Green ICT for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Almost all businesses, organizations and governments today have Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at their core. ICT enables day-to-day operations as well as assessing what has passed and planning ahead. However, ICT professionals aside perhaps, there is often little understanding of the technology and little appreciation of the link to sustainability and the impact ICT is having on the environment. The coverage of this chapter is intended for an audience with no detailed knowledge of the various ICT specialisms, providing a broad, but high-level presentation of ICT, and discusses the various links to sustainability that are firmly established. The discussion starts with the rapid developments since computers first were invented and then moves to energy demands that are being placed as a result of technology proliferations. We then introduce the term Green ICT, report on metrics enabling the measurement of energy consumption and discuss efforts underway to curtail energy consumption, with a focus on data centres. A view from a number of European countries is then presented, looking at how governments are addressing the issues and the barriers that are still in place for a country-wide sustainability drive in ICT. The construction project management sector is one that relies heavily on ICT services, and a brief discussion at the end presents additional issues for the project manager to consider.