Archive for February, 2009
Geophysicists at the University of Toronto suggest that the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would shift the very axis of the planet.
The research, reported in Science magazine on February 6, 2009 looked at the possible affects on the earth of a rise in sea levels due to the collapse of the WAIS. The researchers say the melting of the ice sheet will actually cause a dramatic shift in the earth’s rotation – about 500 metres if the entire ice sheet melts resulting in much higher sea levels in some areas than previously predicted.
Recent projections, such as the Fourth IPCC Assessment Report, assume that melt water will spread uniformly but a largely neglected 1977 study predicted that peak levels would be 20% higher in the North Pacific and 5 to 10% higher along the US coastline. The researchers show that the sea level rise will be two to three times higher than previously predicted for US coastal cities.
The AFL (Australian Football League), with the help of their partner Origin Energy, aim to be the first sporting league in the world to completely offset the carbon emissions generated by their activities. This will see a reduction of about 120,000 tonnes of emissions in 2009, through a combination of offsetting and internal abatement through energy efficiency.
For more information go to the AFL website.
Individual clubs, including Hawthorn , Carlton and St Kilda have their own published green initiatives and are setting an example for the remaining AFL clubs to follow.
At Greensense we believe it would be great to see not only other AFL clubs following in their footsteps, but some of the other large sporting leagues in the country taking a pro-active approach to tackling climate change. Education is a vital first step in encouraging people to make the small changes in their life necessary to reduce their carbon footprint. With their large memberships and high profile, sporting clubs and organisations are perfectly placed to support this education process by taking a lead and setting that al-important example.
Looking overseas there is also still a lot of work to be done by the sporting leagues and clubs. This industry typically has a lot of travel and should be conscious of it’s environmental impact. In a quick scan of websites of the Football Association UK, English Premier League (and 5 of its 20 clubs), National Football League US (and 8 of its 32 clubs), National Basketball Association US (and 8 of its 30 clubs), the Olympics and the US Golf Association it appears none are making any progress in this space.
There is a strong sense of community involvement, particularly in the US, in areas of youth, domestic violence, discrimination, food bank, blood bank, homelessness etc. The New York Jets, whose colours are green, have and ‘Lean and Green’ program but it is all about childhood obesity and food programs with no mention of environmental aspects.
We’ve previously commented on the government’s Sustainable ICT strategy and also on Green Personal Computers. I’m now going to write a series of posts about Green IT starting at the beginning.
What is Green IT?
The common view is that Green IT is about making computer equipment more efficient. Taking this view misses the chance to get more leverage from IT. It misses the chance for IT to contribute to the overall sustainability of the organisation.
Here I’m going to describe five factors that characterise Green IT for us at Greensense.
- Green IT helps meet the organisation’s legal and compliance requirements for the environment (ensuring the ‘license to operate’). It provides tools for records and document management and ensures robust and auditable data collection, data management and compliance reporting.
- Green IT helps to promote the organisation’s brand and environmental reputation. It ensures that publicly accessible information on the organisation’s environmental performance is correct and consistent. It also provides tools for effectively managing customer and stakeholder relationships, including relationships with government, the media and community groups.
- Green IT encourages innovation and a sustainability culture within the organisation. It makes operational and management information on environmental performance more transparent and more widely accessible (for example providing a dashboard on the corporate Intranet). It also provides tools, such as wikis, blogs, and discussion forums, to encourage information sharing, collaboration and innovation.
- Green IT improves business efficiency. In today’s economic climate this is particularly important. First, Green IT makes IT facilities and equipment more energy efficient and reduces IT waste. Then, Green IT improves efficiency in other parts of the business by enabling physical activities to be substituted for electronic ones (e.g. video conferencing). Green IT can also provide tools to help manage efficiency projects (measuring, tracking and reporting).
- Lastly, Green IT provides a platform for growth. By providing services or goods in a more sustainable way, new options can open up. Customers are attracted to more sustainable offerings and they are often cheaper. The way Green IT can be innovative and make services and goods more sustainable is to either transform them from being physical to being electronic (sometimes called ‘dematerialisation’) or through automation, reducing the number of people required to provide the service.
It is important for IT departments to see the potential from thinking and acting sustainably. Green IT should be a major strategic theme that cuts across the whole IT function.
In the next post in this series I will discuss how you can develop a Green IT strategy. I’ll also cover how Green IT relates to climate change and carbon management — our main priority at Greensense.
Sweden has reversed a decades-old ban on nuclear power stations, according to a recent report by Associated Press, saying they need nuclear power to meet their carbon emission reduction targets. In 1980 Swedes voted in a referendum to phase out nuclear power, at a time when safety concerns were high. Since then there has been considerable change in community attitudes because of concerns about climate change.
Sweden has large hydroelectric power sources, but even so, energy usage is growing and it is struggling to meet its ambitious carbon reduction targets: phasing out fossil fuels for heating by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
This new strategic direction has followed extensive public debate in Sweden comparing the risk and cost of nuclear power with the risk and cost of climate change. There seems to be much less debate in Australia on a sustainable energy future.
It is clear that Australian government is keen to sustain the coal industry through investment in so called ‘clean coal’ and compensation to protect the industry from the CPRS. While the government is investing less in renewable energy, it has committed to ensuring that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply comes from renewable energy sources by 2020 through an expended Renewable Energy Targets scheme.
The Howard government attempted to begin debate on nuclear power in Australia, commissioning the Switkowski Report, which called nuclear energy ‘the least-cost low-emission technology that can provide baseload power and which is well established.’ However, the Rudd government has only shown interest in supporting uranium mining and exports.
A common argument in favour of nuclear power is that it can provide ‘base load power’, unlike renewable energy sources. However, a recent government report found significant potential for renewable energy to provide base load power.
What are your views on Australia’s energy strategy?
