JISC

JISC is launching a 3-year programme of activity to support colleges and universities with their decision-making process in green and environmental technology.

The programme kicked off this month with invitations to universities and colleges to bid for funding for projects to investigate Green ICT and to run exemplar projects in energy use reduction and integration of estates and IT.

The green programme of activity capitalises on the outcomes from the JISC-funded SusteIT project, which delivered a report entitled Sustainable ICT in Further and Higher Education in January of this year. ICT-related electricity bills in 2009 are estimated to be £116 million and institutional ICT will, indirectly, be responsible for the production of more than 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in that time

JISC programme manager Rob Bristow commented: “The Government and its funding bodies have laid down the gauntlet to the education community, proposing to link institutional capital funding to achievements against new carbon reduction targets.

“Given that institutions’ ICT-related electricity bills in 2009 are estimated to be in the order of £116 million and that institutional ICT will, indirectly, be responsible for the production of more than 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in that time, it’s clear action needs to be taken.

“It’s also essential that colleges and universities are seen to act in a socially and environmentally responsible way by current and potential students, their staff and their local communities, both in the UK and across the globe. The education and research community also has a crucial role to play in helping deliver solutions to the ever-growing global sustainability problem."

Rob added, “JISC is developing the tools to help universities and colleges address the environmental impact of their ICT use. To date we have uncovered many institutional examples of best practice and helped several institutions explore the potential cost savings through greening their ICT solutions, including the launch of a tool to help them calculate the environmental impact of their computers and IT infrastructure.”

JISC’s Green ICT activity and its related projects will help institutions’ IT and facilities departments understand the actions they can take to promote sustainable ICT within their organisations, including:

• Creating and implementing an institution-wide environmental sustainability policy and strategy
• Purchasing environmentally friendly hardware and software
• Server virtualisation, consolidation and utilisation
• Using alternative computing provision models such as thin client
• Creating more energy-efficient data centres and how to share these among institutions
• Improving power management including networked power-down policies
• Making buildings more ‘intelligent’
• Minimising paper use
• Reducing travel and the environmental overhead of face-to-face meetings and examining the potential for staff to work remotely.

Rob added: “There are a number of opportunities for colleges and universities both to reduce their costs and their carbon footprints, as well as enabling new agile means of delivering IT services. JISC’s Greening ICT programme will enable institutions to start to get to grips with these new demands and opportunities – the programme as whole will start work in early 2010 and will help shape the agenda in this area for some years to come."

Greening ICT - Case study Queen Margaret University video

Video available on YouTubeFilm created by Jon Mowat and Michelle Pauli. © 2009 HEFCE. This film is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales license.

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