urbanisation policy of the kind the Khmer Rouge carried out in 1970s Cambodia.

Finally, I would like to  repeat a question I've heard elsewhere - does our government propose to fix the world's climate before or after it's fixed the schools and hospitals?

Robert Sealey

Making IT green should be a key issue for many companies, given in part the fact that energy prices are rising at an eye-watering rate (Making IT green, freeform.computing.co.uk).

It is not just a case of ensuring you have a good recycling route for obsolete hardware, but also using
energy efficiently.

We are anticipating energy to be the third-largest expense of most businesses by the end of this year. Datacentre consolidation might be a great idea, but it is just the tip of the iceberg.

Energy saving could simply consist of nominating a member of staff to turn off the idle kit at the end of the working day.

Name withheld on request

Avoiding the issue is not the answer to the oil price rise (Surge in oil prices hits IT, www.computing.co.uk/2219448).

As energy costs rise inexorably, the need for a detailed view of where energy is being consumed becomes business-critical. This is relevant to IT, facilities and finance - they need to know where the energy is going.

Before you can identify opportunities to make savings and improve efficiencies, or to charge based on consumption, you need to measure what you are consuming  and establish benchmarks.

The fact that datacentre owners do not know the "true cost" and do not have the tools in place to do this
is a good reason to remedy that, not to keep a lid on it.

Philip Petersen

The price of oil and gas will continue to rise, and everyone will take a hit in the short term at least (Surge in oil prices hits IT, www.computing.co.uk/2219448).

Virtualisation can help reduce power consumption, but the savings are not enough to offset continuous rises over the coming years.

The obvious and only long-term solution is to invest in viable alternatives to oil and gas. However, with the UK government widely expected to miss the 20 per cent renewable target by 2020, the solution seems to be for industry to secure its own renewable sources.

Few companies are willing to sacrifice profits just to tell a nice environmental story. But with some economists predicting oil prices of $250 (£126) a barrel, investing in green power sources is starting to make business sense.

As energy prices in IT departments start hitting the bottom line, we are likely to see sustainable power move from the marketing office into the boardroom, and companies not looking into renewable energy sources now will be left behind.

James Carnie, eLinia

As an IT manager I receive constant requests for new PCs despite having nearly all Pentium 4-based machines.

I have found that reformatting and upgrading memory to 1GB or 2GB gives PCs that are about five years old a new lease of life.

Surely this is good for green IT, even if it does not give users the short-lived "wow" of having a new dual-core PC just opening Word documents.

K Paterson

Does it really matter how carbon emission reductions are achieved? Just because a scheme saves lots of money does not make it any less green, it just makes the IT department look stupid for
not doing it earlier (Is green technology losing its colour?).

In any case, as some recently quoted contracts and savings have indicated, it is unlikely that we will be able to reduce IT energy use in line with national emissions targets. IT can contribute most to non-IT energy reduction.

The real test will be when the impact of the Climate Change Bill starts to loom in a year's time, and companies start panicking when they realise what is required. Does it really matter if there is best practice or benchmarking yet? It needs to be done and you have to start somewhere.

The enemy at the moment is lack of knowledge and awareness, but as someone once wisely said: "Plans are nothing, but planning is everything."

Pete Foster

It is good to see Indian vendors looking at ways to offer innovation and green technologies (Innovative habits can improve data centre costs, Talking outsourcing blog, markkobayashihillary.computing.co.uk).

Many firms talk about innovations, and a lot of work has been done around productivity, but providing green technology has the potential to have a big impact.

There is a tremendous potential for Indian companies to use this in domestic markets in India as well, where the need for energy efficiency is more severe.

Mohit

Saying that “wind power is much more expensive than power from the grid” is not necessarily a sustainable argument (Big businesses must keep green promises, From the newsdesk blog, newsdesk.computing.co.uk).

Ford worked with Ecotricity to put up turbines in Dagenham in 2003, and the numbers indicate the project will pay for itself in about seven years – less if power costs rise.

Once the electricity generated has offset the capital costs and interest generated by building the windmills, further power generated is effectively free. Which is a lot cheaper than power from the grid.

Lem

John Loader's letter raises a crucial issue in pointing to the need for recycling facilities for electrical and electronic equipment in the developing world (Recycle paradox of charity IT, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

I am sure he would agree that the principle of producer responsibility for funding end-of-life recycling is just as valid in the emerging markets in Africa as here in the European Union.

This is why Computer Aid welcomes the recent announcement by HP that it will contribute hundreds of thousand of dollars to a new project to improve PC reuse and recycling in Africa.

