Green ICT in the Mauritius Declaration on Digitalisation and Sustainable Tourism

The "Mauritius Declaration on Digitalisation and Sustainable Tourism", adopted last week, includes a section on "Green ICT".

"7. to consider the rigorous application of “Green ICT” techniques to ensure minimal environmental impact being given that a connected world together managing the resulting data will in itself impose an environmental load;"

Nations are welcome to make use of my "ICT Sustainability" course materials. I would be delighted to have an excuse to visit tropical islands to discuss it. ;-)

Carbon Emissions from the Internet

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Professor Rod Tucker from University of Melbourne, is speaking on "Managing the growing energy cost of the Internet". Rod estimates that by 2020 the Internet will use 10% of global electricity production, unless efficiency measures are taken.

Much of the increased energy use will come from data centers, fixed and mobile networks. The consumption for desktop equipment will reduce with the shift to mobile devices, but not be sufficient to offset the increase in mobile network energy consumption.

Rod had two measures for energy use: per bit and per useful bit (the latter excluding overheads). Historically there has been a 15% improvement in energy efficiency for telecommunications per year.

Rod pointed out that about half the energy consumed in a data centre is in cooling the equipment. Also 75% of the data traveling in the data center is internal, 8% to other data centres and only 17% to end users.

In my course "ICT Sustainability", run at ANU and on-line around the world, the students learn how to estimate and reduce the energy use of data centers and other equipment.


Professor Tucker pointed out that energy consumption of high density hard drives is expected to decrease markedly by 2020, less so for solid state devices. Rod pointed out that at some time in the future cloud service providers will need to transfer data to off-line storage, such as disk drives which are switched off or optical tape. Users will need to then wait a few tens of seconds, or minutes for their data. This was something I learned about as a IT professional in the 1980s and is something today's professionals will need to learn.
Professor Tucker  pointed out that wireless communications use much more energy than wire or fibre. Increasing the bandwidth of wireless greatly increases power consumption. One way to reduce the power use while increasing the bandwidth is to use more lower power base stations closer to the use. At the extreme there may be one base station in each home. This unshared equipment can also be switched to low power mode at night (whereas it is harder with shared equipment).

Today's fibre networks require one microjoule per bit. With higher use the energy per bit will decrease, as the fibre cable doesn't use much extra energy. However, Professor Tucker  estimates that today's real networks use about thousand times as much energy as they theoretically could. This shows scope for reductions.

I suggest it would also be interesting to look at efficiency at the application level. Recently I was evaluating an educational App for teaching English. I copied a small portion of text from the App and pased it to my web editor. I found a small amount of visible text came with a large amount of formatting, creating about a 400% overhead. Web pages compress well, but even so this is an overhead which could be reduced.The CSS standard allows for formatting to be defined once and then applied, but this tends not to happen in many applications.

Professor Tucker showed the diurnal Internet traffic load. Nort America shows a peak in the middle of the day. In Italy there are two peaks, one in the morning and a smaller one in the afternoon (and a dip for lunch). However, the network equipment can't power down to this extent (I suggest perhaps we need "off peak" computing charges).

Professor Tucker pointed out that Facebook stores multiple copies of new photos at data centers around the world to reduce response times. Rod estimated each photo uses 10 Watt Hours. Less used photos are stored at just one data centre, which would reduce energy use (at the cost of slower access). However, I suggest a better way to reduce consumption would be to reduce the resolution of the photos.  The original photo could be stored at high resolution at one center and the copies at a lower resolution suitable for the typical smart phone. The smaller photos will use one tenth to one hundredth the storage.

Rod pointed out that very large amounts of data will take more energy to send via the Internet, than if copied to a removable device and physically transported.

Rod also pointed out that there is the potential to use the Internet to reduce other energy use through measures such as telecommuting instead of air travel. However, this was made less credible as he traveled from Melbourne to Canberra to tell us to use teleconferencing. ;-)

Rod claimed that using a cloud application, specifically Google Docs, uses more energy than a local application.

I asked if the cost of energy was sufficiently large to influence user's behavior to reduce energy use.  He suggested having an energy star rating scheme for cloud services, as applies to white-goods (and computers) would have an effect. But he commented that this would be far more difficult than for a simple appliance. It seems to me that this could still be a useful area for research.

