Carbon and Computers in Australia

The Australian Computer Society has released "Carbon and Computers in Australia: The Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of ICT Usage in Australia in 2010" by Graeme Philipson, of Connection Research. This is a follow up to the first national ICT audit, conducted in Australia by Shadi Haddad (Ethan Group) and released by the ACS in August 2007. The new report comes to a similar conclusion to the previous work (and subsequent work in other countries), with about 2.7% of national carbon emissions due to ICT.

The report makes five recommendations, starting with data centre energy efficiency, the report pointing out that this is more than a third of Australia’s ICT footprint and cooling consumes more power than the actual computer equipment. The second recommendation echoes that which accompanied the previous report: reducing printers, scanners, fax machines and multi-function devices. The report advocates turning off computers, rather than relying on standby power. The last recommendation is perhaps the most important: to use ICT to reduce emissions through better business processes, transport, electricity distribution and building systems

In response to the first report the ACS commissioned me to write a course for ICT professionals on carbon emmissions. (now also available as the book "Green Technology Strategies"). The course commenced in February 2009 and the latest class started last week. The students learn how to measure ICT energy use and assess how to reduce energy used by and with ICT in their own organisations. Students in the past have prepared real reports for their government agencies and international corporations as part of the course. This new report from the ACS will make a valuable contribution to the discipline.

ICT is responsible for nearly 2.7 percent of Australia’s total carbon emissions. More significantly, it is directly responsible for more than 7 per cent of all electricity generated in Australia. These are significant figures, particularly given that Australia is one of the largest carbon emitters per capita in the world.

In 2009 Australia’s ICT users consumed 13.248 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, which caused 14.365 Megatonnes (Mt) of Scope 2 CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions. This compares to Australia’s total emissions of 539 Mt, and total electricity generated of 203 Mt. By any estimation, ICT’s energy consumption and carbon emissions are significant proportion of Australia’s total. ...

The biggest components of ICT carbon emissions are data centre environment (18.8 per cent), PCs (15.8 per cent), printers and imaging equipment (15.7%) and servers (14.7%). But if video monitors are added to PCs, their total energy consumption exceeds a quarter of the total. Add games consoles, and the figure is nearly one third of the total. Games consoles consume five times more energy than mainframe computers. ...

On average, employees in Australian enterprises are each responsible for 0.75 tonnes A year of carbon emissions. The figure varies significantly by industry. The highest figure (1.26 tonnes) is in the education and training sector, because of the large number of computers being used by non- employees (students). The lowest is construction (0.46 tonnes). ...

ICT’s carbon footprint by state is approximately proportionate to state populations, with a few notable exceptions. Victoria’s share of the total (28.0 per cent) is almost as large as NSW’s (28.9 per cent) despite its lower population.

That is because most electricity in Victoria is generated by brown coal, which leaves a much larger carbon footprint than electricity generated in other states. And the ACT (2.0 per cent) has a much higher ICT carbon footprint than its population would indicate, because of the large amount of ICT in government. ...

From: Executive Summary and Recommendations, "Carbon and Computers in Australia: The Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of ICT Usage in Australia in 2010" by Graeme Philipson, of Connection Research, Version 2.0, April 2010 (Released May 2010)