Hundreds of thousands of new printers and computers produced by the major global brands are consumed in urban centres across Africa every year. All electronic and electrical equipment must be recycled responsibly at the end of its productive life - in whichever country.

Within Europe, producers who manufacture and profit from the sale of this equipment are legally responsible for the cost of end-of-life recycling. This responsibility surely extends to their African markets?

Computer Aid is a charitable organisation that assists developing countries to apply IT to poverty reduction and job creation. Our activities do not create any new PCs but they do deliver environmental benefits by extending productive life and social benefits through reuse in schools, universities and healthcare.

UK businesses donate their older PCs to us in the knowledge that a professionally refurbished PC will provide an additional three or four years' second-user life in organisations that could not otherwise afford to use PCs.

The grinding cycle of poverty and disadvantage cannot be broken unless poor countries have the technical means and skills base to develop their economies. In an increasingly global economy it is absolutely essential that graduates of African business schools, teacher training colleges and universities are IT-literate.

Computer Aid can provide many examples of the dramatic contribution PCs are making to help end the cycle of poverty in Africa. And when those PCs come to the end of their productive working life, Computer Aid is working with partners on recycling. In 2008 we hope to organise the recycling of as many as 10,000 PCs used by our African partners.

With support from producers we could go much further. We hope that increasing numbers of companies will follow the lead of HP and embrace the logic of supporting reuse and recycling in their emerging markets to create a fairer world.

Please donate your old PCs to Computer Aid and help us to make IT happen in Africa.

Tony Roberts
Computer Aid International

With respect to John Loader, his argument that old PCs sent to third-world countries will be dumped at the end of their life applies equally well to new PCs sent there as well (Recycle paradox of charity IT, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

As for energy, new and retired PCs use power in similar amounts anyway, and none will use power when switched off at the mains.

The problem is recycling of any equipment in third-world countries, and it is irrelevant whether it is originally new or old.

However, if perfectly usable out-of-date PCs can be  of benefit, they should be  refreshed and sent over.

D Forbes

Tom Young's article on data centre CO2 levels presents a hugely generalised view of the environmental impact of data centres (Data centres hike C02 levels). In many cases using the right kind of data centre can play a part in reducing emissions.

A well-designed medium-to-large data centre actually reduces CO2 emissions compared with running the same servers in a smaller data centre in an office environment because the infrastructure to support the servers can be made much more efficient in a larger, purpose-built facility.

One measure of efficiency is the ratio of total power used by the data centre divided by the power used by IT equipment. This energy efficiency ratio (EER) highlights how much power is used by air conditioning systems and losses in electrical systems.

It can vary from 1.5 to more than three, meaning the total power consumption of the data centre (and therefore CO2 emitted) is between 1.5 and three times that used by the IT equipment.

Well-designed data centres tend to run in the range of 1.5 to two, depending on the design specification and levels of redundancy in critical infrastructure.

Just by relocating IT equipment from a data centre with an EER of three to one with an EER of 1.5 effectively halves CO2 emissions.

Most third-party data centres use a billing mechanism that has a variable rate depending on power consumption. Some even provide real-time statistics of power consumption at a per-rack level.

Customers of these data centres see an easily identifiable cost for running their IT infrastructure rather than having it hidden in their own office costs.

Moreover, they can easily identify a cost saving if they switch to more efficient hardware or implement virtualisation of their server infrastructure.

As an industry we need to be focused on lowering CO2 emissions based on the useful work carried out by IT equipment. Rationalisation of hardware, more efficient hardware and virtualisation will all play a part in these reductions, as will more efficient data centres.

We must be wary of demonising data centres as a source of CO2 emissions, and instead look at the opportunities available to us by locating equipment in modern, purpose-built, efficient facilities. It is not how much power a data centre uses, but how much it saves.

Marcus Hopwood, IFL

The UK's WEEE regulations do not place specific recycling targets for business equipment on producers, based on the annual weight of products placed on the business market Ð this is only for household products (Do WEEE know enough? Sandra Smith's blog, sandrasmith.computing.co.uk).

Instead, producers simply have to arrange to pay for the collection and recycling of any affected business equipment. This is quite different from having a weight-based annual quota to achieve.

Sadly, this does not necessarily encourage manufacturers to promote responsible environmental policies such as WEEE recycling to their business clients.

What we really need is an educational campaign by the Environment Agency making businesses fully aware of their WEEE rights.