References

Vishwanath, A., Jalali, F., Hinton, K., Alpcan, T., Ayre, R. W., & Tucker, R. S. (2015). Energy Consumption Comparison of Interactive Cloud-Based and Local Applications. Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on, 33(4), 616-626. DOI: 10.1109/ICCW.2015.7247606

Managing the growing energy cost of the Internet

Professor Rod Tucker, University of Melbourne will speak on "Managing the growing energy cost of the Internet" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 12.30pm 29 September 2015.

"The size and capacity of the global telecommunications infrastructure is growing as the demand for on-line data and new Internet services continuously expand.  The Internet and its associated data centres presently consume only a few percent of the global electricity supply, but this consumption is growing. In this talk, I will discuss the key contributors to energy consumption in the Internet and describe some approaches to the design of a more energy-efficient network."

Also, ANU's award winning course ICT Sustainability (COMP7310) is being offered on-line to students worldwide, commencing February 2016. The course notes are published as "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future" (Worthington, 2012).

Scottish Green ICT Strategy

The Scottish Government has issued "Scotland’s Digital Future: Scottish Public SectorGreen ICT Strategy" (April 2015) for their public sector. The report is largely based on the UK Government's strategy. (the same five level "ICT Sustainability Maturity Model" is used).

The report cites the Climate Change (Scotland) Act, 2009, which has a target of a 42% reduction in CO2 by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Also "Low Carbon Scotland: Meeting the Emissions Reduction Targets 2013-2027" report (2013). In terms of e-waste there is a Scottish Landfill Tax and Zero Waste Plan.

The report mentions skills requirements, but there is no specific requirement for ICT Sustainability skills of IT professionals employed or engaged by government and no targets for for having staff trained to impalement tie ICT Sustainability strategy. If the did want to train staff, the Scotti Government are welcome to make use of my "ICT Sustainability" course.

The report also covers some principles:

Procurement principles

• Consider extending the life of existing systems
• Go for Services not Assets: Cloud services, virtualise, consolidate
• Packaging reduction, re-use, repair and re-cycling methods

ICT Operations principles

• Minimise power consumption
• Follow data centre standards for efficient operations to help reduce
• power consumption
• Develop a road map for the transition from hosting own data to hosting in
• cloud based services to further reduce power consumption
• Reduce paper consumption
• Embed green behaviours in operational practices and services

Disposal principles

• Re-pair - if broken fix it
• Re-use, Re-furbish for other purposes
• Re-cycle
• Clean and re-sell/donate - charitable and registered voluntary and
• community groups
• Dispose in line with regulations.

Building a Corporate Emissions Database

Olga Lysenko, Head of the Office of the CIO at the Australian Clean Energy Regulator (CER) will speak on "Building Australia's Premier Corporate Emissions and Energy Dataset: Making Sense of Complex Data from Multiple Databases for Multiple Programs" at DAMA/ACS, in Canberra, 5pm, 24th March 2015

ACS Canberra endorsed DAMA event: 

Building Australia's Premier Corporate Emissions and Energy Dataset Making Sense of Complex Data from Multiple Databases for Multiple Programs 

Established in 2012, the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) is the government body responsible for administering legislation that will reduce carbon emissions and increase the use of clean energy. The CER administers the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme (NGERS), the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), the Carbon Pricing Mechanism (CPM), the Australian National Registry of Emissions Units and the Renewable Energy Target. This talk focuses primarily on the many challenges of developing the NGERS corporate greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption and energy production dataset and reporting solution:

• Consolidating data from 6 years in 4 instances of a legacy data entry system and in 1 instance of a new data entry system under concurrent development;
• Making sense of complex data for all major fuel combustion and industrial processes for thousands of Australian facilities under legislated reporting rules that change every year;
• Overcoming technical challenges including building a new enterprise data warehouse, consolidating the data and building an externally facing reporting portal; • Overcoming business challenges including setting up a data management group and data policies, and getting buy-in from key players;
• Meeting reporting needs for multiple users and programs: CER as data user for administration of NGERS, ERF and the CPM, CER as publisher of certain public data on its website, and CER as data provider to other Commonwealth, state and territory agencies for policy development, program administration and international energy and climate change reporting; and
• Steering the project through the maturing governance processes of a new agency under pressure to deliver politically contested programs in a very short timeframe.

Biography

Olga Lysenko Olga Lysenko is currently the Head of the Office of the CIO at the Clean Energy Regulator (CER). Prior to this she was the Executive Officer to the Chair and CEO of the CER. Before taking up that post she was the Director of the Business Intelligence area in IT where she established the Business Intelligence Section at the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency in 2010 and transitioned it to the CER when it was established in 2012.

