Some interesting numbers came out of the US last week from analyst Forrester Research about the number of people that are willing to pay extra for consumer electronics devices that use less energy or come from a company that approaches product design with the environment in mind. According to Forrester, 12 per cent of the 5,000 people surveyed were willing to pay a little extra for a device with green credentials putting them in an emerging group categorised by the company as ‘environmentally conscious consumers’.

This is a rather vague and ill-defined bracket and the killer question of ‘how much more are you prepared to pay’ remains unasked, but, extrapolated out, 12 per cent of the US population amounts to around 25 million people. This is not an insignificant target market for manufacturers and retailers to be aiming at. Recognising this target market and the opportunity for someone to make a break towards it, Christopher Mines, vice president of Forrester, threw down a challenge to the consumer electronics industry.

"The green leadership position is open: Which manufacturer will create the iconic Prius product in consumer electronics?" he said

The Prius is the Toyota hybrid electric car that has been a hit with celebrities and the environmentally conscious with sales breaking through the one million mark this year. Larry David, the car-loving comedian, was persuaded into replacing his Ferrari with a Prius by his environmentally-conscious wife.   

There was more evidence in the survey to support what is en ever-growing perception in the consumer electronics industry of a step-change in consumer behaviour and focus: an additional 41 per cent of the respondents were concerned with the state of the environment, which they believe is threatened by excessive energy consumption and the hazardous materials found in consumer electronic devices. Extrapolated out this is around 90 million consumers. However this group, while concerned, did not strongly agree that they would pay more for green products. On top of this the remaining 47 per cent of respondents, representing 96 million Americans, did not share the others' concerns about the environment or global warming.

So, what does all this data mean (and incidentally, hats off to Forester for producing such a timely and penetrative piece of research)? Will 12 per cent of the population really be enough to change manufacturer, retailer and consumer behaviour?

Well, regardless of the research results, many high-end chip and device manufacturers including Apple, Dell, HP, Sony, and Toshiba are already trying to make their businesses greener through greater energy efficient products, lower-impact manufacturing, longer product lifecycles, and recycling. The result of not doing this would be to necessitate top-down regulation from government. This inhibits innovation or competition in the market. Companies therefore have a duty and an incentive to try to change their business practices early to anticipate the twin pressures of consumer demand and government regulation. If the industry is reactive and chooses to do nothing then it will suffer the restrictions and infringements of mandatory standards.   

I hope Forrester repeat this survey next year. I reckon by the end of 2008 the 12 per cent of people who currently say they are willing to pay a little extra for a device with green credentials will be at about 20 per cent. The race to produce the consumer electronics industry’s Prius has been on for some time now. As the market of those interested in it grows, so do the possible rewards.

By Daniel Smyth 

An article in last week's Digital Business supplement of The Financial Times titled “What’s on CIO Wish Lists?”, suggested that the chief information officer (CIO) agenda for 2008 places green issues at number 11, not even making the top 10.

These findings are not necessarily that surprising. Perhaps if CIOs had a better understanding of their business (number one on the wish list), they would appreciate the importance of managing green issues as the central part of their strategy and align this with their business.

With the government looking to introduce carbon "cap and trade" schemes for the private sector, business is not far off from carbon allocations where the IT director will have to fight his or her corner with the rest of the organisation over how much power can be consumed.

However, it is short sighted to see IT carbon emissions as only a problem. IT can provide a powerful solution to the problem of carbon emissions by maximising the value of energy used to support the business, which minimises carbon expenditure.

The Grid Computing Now! Knowledge Transfer Network is a UK government intervention to stimulate the market adoption of grid computing to increase the country's competitiveness. One of the focus areas is helping CIOs understand how grid can contribute to the reduction of their organisation's carbon footprint. Our own mini-survey found an increasing concern about green IT and sustainability from IT managers and CIOs across all sectors, with some very effective measures being taken to address this challenge.

But, perhaps we should not be so surprised at the findings of the FT's CIO "wish list" straw poll.  After all, if you asked a turkey where Christmas was on their top 10 list, it would also be number 11.

By Ian Osborne, project director, Grid Computing Now!
Grid Computing Now! is supported by Intellect.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) recently published the results of a survey it had conducted looking into business' reaction to the issue of climate change. Some 70 per cent of the 151 companies surveyed said that climate change and environmental issues were affecting their corporate behaviour, and over half of them felt they wanted more certainty from government about what would be required of them when making long term decisions to reduce their carbon footprint.

Companies appear to be concerned about the plethora of tax and regulatory initiatives concerning businesses and the environment and many feel that the government has made constant policy changes on this issue. In addition many businesses criticised 'a lack of co-ordination' within central government, between local and central government and between UK and EU initiatives. Anecdotal evidence from Intellect's member companies mirror these comments.