Keith Pryde

While I can see the logic of Tony Roberts' argument that old PCs should be sent to the poorer countries, there is a flaw in his argument (Give old PCs to developing world, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

In the UK, old PCs, like all electrical equipment, have to be recycled at the expense of the manufacturer and according to stringent environmental rules. Send a PC to the Third World and eventually it will fail and may well have to be dumped as the type of recycling available in the UK just won't be there.
Added to that, old PCs are energy-hungry and the places they are being sent to are energy-poor.

John Loader

Once again, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to produce affordable laptops for schoolchildren in the developing world, has announced a price hike (Are you doing your bit for the world?, Editor's diary, editor.computing.co.uk). The "$100 laptop" will now cost $188 when it finally goes into production. However, while the project's aims are admirable, it still hasn't got any customers.

Unfortunately, for the schoolchildren intended to receive the laptops, countries have to raise the massive amount of money required to order the laptops before production can start.

Shouldn't the IT industry be listening to Michael Dell, who pointed out at a press conference in July this year that the millions of functioning PCs that come out of circulation annually offer a much more realistic - and affordable - option for the world's poorest children?

The UK government is in agreement; the WEEE directive explicitly prioritises reuse over recycling. Yet Computer Aid, the world's biggest not-for-profit supplier of refurbished PCs to developing countries, faces a shortage of supply to meet the demand for thousands more reusable PCs to schools, colleges and hospitals in the developing world.

We have already shipped more than 95,000 PCs to help bridge the global digital divide. And these machines are making a significant difference to hundreds of thousands of lives.

As if that wasn't enough, reuse is also more environmentally responsible than recycling PCs, as a research project at the United Nations University in Tokyo has demonstrated. Professors Rudiger Kuerh and Eric Williams have shown that reusing a whole computer "is some 20 times more effective at saving lifecycle energy than recycling".

That is because the manufacture of PCs requires the consumption of more than 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels; 75 per cent of a PC's fossil fuel consumption happens before it is switched on. This is much higher than most electrical goods, which consume around 95 per cent of fossil fuels when in use.
For all these reasons, it is a terrible waste to recycle a computer straight off the corporate desktop when it is only three or four years old. That is why Computer Aid says: "Don't recycle - reuse!".

Tony Roberts
Computer Aid International

I have been giving consideration to lifecycle ownership of computer equipment following the setting up of an environment committee at my firm.

The article by the chief executive of Computer Aid International (Don't recycle your computer - reuse it instead), made lots of sense. But I get the feeling that we are moving the issue of landfill from a highly-regulated region to an area of the world that is already struggling with the effects of industrialisation and global warming. I agree that schools will be able to make use of what we throw out from business for at least a couple of years, but what do they do with the equipment when they have finished with it?

We are all obliged to follow the WEEE directive or risk punitive damages for our corporate paymasters. In Africa I fear that when these computers are no longer of any use, they will simply be left to rot and bleed into the Earth.Are companies taking their responsibilities beyond the deployment of these computers to Africa? Are they collecting the end-of-life equipment from this heavily-scarred continent then breaking them down to their composite components for recycling? This should be considered as part of the lifecycle of the computer.

Gavin Jones

So what’s the point of all this then? (HSBC plans a green future). Smoke and mirrors, a good example of green washing, corporate social responsibility? Maybe the bank should be looking more towards its investments and financial support of industry in China and India and other emerging global markets that are pumping billions of tonnes of toxic gas into the air. The damage through this causes so much more than a few corporate do-gooders trying to appeal to its Daily Mail-reading customer base. This is just a blatant and successful attempt at cashing in on the greedy Western guilt.

Jason Taylor, living in the mining districts of India

Google is installing a huge solar array that is composed of many panels (Green initiatives just a PR exercise, Newsdesk blog, newsdesk.computing.co.uk).

Multiple solar cells go into a solar panel and multiple panels are connected in series to make a solar array.

Also, while it might be amusing to see a wind turbine at a gas station, every step a company takes in spreading renewable energy should be appreciated.

If you are so keen to point out any ‘ironies’ in BP’s company, look at BP Alternative Energy. BP Solar employs 2,200 people and is expanding its production capacity fourfold. BP is one of the first of the ‘big oil’ companies to change and become a ‘big energy’ company. This change should be welcomed and encouraged in the energy industry, even if it just moves forward in tiny steps at a time.

Carter Lavin

Carbon dioxide does not cause climate change (IT initiatives at heart of HSBC’s green resolution). A change in the climate might be occurring as the climate on earth changes all the time and global change is caused by the Sun ­ a new Nasa finding. All life is carbon based, CO2 is part of our food chain, and it is not a pollutant. If climate change is caused by human activity, we would need to start eliminating life on the planet. This is absurd, so is the assertion that humans are causing climate change.