Rino Ciaccia is a data management professional currently employed as Principal Consultant at RXP Services, based in Canberra. He has over 25 years’ experience in designing and building data management solutions both locally and abroad. He worked with Reuters in Australia and then Singapore providing software support for the development and maintenance of financial data products covering: fixed interest securities, equities, money, commodities and futures.

Jeremy O’Keefe Jeremy O’Keefe has managed the Business Intelligence Section at the CER since 2013, building up the CER’s Enterprise Data Warehouse and BI reporting capabilities for NGERS and other datasets. He has worked on climate change policy and programs since 1998 including setting up Carbon Price Mechanism registration and reporting processes, managing registrations and emissions reporting under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007, running tenders for ETS auctions and the ANREU (national register of carbon units), compiling emissions estimates for Australia’s National Greenhouse Accounts, compiling economic projections of Australia’s emissions for electricity generation, agriculture and other sectors, and providing policy advice on emissions trading and carbon sinks.

ICT Sustainability Executive Briefing in Canberra

Fujitsu is holding a free ICT Sustainability Executive Briefing in Canberra, over lunch, 10 February 2015. I will be on the panel to discuss their ICT Sustainability: Australian Benchmark 2014 report, along with William Ehmcke, Director of Connection Research, who carried out the research. I get my students to read use some his previous work in my ICT Sustainability course *the students start again in mid February 2015) at ANU.

E-waste in India

The Indian state of Puducherry has issued an Order for Management and Handling of E-waste  (16th September 2014). The definition of e-waste includes e-waste’ covers electrical and electronic equipment to be discarded, including computers, laptops, printers, copying
equipment, electrical and electronic typewriters, facsimile, telex, telephones and television sets. Unusually it also includes refrigerators,
washing-machines and air-conditioners, but excludes central air-conditioning plant. E-waste is is to be sent to authorized collection centres, registered recyclers or returned to the manufacturer. This may be of interest to students of "ICT Sustainability", inclduing the course COMP7310, being offed by the Australian National University on-line to all postgraduate students in first semester 2015.

Submissions Extended for International Conference on Sustainable Innovation

The deadline for papers to be submitted for the 2014 International Conference on Sustainable Innovation, has been extended to April 15, 2014. The conference is to be at Muhammadiyah University of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 3 to 4 June 2014. I am planning to speak about "Teaching On-line to Reduce Energy Use with Computers ".  I am not jst going for the optional tour of Borobudur Buddhist Temple after the conference. ;-)

Background

The world is facing changes in many aspects. In the last decade global climate change and global economical change are two hot issues. Both do not seem to be interrelated, but in fact they closely affect each other.
The age of natural resources exploration and exploitation is as old as the human age, mainly to support economical aspect of humanity.  And consequently, time witnesses the natural resources depletion. Many efforts have been made to minimize the effect of natural resources depletion, however it gives big impact on economy, not only because of the high cost but also because of less availability of the resources, and at the end we will question the sustainability of mankind.
The process of developing a good nation could also attain development purposes in terms of good economy, good society and good political process. Technology and innovation then become a strategic sector to immediately prevent the bad impact of natural resources depletion, along with management sector. Global population growth, climate change and natural resources depletion are the most significant challenges. The rise of green economy is expected to be able to counter these problems, and at the same time open up new opportunities for businesses.
In 2009, President Yudhoyono pledged to cut Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emission by 26% from business as usual levels by 2020, and by 41% with international assistance. Since then, Norway has committed US$1 billion to help Indonesia to meet that target, and in May 2011 the government issued a two-year moratorium on new forestry concessions. The Critical Decade, a report by the Australian Climate Commission (now Climate Council) summarized the current state of climate science, the likely impacts and the urgency for action. The report said:
“…the global climate is changing and humanity is almost surely the dominant cause. The risks have never been clearer and the case for action has never been more urgent.”
Its conclusions and key messages are clear; they are the same as those reached recently by the US National Academy of Science, and by all other major scientific academies around the world: this warming is already having adverse impacts around the world, with increases in hot extremes and increases in sea level; and, decisions made this decade will largely determine the extent of warming experienced over the next two generations.
Hence, it is critical that the next elected President will honor the on going pledge and take further action to cut Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emission as stipulated from business as usual levels by 2020.
The 1^st International Conference on Sustainable Innovation (ICoSI) was held in 2012 with an emphasis on the regional network and knowledge about sustainable innovation. The 2nd International Conference on Sustainable Innovation will emphasize on the natural resources and the built environment management with ethical, financial management, innovative technology and public policy and regulatory solutions to support the sustainability and energy resilience of Indonesia and the rest of the world. The main theme of ICoSI 2014 “Technology and innovation challenges in natural resources and built environment management for humanity and sustainability” reflects the need of immediate action from professionals, scientists, policy makers, students, civil society members and all stakeholders with different fields and different geographical backgrounds to face the above global challenges.

Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer

I will be speaking at Google Sydney on "Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer", during the Sydney Linux User Group meeting,  6pm 28 March 2014. This is free to attend, but please RSVP.

Reuse or Recycle Your Old Computer

Computers and mobile devices become obsolete much quicker than other consumer products, such as refrigerators and cars. Electronic equipment can contain toxic and valuable materials which should not be simply put into landfill. Before you buy a new computer, tablet or phone, look at the options of what to do with the old one.

Tom is the author of the free ebook "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future" and teaches an on-line course in ICT sustainability which started at the Australian National University in mid-February.

What is e-waste

Electronic waste "e-waste": material from unwanted electrical or electronic devices.

1.  Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (1989) limits the movement hazardous waste between nations. 
2.  Criteria for the export and import of used electronic equipment  assumes that e-waste is hazardous, until shown otherwise.

See: Materials Use in"ICT Sustainability:Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future" Tom Worthington, 2013.

National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme

• National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme (NTCRS): paid for by an industry levy
• Recycling Drop Off Points free for the public, across Australia
• Drop-off in Sydney at shops and council depots.
• 41,000 tonnes of Old TVs and Computers Recycled in Australia Last Year
• 30% of old TVs and computers recycled: "National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme - Outcomes 2012-13".
• About two million devices

Reuse or Recycle?

The NTCRS and services such as MobileMuster are strictly for recycling, not reuse. The equipment is broken up into its constituent materials (plastic, metal, glass) and these are melted down for making new items. For Reuse the equipment (or parts) refurbished and used again (often by charities).

Options for E-waste Plastic

The New Zealand Government has issued reports of two studies it commissioned on how to dealing with plastic which contains Brominated flame retardant (BFR) chemicals. These plastics have been commonly used in computers and other electronic devices. The chemicals are banned under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). The result is e-waste which is difficult to dispose of.

Backup and Erase Media Before Recycling or Reusing

Before recycling or reusing your computer, backup any useful information and then erase the media.

TAD’s Computer Support Service (CSS)

Technical Aid to the Disabled (TAD) accepts donations of relatively new computers for their TAD Computer Support Service.

Computers are refurbished by volunteers, upgraded to new Windows OS and provided to those on a disability or a Centrelink card at a modest cost.

Upgrade Really Old Computers to Linux 

• Microsoft is ending technical assistance for Windows XP, 8 April 2014 and advise "Very few older computers will be able to run Windows 8.1"
• Last year I upgraded four old PCs from Windows 98 and XP to  Mint Linux (Version 15) "Mate". This worked fine and provides a Windows-like interface.

Reuse or Recycle?

• Second hand computers are not classified as e-waste (as long as they work).
• Refurbishing a computer will extend its life.
• But will the computer use significantly more electricity than a new one?

See also: Labels: e-waste, ICT Sustainability

41,000 tonnes of Old TVs and Computers Recycled in Australia Last Year

The Department of the Environment, has released a report on "National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme - Outcomes 2012-13". It is estimated the scheme just about reached its target of recycling 30% of the TVs and computers made surplus during the year (41,327 tonnes). 

 Assuming each computer or TV weights an average of 20 kg, that would represent two million devices being recycled (computers weight less and TVs more). However, the target may not take account of the old equipment which has accumulated in homes and offices in the absence of a recycling scheme. Also the introduction of digital TV and tablet computers may be increasing the rate at which equipment is replaced. I suggest a more realistic target might be four times the one set.

This week I have a class of university students studying e-waste. 

Eco Rating of Mobile Phones

Vodafone have introduced a scheme for Eco Rating of Mobile Phones.The scores are on a scale of 1 to 5, in increments of one tenth, with a higher score indicating more sustainable.The score is calculated based on 162 questions about the
environmental and social impact of a phone, divided into Product (106 questions) and Corporate categories ( 56 questions). A separate scale is used for smartphones (much as different size fridges are rated separately for energy efficiency).