Notably, many of the businesses surveyed by PwC felt that regulation was the best way to reduce carbon emissions. In a simplistic sense, regulation certainly provides a level playing field but is often clumsy and costly. What's more - it is very slow. For example the WEEE directive on electronic waste disposal was first discussed in Brussels over six years ago, yet has only just come into force in the UK this month  and is already subject to review in several EU countries.

An alternative mechanism is that of the market instrument,  where the government can provide financial 'carrots' - for example government incentives for energy efficiency . Most of the businesses in the PwC survey said they would welcome tax incentives to encourage them to become carbon neutral. Experience shows that incentives work well because they reward good behaviour, stimulate innovation and allow flexibility in finding best solutions.

Voluntary agreements can generally  be a much more cost-effective means of achieving the same or better objectives, more quickly. However, they do depend on the customer valuing the voluntary agreement. The PwC survey  highlighted customer demands and keeping up with competitors as key influences on corporate environmental behaviour. Intellect represents approximately 75 per cent of television manufacturers, of which around 85 per cent have voluntarily registered to use the Energy Savings Trust energy labelling on their product packaging. With consumers considering energy efficiency when making purchasing decisions, this scheme is working well.

It is clear that  consumers, businesses and the government are ready and willing to act to save the environment. In devising a framework to achieve a greener, cleaner business, we need to ensure we do not lose the momentum we have now.

Most weeks, Computing features at least one data centre story, which, rightly so, is often about green initiatives. Recently, Gartner revealed that the global information and communications technology industry accounts for approximately two per cent of global CO2 emissions. Data centres certainly play a part in that figure.

Estimates of domestic power consumption for data centres alone have ranged from 1.5 per cent in the UK to anywhere between 1.2 and four per cent in the US. Whatever way you look at it, these are significant figures. In fact some notable users in the industry have acknowledged that their server power consumption can be measured in terms of “a significant percentage of nuclear power station” output. All unsavoury enough in a world where competition for this precious resource can only dramatically increase.

Another concern is that rising energy costs are already eating away at the investment budget available to the IT director, and yet the demand for increasing capacity continues to double each year, on average. This presents the spectre of energy costs rising beyond equipment costs in the not too distant future, as well as the distinct possibility of carbon trading imposing limits on output for IT purposes - and won’t that be a fun annual planning negotiation when the time comes?

So what to do? It has been all too easy for IT managers and CIOs not to worry about the cost of running data centres, because many haven't seen or paid the electricity bills to date.  It's almost like buying a car and not having to pay for the fuel.  Why would anyone care how efficient it is, if they don't have to fill it up at the tank themselves?  Well this is now changing as we all become more aware of the environment, and  one item on the IT director agenda should be the efficiency of the current data centre. Some leading vendors are now dining out on their ability to integrate the monitoring and management of the data centre from this perspective.

What about the equipment itself?  The good news now is that the devices themselves are becoming more power efficient, especially the processors, and that the capacity they offer continues to meet the strictures of Moore’s Law. Reducing the energy wasted in AC:DC conversion is important too. A recent experiment showed that power consumption in a data centre dropped 20 per cent when run solely on DC power. Now there’s an idea for the future.

By combining modern multi-core processors and virtualisation, the assorted jumble of equipment, some of which is old, expensive to maintain and relatively inefficient, can be reduced with a simpler, flexible infrastructure. This can be orchestrated using state-of-the-art system middleware combining the best management abilities available in the grid world to allocate resources and tasks, manage the inevitable glitches and maintain a high degree of availability for the organisation. With this approach adding new resources, whether physically in the data centre or remotely via a third-party infrastructure, can become a breeze, assuming you have the capacity and networking available.

With the rapidly-growing demand on computing capabilities, organisations based in large commercial centres should also be thinking realistically about where the data centre should be located. The cost of prime real estate, the proximity of renewable energy and the option of outsourcing some of the redundant aspects are all worth considering. 

However, as we all know, things are rarely as simple as they seem. Simply migrating your applications to a virtual machine is not trivial, you may be limited by legacy applications which have embedded knowledge of hardware configurations. This might be a case for using a more modern server with more extensive virtualisation capabilities - after all, not all applications can be distributed. And even if you can distribute application tasks around your  network, are you licensed to run them everywhere they might be allocated? You may well also have to think again about your networking arrangements - the distribution of virtual machines and the accompanying data  could be a significant factor in application performance.

That said, there is plenty of potential in this as a way to move forwards towards the more challenging goals that will come the industry’s way in the years ahead. The earlier we can start the better.

This post was written by the project manager for the Grid Computing Now! knowledge transfer network, for which Intellect provides the secretariat.