Dr Coles

I was alarmed to read criticism of tree planting to offset carbon emissions (Green initiatives just a PR exercise, Newsdesk blog, newsdesk.computing.co.uk). We must lead by example in our attitude towards protecting the environment and this involves encouraging and engaging in various initiatives, such as tree planting. It should not be discouraged and I don’t believe it has been discredited as an initiative to help reduce carbon emissions. It should, however, be used in conjunction with other carbon-reduction schemes.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the potential biological mitigation of tree planting will make up 100 Gigatonnes of carbon by 2050 ­ 10 to 20 per cent of projected carbon emissions. This is an important contribution to the future well-being of the environment. The heat energy that trees absorb is neither stored nor reflected; it is converted into carbohydrates, which the trees use for growth. This is why trees have such an important moderating influence on local climates.

Fabio Torlini
Rackspace

While one must applaud these moves by such large  organisations (HSBC plans a green future), I hope that the great technical efforts will be accompanied by some low-tech ones such as asking everyone who works in the office block on the cover of your 12 July issue to turn off the lights when they leave ­ if they’re ever allowed to go home in this 24-hour world.

Bob Irving

PR campaigns are where cynicism starts, and dangerous inaction results (Green initiatives just a PR exercise, Newsdesk blog).

Computer science has always been linked to making things faster, smaller and more efficient, so reducing the technology footprint in these respects is inevitable.

These footprints also correlate directly to a better bottom line. As long as green enables lower-impact consumerism, but consumerism all the same, and is not linked to green ethics, including sustainability, non-violence, and social justice, this kind of posturing will happen. It is hard to imagine how modern, successful companies will achieve this.

John Dumbrille

It was disappointing but sobering to read an article so riddled with scepticism (Green initiatives just a PR exercise, Newsdesk blog).

Cynics are quick to criticise the constant bombardment of environmental awareness campaigns. This does not mean they are not worth the effort or that the PR fluff (if that is what it is) motivates entire organisations to become more environmentally conscious.

People are willing to make small changes to their daily lives if they are given the right encouragement. Large companies, such as Google, have a duty, therefore, to lead the way, and if these
so-called ‘grand gestures’ encourage other companies and individuals to become greener, should this not be considered a good thing?

Whether it is the threat of competition or moral obligation, all companies’ green initiatives count for something, because you can’t do something that is green that is also not good for general IT deployments in terms of efficiency or speed. The monthly green IT web seminars hosted by Computing have become an important source of information for the industry.

It is easy to knock grand gestures aimed at travel when our own house is part of the polluting, unpalatable truth. Who could make bigger carbon cuts in the next five years, airlines or the IT industry? I think I know the answer so let us keep banging the drum.

Chris Gabriel

After his comments about carbon trading, Raymond McKerron (All just hot air?) may be interested in looking at the effects of sulphide emissions trading in the US in the 1970s, as detailed in Tim Harford’s book The Undercover Economist.

When the government asked industry to stop producing sulphide emissions they all said: ‘Oh, no, it’s all too expensive.’ So the government started selling permits at a figure a little below the industry estimates.

Only it didn’t sell any permits at this price ­ the actual trading price fell by hundreds of per cent, as it turned out the estimates were too high and industry invested in cutting emissions instead of buying permits to pollute.

The exercise was not one in creating a trading market, but rather in creating an economic situation which encouraged industry to stop undesirable behaviour.

If you judge the scheme in terms of trading it was an abject failure. In terms of preventing sulphide pollution it was an unmitigated success. Companies are selfish beasts, they need correct handling.

Richard Gardner

Isn’t global warming and carbon footprints just spin to pave the way for a new commodities market? (Tread carefully with carbon).

The production of carbon dioxide by industry, as a single factor, would take 300-350 million years to make sufficient difference to the atmosphere as to cause a realistic change in the world.

Climate change is a natural phenomenon which operates in 800 to 1,000 year cycles. Industry makes no significant effect upon these cycles.

But consider the City broker, who buys and sells commodities without ever seeing them, but who makes significant fortunes in the transactions. The advent of computers has brought this trading floor to new heights and carbon trading is just another get-rich scheme.

Raymond A McKerron

Businesses are responsible for 40 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions and must behave responsibly immediately if we are to make any progress in saving the planet from the effects of global warming (Tread carefully with carbon, Computing, 24 May).