The top ratings for currently sold phones:

Feature phone: Nokia C2 - 01

Overall ECO 3.9:

• Green design: 3.7
• Mobile phone life cycle: 4.3
• Company performance: 3.9

Smart phone: Nokia Lumia 720

Overall ECO 3.3:

• Green design: 2.3
• Mobile phone life cycle: 3.6
• Company performance: 4.1

Finnish Green ICT Sector Action Program

The Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications announced "An action programme for a green ICT sector" 18 December 2013. Unfortunately I could only find the media release in English, not the actual plan. The plan is available in Finnish as "Vihreän ICT:n toimintaohjelma", appended is an excerpt from a machine translation "Green ICT: Programme of Action". The plan targets three areas: data centres, telecommunications networks and audiovisual services.The third area concerns the energy impact of the change from watching broadcast TV to streamed video on computers.

Green ICT: Programme of Action

Summary

The Ministry of Transport and Communications, the aim is to promote the material and energy efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from information and communication technology based products and services. More and more green ICT initiatives combining traditional communication and environmental policy. At present, green ICT key technologies seen as a greater use of communication tools, electronic services and improving energy efficiency.

Green ICT agenda is based on the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the strategic research, development and innovation policies for the period 2013-2015, as well as traffic environmental strategy for the years 2013-2020. The program seeks to establish a priority ICT infrastructure required for energy needs. In addition, the aim is cross-sectoral and research-based collaboration, which allows ICT's negative effects can be minimized.

The Action Plan includes three priority areas: energy efficiency, sustainable development and timely research. In addition, the program measures are shown in the first stage, data centers, telecommunications networks, and audio-visual services areas.

Green ICT Programme of Action is part of the communication policy älystrategiaa, Quartz program. Crystal-program is an essential part of continuous development principle. According to this principle in this action plan objectives and actions developed to meet the changes in the operating environment and practices. The progress of actions and the impact of monitored annually and the data are collected from the administrative sector, as well as other authorities and the research needs of the parties.

Table of contents

1 INTRODUCTION .. 3
2 PREPARATION OF THE ACTION .. 4
3 SUMMARY OF THE ACTIVITIES OF RECOMMENDATIONS .. 5
3.1 Focus 1 - Energy Efficiency .. 5
3.2 Focus 2 - Sustainable Development .. 5
3.3 Focus 3 - Updated research information .. 6
3.4 Measures to .. 6
4 GENERAL TRENDS AND CHANGES IN GREEN ICT .. 7
4.1 Climate change and other environmental impacts .. 7
4.1.1 Information society development and climate change .. 7
4.1.2 ICT and the environment interrelationship between .. 8
4.2 Information and communication technologies, increasing energy consumption .. 9
4.2.1 ICT ecosystem energy .. 9
4.2.2 ICT's energy consumption growth in the underlying factors 10
4.3 Digital service culture and green growth .. 13
4.3.1 Digital service culture .. 13
4.3.2 Green growth .. . 14
4.3.3 Reliable and fast service infrastructure for sustainable development
prerequisite .. 15
5 ACTION AREAS .. 16
5.1 The server centers .. 16
5.2 Telecommunication networks . .. 17
5.3 Audiovisual services .. 17
6 INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION .. 18
7 FOLLOW-UP AND DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL .. 19

From: "Green ICT: Programme of Action" (machine translation) of Publication 34/2013, Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications,  12/13/2013, ISSN (online) 1795-4045, ISBN (online) 978-952-243-369-5, URN http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-243-369-5

Options for E-waste Plastic

The New Zealand Government has issued reports of two studies it commissioned on how to dealing with plastic which contains Brominated flame retardant (BFR) chemicals. These plastics have been commonly used in computers and other electronic devices. The chemicals are banned under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). The result is e-waste which is difficult to dispose of. Available are:

1. Managing waste that may contain brominated flame retardants,
2. Brominated flame retardant research: A pilot study of e-waste plastic sorting in New Zealand (AS140193), Geoff Latimer, NVIRON Australia Pty Ltd, for NZ Ministry for the Environment, September 2013. The study found most CRT TVs in NZ were manufactured in Asia after 1990 without POP-BDEs. A small number of older units from Europe may contain the chemical. Photocopiers and printers are likely to be POP-BDE free. There was limited evidence on POP-BDEs in CRT computer monitors, so the authors recommended monitors should be assumed to contain them. But LCD computer monitors are unlikely to contain the chemical.
   
