With so many carbon targets, how can we make sure we are getting bulls eyes?

With carbon targets becoming an increasingly common theme in today’s business world are businesses doing enough to make sure they are meeting them? By 2019 all new non-domestic buildings will need to be zero carbon and new legislation such as the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) means businesses need to take this more seriously.

CRC, the UK Government’s new emissions trading scheme, moved a step closer to reality this month with the dispatch of qualification packs to businesses. Due to be enforced from April 2010 the mandatory scheme will affect supermarket chains, hotel chains, office-based corporations, government departments and large local authorities.

Businesses need to find out if they are eligible by providing detailed information on electricity consumption for 2008.  2010 will be the first year when full disclosures on energy consumption must be made and failure to do so by a September 2010 deadline risks a fine. As the scheme evolves companies will receive payments back from the government in relation to their annual emissions, plus or minus a bonus or penalty dependent on their position in the league table.

The CRC has the potential to make a real difference when it comes to reducing carbon emissions and motivating firms to consider green issues when investing in business premises. The scheme will expose for many organisations the carbon impact of their ICT infrastructure especially as other aspects of the workplace become more sustainable as we get closer to the 2019 zero carbon buildings deadline.

Changes in ICT can make a real difference to a workplace’s carbon emissions and its CRC rating. For example moving from a mass population of PCs to one made up of thin client computers can cut energy consumption significantly and reduce the need for air conditioning making hitting those targets less of a challenge for businesses. If companies can reduce the carbon emissions of their business now they will be better prepared for the planned changes in legislation coming up in 2019.

 

New York Skyline to get Green Hue

New York State has announced that all new state buildings must meet new green building standards from August 2010.  Challenge is these standards have yet to be decided.  Not all bad because this is a great opportunity for the State to assimilate all the latest thinking on both  how buildings are constructed and run on sustainable grounds.

 

Can we have Passive Offices?

A discussion on the LinkedIn Green group about the international green building movement has pointed out the Passive House  project called Cepheus that ran earlier in the decade.  The concept’s heart is keeping both heating and power consumption per square metre below a low bar of  42 kWh/(m²a).  Wonder how the passive concept applies to non-domestic buildings and their higher density of applicances?

 

Green Office Building Movement is Global

Interesting how the concept of sustainable commercial buildings is not restricted to the Western world. India, in particular, is a hotbed for green office buildings. South Africa has strong green building movement too and will host a major green building conference in October. Good corrective for just thinking the States and Europe lead on this important issue.

 

Green Your Building By Shutting out the Sun

Most green buildings maximise natural light. But a successful green building design in the USA turns this principle on its head. In designing Walsh College’s new building, the architect blocked up windows with thicker insulation to increase heat efficiency. Sounds mad but the new building is a night school so daylight isn’t an issue. Sensors detect whether a room is occupied, turning on heating or cooling accordingly.

 

Governments grapple with making older buildings greener

Government targets on sustainable buildings tend to focus on what’s easier to achieve, namely building sustainability into brand new buildings. What’s more challenging  is getting the existing building stock closer to tough energy efficiency targets.  This has been recognised bu the US government with its recently announced environmental retrofitting programme.

Like many other programmes this tends to focus on domestic building stock rather than commercial buildings. A source of  ongoing energy efficiency here can be achieved by changes to the CT infrastructure. A good example of this is the UK firm Reed, which switched over to thin computers and slashed its power bills in the process.  

As the recent Westminster event on sustainable IT and buildingsdebated, more energy efficient ICT can play a key role in helping both the private and public sector reduce the carbon emission associated with the built environment, both old and new.

 

Las Vegas Plans Green Casinos

The one place on the planet where you’d least expect green buildings is going green in a big way – if we are to believe the CityCenter plans for a new “Sustainable  Strip” in Las Vegas. One nice touch is the “green” stretch limo service.  But nothing about carbon emissions from the banks of one armed bandits. As heavy ICT users  casinos aren’t adverse to considering virtualisation and thin clients to cut costs and – ultimately  – reduce carbon footprint through energy efficient desktops and servers. Perhaps the Las Vegas green casino planners will consider sustainable IT to square the circle on their ambitious CityCenter plans?

 

Linking Carbon Reduction to Uni Funding to Sprout Green Campuses?

Yesterday the UK body responsibility for directing government funds to universities launched a consultation on whether future financing on unviersity capital investment projects should be tied to carbon reduction plans.  There’s a very interesting piece in the Times Higher Education Supplement on how universities are likely to respond. For example the University of Bristol expresses concern that this presents some tough choices and makes the point that computing infrastructure essential for university work is a heavy consumer of energy. It therefore will be interesting to follow the consultation process, not least because some UK universities are trailblazing sustainability for the public sector as a whole already.

 

Natural Ventilation in Commercial Building Design

An Australian architect’s case study  illustrates well current thinking on natural ventilation and cooling techniques in office building construction.  Designed to deal with external factors, these features are less able to cope with the heat outputs produced by the typical ICT infrastructure of a commercial office building, in addition to the heat produced by the building’s occupants. Examples of how high density IT can be integrated with innovative green office building designs like this Australian one and on a large scale can be found in the UK university sector today.

 

Scottish University wins top sustainable IT prize for new campus

Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, Scotland  has picked up a Green Gown award which recognises sustainability initiatives of UK colleges and universities. The university won the Green ICT  category for a new campus-wide IT infrastructure that massively expands and extends access to IT for students, staff and visitor while meeting strict sustainability requirements on cutting power consumption and heat output. Key to achieving this goal is how 900 PCs were replaced with over 1200 Wyse thin clients that consume less power than a PC and actually emit less heat than the students who use them.  QMU was also commended for the overall green design of the new campus which utilises natural ventilation among other features.