The green IT message remains relevant for today and tomorrow

Greenresearch

Dell received a lot of attention for its claim last summer that it had become carbon neutral. The company claimed it was “saving more than $3 million annually and avoiding nearly 20,000 tons of CO2 through facilities improvements and a global power-management initiative.”

Dell’s claim of having achieved carbon neutrality became the focal point of a recent skeptical article (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal. The article pointed out that the carbon emissions Dell claims to have neutralized don’t include those of its suppliers or “the diesel and jet fuel used to ship those computers around the world, or the coal-fired electricity used to run them.” This is a valid point. But Dell says that it’s method of measuring its carbon footprint is a start, and the most practical one at that, since many of its suppliers are not currently able to account for their own carbon footprint.

An interesting and relevant article which raises some good points. We need to accentuate the positives, what vendors and service providers are doing right when it comes to discussing/measuring and reporting their carbon footprint, at the same time we need to recognize that it’s being declared or discussed is the first step, next we need to agree some kind of standard, some kind of value that we can then use as a measure to establish how we can continue to deploy infrastructure that meets the business need whilst reducing the impact on the environment and preventing unnecessary costs in power and cooling.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.