3. Brominated Flame Retardant Research: A cost-benefit analysis of sorting options for e-waste plastics, ACIL Allen Consulting Pty Ltd, for NZ Ministry for the Environment, October 2013. The report compared visual inspection of items versus use of a handheld "XRF scanner" which uses X-rays to detect the chemicals.  The report concludes that the scanners can't sufficient distinguish between POP-BDE and the more benign chemicals used to replace them, resulting in a large number of false positives. The report concludes XRF is more expensive and does not give any better identification result.

China E-waste Draft National Standards

The China Electronic Standards Association (CESA), distributed seven draft national standards the handling of e-waste. These cover the dismantling of obsolete equipment, general requirements for premises, equipment procedures, pollution control, health and safety, and documentation. These cover desktop computers, copiers, printers, laptops, plasma, LCD and CRT TVs and computer monitors. It is not clear why seven separate standards are needed, as most of the procedures will be common for all types of equipment. One standard could be issued with appendices, or supplements, for variations in equipment type. These standards are important for Australia, as much of the  e-waste collected through the Australian National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme, goes to China for recycling.

Here are the original Chinese texts of the proposed standards:

1. CRT TVs and Monitors: 20083080-T-339
2. LCD TVs: 20083081-T-339
3. Plasma TVs: 20083082-T-339
4. Notebook computers (laptops): 20083083-T-339
5. Printers: 20083084-T-339
6. Copiers: 20083085-T-339
7. Desktop computers (PCs): 20083086-T-339

Climate Commission Says Leave Coal in the Ground

Greetings from The Playhouse Theatre in Canberra, for Professor Tim Flannery and the Climate Commission community forum on "How is the climate changing and what does it mean for our future?". I am not sure who chose the music, but the Bee Gees "Staying Live" seems apt. This meeting is timely with the Climate Commission having released today "The Critical Decade 2013 Climate change science, risks and responses" (by Professors Will Steffen and Lesley Hughes) that "... most of the fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground". The Australian Government is reported to already have rejected this finding. The Federal Resources Minister, Gary Gray, is reported to have argued that coal is helping bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Mr. Gray considers it better to bring millions out of poverty for a few years even as this condemns thousands of millions to greater poverty  some years later.

The Climate Commission argues that the world needs to "de-carbonize" by 2050 to limit global warming to 2 degrees. In my view aiming for a 2 degree rise is a poor strategic choice by the commission.In effect the commission has accepted a political compromise to minimize the economic impact. However, the commission is supposed to leave the politics to the politicians. In my view the commission should work on a zero temperature increase, then leave it to the politicians to compromise. Also the commission might look for some economic positives with alternative energy. The fear of being left behind with Australia having coal which it can't sell because it is banned as a dangerous pollutant and having no alternative, may be effective.

Will Steffen mentioned that ANU has a new six star energy saving building (the Frank Fenner building). Recently I attended a seminar in the building and found it very comfortable. Such a building has non-environmental benefits which may have more influence on decision making, than the environmental issues. I teach "ICT Sustainability" at ANU and suggest my students find direct business benefits from the energy savings measures they find.

At question time many of the speakers said they were staff and students of the ANU. This raises one positive and relatively uncontroversial way government can address climate change, through education. Post-secondary education is a major export industry for Australia and education about sustainability could be a future major contribution to this.

ps: A video of the evening will be on the commission's web site.

Climate Commission Canberra Forum

Professor Tim Flannery and the Climate Commissioners are holding a community forum in Canberra on "How is the climate changingand what does it mean for our future?", 6.00pm 17 June 2013. I will go along as I teach "ICT Sustainability".

Assessing Student Progress in an On-line Course

How does a teacher keep students working each week and review their progress? For the course "ICT Sustainability" (offered by ANU as COMP7310) and Open Universities Australia as ACS25) I use small weekly assessment tasks. This is using a Constructivist e-Learning approach, derived from UK Open University.

In practice what I do is look at each student's work a couple of times a week. I have Moodle forums set up with the marking option on. I read every new contribution from every student and quickly give it a mark of 0, 1, or 2. Then I have a quick look at the Moodle grade book to see how everyone is doing.

Moodle automatically adds up the marks for individual items of work and puts the average in the grade book. At the end of the week I go into the grade book and sort the list of students in ascending order by mark for that week.

