When colleges and universities start assessing their carbon footprint, the IT department is likely to come under fire by virtue of having oversight of much of the energy consumption on campus. Just how much energy do IT functions account for? At Harvard, for example, Sustainability Office Director Heather Henriksen says that IT functions—from data centers to network equipment to desktops and laptops—make up between 13 and 25 percent of the institution’s peak electrical load. “Research computing needs are set to double in five to six years under business as usual,” she adds. “These figures make it clear that university-wide efforts to save energy in IT will be crucial to achieving Harvard’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below our 2006 level by 2016.”
A 1,000-ton water chiller at St. Edward’s University (Texas).
The good news: IT leaders are generally stepping up to the environmental challenge and adjusting operating procedures to be more green. CDW-G’s 2009 Energy Efficient IT Report shows that IT executives who are responsible for the IT energy bill are twice as likely to place high importance on energy efficiency in the purchasing process as executives who do not own the IT energy bill.
Finances aren't the only motivator. “With my interest in cost savings and sustainability, I was excited to volunteer to lead the project,” says Abel Salazar, technical support analyst at St. Edward’s University (Texas), about a semester long experiment testing the performance of recycled paper and toner against new. In the end, St. Edward’s switched to 30 percent recycled paper across campus and to refilled toners in computer labs. And Louise Gava, sustainability coordinator at St. Lawrence University (N.Y.), was delighted to find like-minded colleagues in the IT department when it was time for a new hardware/software rollout. “They approached me when they began their planning, stating that they wanted to do this the right way and asking what they could do,” she says. Read on for 30 tips—related to paper, power, virtualization, procurement, and policy—from other institutions for greening your own campus’s IT operations.
Power
“Smart” power strips and virtual technology are two of the ways the IT department at St. Lawrence University (N.Y.) is reducing energy consumption.
1. Power down by degrees. The University of Minnesota started a Green Computing Initiative in 2009 that is predicted to save $40 per machine annually. When not actively in use, computers step down: 10 minutes, monitor turns off; 15 minutes, hard drive turns off; 60 minutes, computer enters stand-by mode (this has the largest impact on energy savings). The step-down program/script pushed out to users through central servers and excluded computers that are required to remain on, such as a Point of Sale machine. Lone Star College (Texas) leaders estimate their Desktop Advanced Power Management will save LSC $750,000 in power costs over a three-year period.
2. Configure desktops for power savings. Starting last year, the IT staff at Eastern Kentucky University began a process of configuring the desktop machines in all of the IT labs for power savings to minimize off-peak power consumption.
Harvard hopes “smart” power strips along with other measures will help meet the goal of greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.
3. Be smart about power strips. Applying “smart” power strips for peripherals such as computers, speakers, printers, monitors, and scanners help ensure these devices will not draw power when they are not in use. Since 2008, St. Lawrence has deployed 400 Smart Strip power strips in campus locations such as staff and faculty offices and computer labs. On average, Gava estimates there has been a savings of about 704 kilowatt hours per employee, with about 140,000 kilowatt hours saved annually. St. Edward’s and Harvard are also benefiting from this switch.
4. Manage your endpoints. IT staffers at St. Edward’s are currently testing an array of endpoint power management solutions to find the right balance between availability and efficiency while maintaining the expected student computing experience. St. Edward’s also maintains a regular computing replacement cycle in an effort to benefit from industry advances in power efficiency.
Paper
5. Pay for print. “Because paper does grow on trees” is the slogan for the paper reduction effort at St. Lawrence University. Launched in fall 2009, the program allots students 400 free sheets per semester with a $0.06 charge for subsequent sheets. Exceptions are made for paper jams and work-related print jobs. Approximately 241,000 sheets of paper, or 28 trees, were saved the first semester of the initiative. Clark University (Mass.) introduced a similar effort in January, with allotments of 1,200 pages annually with subsequent charges of $0.10 per single-sided sheet or $0.14 per double-sided sheet.
