Energy conservation measures that enable TCS to help itself, others.
TCS, has analysed and measured its employees' per capita carbon footprint, and worked towards reducing it by 20 per cent from its 2006 levels.
M. Ramesh
R. Ravikumar
If you look at it from an ecology perspective, the role of information technology divides in a ratio of 98:2. The ‘2' refers to the contribution of IT to the emission of greenhouse gases and what the industry should do about it. The other 98 per cent is an area where IT can play a role in helping other industries bring down emissions, and generally live a green life.
The first 2 per cent is responsibility, the other 98 per cent is business. As the world goes green, there is a huge role and business opportunity for IT to help in the process.
The green thrust across the world is opening up new areas of operations to the IT industry. Europe, for instance, has avowed to produce 20 per cent of the electricity it needs from renewable sources, by the year 20:20. This ‘20:20:20' movement calls for an addition of 30,000 MW of wind power capacity, most of which will come offshore.
To take the example of ‘wind' further, the offshore technology is still emerging and a lot of money is being sunk into perfecting the machines and the foundation they stand on and in fact there are efforts put into making them towable. Imagine the amount of work that would need to be done at the back offices, where the R&D is developed and perfected.
And if you get into other renewable energy (RE) sources — solar, wave, geothermal and so on — the quantum of work that is due to be done is enormous — and so is the opportunity to the (Indian) IT industry.
Tata Consultancy Services, for one, has spotted this opportunity. It has created a vertical to address this area — the ‘Eco Sustainability Service'. The unit is busy selling its services.
Samir Menon, Head – Client Relationships, Eco Sustainability Service, TCS, lists out four areas where the IT industry will be able to straightaway chip in — design and development where IT can provide modelling and simulation services, enhancing efficiency of existing systems, maintenance (a big cost and an opportunity especially in offshore wind farms) and understand customer requirements, which is a bit of an MIS.
This, of course, is for starters. There is plenty more to do as we go along. For instance, decommissioning, an issue an(y) industry would need to address upfront, but is mostly not being done now. As technology improves and you want to replace your legacy system with a better one, you wouldn't want to be grappling with an unforeseen eWaste issue, notes Menon. The IT industry (itself a eWaste generator) can hardly afford not to go green itself, regardless of the fact that its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is only 2 per cent. The technology of virtualisation has helped enormously, as you could telescope a host of servers into one and thereby save space, material and, importantly, air-conditioning.
IT starts at home
There are many other areas too where the IT industry can shrink its carbon footprint.
TCS again has done a few things in this direction. Lakshminarasimham Srinivasan, Head – Strategic Business Unit, Eco Sustainability Services, TCS, has analysed and measured its employees' per capita carbon footprint, and worked towards reducing it by 20 per cent from its 2006 levels. “Our target is to reduce it by 25 per cent by 2012,” he says. The company's server Consolidation & Virtualisation in data centres resulted in 79 per cent savings in power consumed by servers in 2008-09. Usage of power-efficient monitors resulted in a drop of 57 per cent in monitor power during the year. On per capita basis, it works out to 15.6 per cent reduction.
There is a lot an IT company can do to reduce its carbon footprint, says Srinivasan. TCS, for instance, replaced all its CRT monitors with TFT monitors. It introduced ‘desktop hibernation' to reduce wastage of energy during non-office hours.
Time and temperature control on air-conditioners and provision of intelligent light sensors, minimising use of halogen and other energy-intensive lighting, use of non-conventional energy resources such as solar water system and bio-digester also helped in a big way.
Importantly, “we cut down on travel by deploying over 200 video conferencing units,” says Srinivasan.
In 2008-09, TCS saw a 42 per cent drop in paper consumption, which it achieved by measures such as providing duplex printing by default to all printers and replacing paper and plastic cups with ceramic mugs. It is not inconceivable that like TCS, the other IT biggies have their own programmes, regardless of whether or not they have created a business unit to capture green business. However, there is not much evidence of the medium and small IT companies being sensitised to this business opportunity. For them, it is time to get cracking.
mramesh@thehindu.co.in