First I look at those students with not submitted any work. I change their mark from a blank to zero and send them a reminder. Then I work my way up through those with zero and one, sending them an individual note praising something they did and making suggestions for improvements. For those who got top marks I will usually just send a "well done". As the course progresses I will tend to send less to students as they get into the rhythm of the work. But some students need extra attention.

As well as the individual feedback, I post a message to a forum each week, with the average mark for the class and the number of students with 0, 1, and 2, plus some general comments of praise and suggestions for improvement for the overall class.

Normally I don't comment on individual student's work in the forum to the class. Instead I leave t to the students to comment to each other. Occasionally I will need to comment to correct something the other students have not picked up on, but that might be only a couple of times during the course. More often I will comment privately to one student, who will then post it to the group. This can be frustrating as the students do not realize how much I am doing in the background to make the discussion flow.

Rather than email, I use Moodle's own message system to communicate with individual students. This is more cumbersome, but it keeps a log of the interchange with each student and keeps the student messages separate and safe. When sending comments for a week, I can see what I said last week and any reply from the student. This way I avoid admonishing the student for late work this week, when they told me about their sick relative last week.

Charging Scratches Itchy Printer Finger

In "Global warming and our itchy printer fingers" Tom Lucas (Online Opinion, 6 March 2013) describes rage brought on by seeing uncollected printout by the office photocopier (I assume this is a multi-function device which prints as well as photocopies).

There are some simple measures which can help reduce paper use. One is to require staff to input a code at the printer, before their document will print. Any documents left in the queue for more than an hour or so are deleted unprinted. Another technique which is to have a quota and charge for material use. Even where real money is not charged, it still changes staff behavior when they know their resource use is being tabulated and reported.

This is a topic my students address in the course "ICT Sustainability", where I teach how to use less energy and materials, through better use of technology

ICT Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Double to 4% by 2020

BIO Intelligence Service has released "ICT Sustainability Outlook: An Assessment of the Current State of Affairs and a Path Towards Improved Sustainability for Public Policies". This is a white paper prepared with Alcatel-Lucent. It was completed 15 November 2012, but not released until 6 March 2013, along with a media release.

The report finds that the environmental impact of the ICT sector will increase at a lower rate than the exponential increase in ICT would otherwise suggest, due to efficiency gains. The report estimates global network traffic will increase 35 times by 2020. The report estimates current ICT use contributing 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions (consistent with the first national study conducted in Australia in 2007). The report estimates emissions will increase to 4% by 2020. The authors note that only eight OECD countries have policies to maximize ICT benefit across the economy.

Australia is mentioned only once in the report, in reference to the production of rare earth elements. It is disappointing that Australia's pioneering work on estimating and reducing ICT emissions is not acknowledged. The Australian Computer Society commissioned two studies into ICT emissions and a professional ICT Sustainability course,  teaching how to measure and reduce emissions. The coruse was the first of its kind in the world, with the course materials designed for on-line delivery and made freely available. First run by ACS in February 2009, I currently have a class of Australian National University masters students undertaking the ANU version of the course (COMP7310).

The report recommends public policy makers:

1. build intelligently by deploying smart infrastructure and, in particular, the smart grid;
2. support energy efficient mobile network access;
3. anticipate and maximise the benefit of the cloud;
4. encourage and support advanced research;
5. support industry efforts to harmonise impact assessment methodologies

From: "ICT Sustainability Outlook: An Assessment of the Current State of Affairs and a Path Towards Improved Sustainability for Public Policies", BIO Intelligence Service and Alcatel-Lucent, 15 November 2012

Study of Sustainable Practices at Universities

John Peterson at Keiser University is conducting a study of Sustainable Practices at US universities. He is concentrating on the University Leaders for a Sustainable Future (ULSF) and looking at why so few have signed their "Talloires Declaration" on sustainability and environmental literacy. He has an online questionnaire.

A study of sustainability and environmental literacy at American universities would be useful. But these are global issues and might benefit from looking further afield. The Australian National University (ANU) is a signatory to the Talloires Declaration on sustainability, as I expect other non-US institutions are. The ANU Climate Change Institute and ANU Energy Change Institute research environmental issues. Postgraduate students  in my ICT Sustainability Course work on projects with the university's Green office. Last year I visited Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Syarif Kasim Riau in Indonesia, to talk at their international Green ICT symposium on Sustainable Development Through Green ICT. I expect other universities in the region have similar initiatives.