The Low Carbon Economy and IT's Role in It

Speaker: Simon Mingay

A 60% to 80% cut in carbon emissions will demand doing different things, not just doing things differently. The winners in a low-carbon economy will think differently.

Exposure for Green issues has exploded over the last year or so. EU is trying to work out how to create a low carbon economy that sustains growth. We are looking at the beginning of a significant and long-term change, and IT is only just starting to look at the issues. Cuts required by 2050 cannot just be on the supply side (by choosing lower carbon alternatives for energy generation). Cuts must also come from the demand side.

Key question: "Do we understand how we would thrive in a low carbon economy?"

A Low-Carbon economy:

• Greenhouse gas emissions is halted and reduced
  
• Carbon becomes a constraining resource
  
• Energy from a fossil fuels is made a constraining resource
  
• Enterprise stakeholders take action based on carbon
  
• Carbon presents both a risk and an opportunity to the enterprise
  

How can we in ISS help the university plan to reduce carbon emissions? We need to fix our own footprint and then help, through application of IT, can reduce the university's carbon footprint. Need to be able to measure advantage of initiatives based on carbon savings. Comparing video conference with in-person meeting for example. Metric used to normalise carbon abatement is Euros per metric ton. So what is the cost of putting in a video conference facility in Euros per metric ton of carbon saved—compared with (say) train travel saved for attending a meeting in person.

What IT can do to help:

• Dematerialization: the process of taking materials out of value propositions (e.g. CD – MP3 download); replacing travel with video conference.
  
• Analytics and knowledge sharing: information management, environmental management; business process analytics (looking at business process from the perspective of reducing carbon emissions)
  
• Process Control: operational technology—e.g. presence based power management; smart metering—real time metering.
  

The Building Blocks of an Environmental Program:

• Energy efficiency
  
• Material efficiency
  
• Water reduction and management
  
• Waste reduction and management
  
• Pollution prevention
  
• Emissions management
  
• Supply chain management
  
• Environmental reporting & EMS
  

Points of focus:

• Paper reduction
  
• Energy efficiency
  
• Travel
  
• Transport
  
• Buildings
  
• Waste reduction and recycling
  
• Real estate
  
• Procurement
  
• Product/service design and development
  
• ICT itself
  

KPIs:

Carbon emissions per student per lecture? Carbon emissions per graduate? Carbon emissions per hour in a lab? Carbon emissions per hour in the library? Carbon emissions per night in residence? … We need to work that out.

Steps towards reducing carbon footprint:

1. Eco-efficiency (internal): travel substitution; flexible working; remote collaboration; materials efficiency (paper reduction)
   
2. Eco-efficiency (external): product lifecycle management, remote support, remote printing (if we need 1000 prospectuses in Malaysia, why not print them there, to reduce the costs (in carbon) of shipping
   
3. Changing the mindset-doing different things: carbon accounting; challenging the principles of "just-in-time" delivery, instead aiming at efficiency of carbon use;
   
4. Changing the value chain: dematerialization; products becoming services (car to public transport; SaaS; zipcar, whizzgo, goloco); localization of the supply chain.
   

"As human numbers continue to increase, casting an evermore unsustainable ecological footprint, it is hugely important that business and industry engages with the problem." Lord Bob May