Too many businesses are wasteful, particularly with their current and future energy requirements for buildings, lighting and technology. More than 19 per cent of electricity is wasted, and lighting accounts for 19 per cent of the worldwide demand, with the prospect of increasing to 80 per cent by 2030.
In addition, there are too many staff travelling to unnecessary meetings instead of holding video and telephone conferences. Making basic changes to working practices will contribute significantly to reducing carbon emissions as well as improving the competitiveness of businesses.

The urgent demands on business as a consequence of global warming are also a catalyst for changing wasteful and inefficient operations, which will benefit corporate competitiveness.

Professor Garry Hunt

Nick Jones writes that his TFT monitors use less than 1W when on standby (Turn out the lights to save energy, Letters, 17 May).

I would like to know how he measured the power of his TFT. We use a wide range of make and types of computer and TFT screens, and believe I can give more realistic typical power consumptions.

My results are: TFT 40W or on standby 7W; computer at 80-100W or on standby 10W; or a voice over IP phone 7W. A typical screen and phone uses about 24W on standby for 128 hours. That is about 3.1kWh per week on standby ­ so switch it off.

Peter Howell

I read with some disbelief your article: Industry must clean up its act. While I do not dispute that large amounts of energy are needlessly wasted by equipment being left on and poor power management, statements such as ‘turning off monitors at night has an immediate effect’ are quite simply not true.

Having recently tested our IT equipment, I can confirm that our TFT monitors draw less than 1W of energy when on standby. Compare this to the 100W which a light bulb uses (or even the 22W of an energy efficient bulb) and it becomes clear that turning lights off when out at lunch can have a far more significant effect than turning the monitor off overnight.

Furthermore, since some monitor models have small power adapters on them, turning them off on the front actually achieves nothing ­ it would be necessary to turn them off at the wall before any effect were noticed.

Nick Jones

More needs to be done to promote reuse within the UK, and the imminent WEEE Directive is the push this country needs (Vista upgrades trigger surge of e-waste, 22 February, Letters, 1 March).
The WEEE Directive is a major step forward to ensure the UK becomes a greener country, and while it is extremely worthwhile to help developing countries, we should not be too quick to ship too much hardware overseas.
If the UK has taken so long to clean up its act, how will developing countries and the charities that provide help deal with the recycling overload that will surely follow?
Terry Maguire

Timothy Gilson suggests that an easy way to avoid an upgrade to Vista and a glut of redundant hardware is to move to Linux (Vista upgrades trigger surge of e-waste, 22 February, Letters, 1 March). He says most users would notice little difference.
While I could use Open Office and a Linux email client, I would be scuppered when I tried program in VB.Net, VFP or VB6, or manage my SQL servers at work. At home my CAD package, my engine simulation software and none of my games would work.
So I cannot agree that a move to Linux would be easy. Some of us use more than just Microsoft Office on our PCs. My way of avoiding the upgrade to Vista is to stick with XP, which runs all my applications perfectly well on a four-year-old PC.
Ric Naylor

Reusing hardware in developing countries is not as green as you might think (Vista upgrades trigger surge of e-waste, 22 February). Your report contains the suggestion that by doubling the lifespan of a PC, the environmental footprint is halved. But the extended use is by people who would not otherwise have access to IT. This does not stack up.
If the extended use was by someone who would otherwise have bought a new PC that would indeed halve the environmental footprint. But if it is being used by someone who otherwise would not use a PC at all, then the only difference between reuse and non-reuse is that an additional 6,000 hours of power will be consumed in the reuse case. The PC will be discarded eventually anyway.
I am not suggesting it would be morally right to deprive developing countries of IT resources that they could obtain inexpensively. But we should not deceive ourselves that shipping old PCs abroad is good for the environment.
Good for the environment would be to extend the UK PC lifespan from the current three or four years. Who needs Vista?
Ian Troughton

Computer Aid does an excellent job in taking redundant hardware from businesses and shipping it to schools and charities in developing countries (Vista upgrades trigger surge of e-waste, 22 February), but quite rightly has minimum specifications for the equipment it can use.
This can be a disincentive for small businesses and individual users, as can the need to transport donated equipment to the organisation's premises. Under these circumstances Freecycle.org is invaluable. Conceived as a means of keeping usable products out of landfill sites, Freecycle is a worldwide network of regional Yahoo groups where members can post details of any goods they want to give away.
Interested parties respond and the donor simply selects and informs the chosen recipient who then collects the goods from the donor. The UK alone has 400 such groups and a total of over half a million members.
These groups are home to plenty of tinkerers, so the stuff does not even have to work or be intact. I have found that takers are often after a single secondary computer for home use, so it does no harm in local PR terms either.
Roger Thomas