Green ITGreen Information Technology, or Green IT, refers to the principle of taking the energy requirements and energy costs of IT equipment into consideration in order to make computing greener, including both the equipment itself and how it is used.
The IT sector currently accounts for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions – as much as the aviation industry – and that figure could double by 2020. That is why a Green IT working group was launched by the Group Information and New Technologies Department in 2009 with the aim of sharing methods and technologies to reduce the environmental footprint of information and communication technologies.
Alain Pouyat, Executive Vice-President, Information Systems and New Technologies at Bouygues. Making better use of workstations and printers. The first thing that Green IT does is to reduce energy consumption and mitigate the carbon footprint, notably through better use of computers and printers. Collecting computer hardware and electronic equipment. In 2010, the Group selected ATF Gaia to handle the recycling and resale of computer hardware and electronic equipment. Since the contract started, 15,600 items of equipment have been collected. Of the resulting tonnage, 54% has been destroyed and 46% re-used. Find out more Outsourcing data centres. The working group is studying the development of data centres. These hosting facilities account for nearly 30% of the information system electricity bill. The Green IT Factory®, created by Bouygues Immobilier, is a solution for outsourcing data centres already operating or in development that saves 20% in investment costs and 30% in energy consumption. The concept incorporates eco-design principles across the board, from the choice of equipment (cold corridor cooling system for data centres) through to management and tracking of servers’ electricity consumption, with real-time monitoring of equipment temperatures. Cutting travel and improving efficiency. Discussions on mobile working and videoconferencing help employees to reduce travel and boost performance.
(Updated: June 2011) |
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“Over the past two or three years, Bouygues has put in place a Green IT strategy. We can include it in products sold to our customers and design it into new generations of buildings, such as Green Office® and BBC low-energy buildings. We are just starting out in this approach. We still have much to learn and we need to find the right compromise between the level of optimisation we can achieve and the level that is acceptable to users. We mustn’t forget that IT is first and foremost for users. It’s their comfort that counts.”
