Green ICT is the study and practice of using computers and telecommunications in a way which maximises positive environmental benefit and minimise the negative impact. A common misconception is that Green ICT is for engineers and environmentalists, but this is a management issue where IT Service Management specialists can apply their skills to contribute to the business as well as the environment.

Green ICT seeks to inform accepted management practises to achieve efficient and effective business interaction. The same skills which IT professionals apply to management of projects can be used to estimate, report and reduce carbon emissions, helping organisation to meet the new requirements imposed by governments.

The Australian Computer Society has produced the world's first online postgraduate course in Green ICT, specifically designed for IT professionals. The course is modelled on the ACS's IT Service Management course and designed to align with the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). The course content is available free online.

The Senate Standing Committee on Economics is holding a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Inquiry . It is inadequate to aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to between 5% and 15% below 2000 levels by 2020, as detailed in the Draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill. The bill should be changed to aim for a 25% to 50% per cent reduction, as advised by IPCC scientists.

A reduction of 15% can be delivered just by the use of more effective use of computers and telecommunications (ICT).

A common misconception is that Green ICT is for engineers and environmentalists. However, the processes used by business need to be changed to incorporate the technology produced by engineers and green techniques advocated by enviopnmentatalists. IT Service Management specialists can apply their skills to contribute to the business as well as the environment.

Green ICT seeks to inform accepted management practises to achieve efficient and effective business interaction. The same skills which IT professionals apply to management of projects can be used to estimate, report and reduce carbon emissions, helping organisation to meet the new requirements imposed by governments.

The Australian Computer Society modelled its postgraduate course in Green ICT on the IT Service Management course.

A web search for "Green ITIL" in March 2009 found only 42 entries. Of interest was a lengthy blog post "The New Color of ITIL: Green" By Denise P. Kalm and Marv Waschke in Mainframe Executive, March 12, 2009. This explains where green can be fitted into ITIL's existing approach. Another is "Green ITIL" from the British Computer Society, March 2009. This takes a slightly different approach, saying even the latest ITIL (Version 3), does not include measures of environmental impact in IT service delivery. However, while the article goes on to claim this could be done, it does not detail how.

Of most use is "Green ITIL" from Capgemini (8 December 2008). Capgemini provide a far more detailed proposal of how ITIL can incorporate sustainability. They start with the concept of "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR). Capgemini argue that CSR is the link from Corporate Governance to the IT function of an organisation. Within IT, there is IT social responsibility (which is not a term I am familiar with) then linking to, at the lower level, to Service Management Policy, which where ITIL comes into play. This provides an excellent way to link green ICT into wider corporate social policies, where such policies exist. It also provides a context for incorporating green ICT into ITIL and then being able to make decisions on IT resource allocation including sustainability issues.

However, Capgemini's approach assumes that green issues will fit withing ITIL's existing framework of services: IT Services, Application services, Infrastructure services, Network Services, Data Services and Security Services. It then firther assumes that ITIL's categorisation of Processes, Methods, Functions, Roles and Activities apply. Lastly it assumes that sustainability measures can be captured in the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for monitoring the IT service management, so that this can then be used with techniques such as Balanced Scorecard and, at a higher level, Corporate Balanced Scorecard.

Capgemini argue that measures such as "Carbon Score" can be used to include CO2e in a balanced scorecard approach. While this seems rerasonable for major new acitvities such as new equipment purchase, software development or service acquistion, by extending it to consideration of environmental impact of in Requests for Change (RFCs), Capgemini may have extended Green ITIL a step too far. It is unlikely to be useful to consider the envrionmental impact of every small change to a system.

Capgemini are on firmer ground with their example of an organisation deciding if an IT servcie should be provided 24/7. While customers would like service continuously, in reality most servcies are only heavily used during officie hours on weekdays. There is a high envrionmental cost in running these services after hours and on weekends. However, this analysis appears to be falwed. It would suggest that the logiocal conclusion would be to shuit down the computer system after hours. There would be few indsutries which such a proposal could be justified on envrionmental or other grounds. The real world solution would be to design the system to reduce capacity to match demand, thus reducing energy use automatically after hours and on weekends when demand is low.

Green ICT (Green IT or Green Computing) is the study and practice of using computers and telecommunications in a way which maximises positive environmental benefit and minimise the negative impact.

The energy efficiency of operating equipment is a major concern of Green ICT. The embodied energy and lifecycle of the materials used in the design, manufacture and reuse and recycling of equipment and components are also concerns. Green ICT seeks to inform accepted management practises to achieve efficient and effective business interaction.

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) provides a common reference model for the identification of the skills needed to develop effective Information Systems (IS) making use of Information & Communications Technology (ICT).

Green ICT Strategies target SIFA Level 5 competencies: "ensure, advise: Broad direction, supervisory, objective setting responsibility. Influences organisation. Challenging and unpredictable work. Self sufficient in business skills".

The techniques of using mentored collaborative online learning for computer professional education were developed for the ACS by David Lindley.

Note: Part 2 of the video of the presentation starts at the point.

Research sponsored by the ACS, and others, shows that about 1.5% to 2% of carbon emissions in developed countries are due to ICT. Unless measures, such as those covered in the Green ICT course are applied, this figure is likely to rise. However, even with extensive application of power saving techniques, ICT is unlikely to able to contribute more than a 1% reduction in overall emissions. The larger area for savings is through ICT being used to make other processes more efficient and less polluting.

Better ICT can reduce energy use, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time lowering costs. As an example, the Australian Government is planning to replace interstate travel for some meetings with high-definition video teleconferencing.

As well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions from air travel, the use of teleconferences will reduce the cost of airfares. This process of "dematerialisation".