HK ICT Elite ForumPower Panel Discussion I – Green ICT

Panelist:Mr.Fu Zhiren

General Manager, Data Communications Dept, China Telecom Shanghai

Mr.Patrick BinnsExecutive Director, Alberta ICT Council

Dr.Elizabeth QuatInitiator & Founding Steering CommitteeChairman of HK Green ICT Consortium

  Moderator:Dr. Wilton Fok 

Senior Teaching Consultant,

Dept. of Electrical and  Electronic Engineering, HKU

Agenda

• Overview of Green ICT by Moderator (15 mins)

• Panel discussions on the following topics:– Current situations of Green ICT in China, Canada and Hong Kong (15

mins)

– Problems and solutions (15 mins)

– The way forward (15 mins)

• Q&A (15 mins)

• Total 75 minutes (from 10:45am to 12:00pm)

Overview of Green ICT

• ICT solutions are now essential for corporate activities.

• However, with the rapid spread of these solutions, an increased burden has been placed on the environment, with more power being consumed, among other challenges.

How ICT is polluting the environment?

• E.g.– One Google search query consumes an average

of 0.0045 Kwh– Google processes petabytes (1015) of

information everyday– Handling 400 million queries 1,800,000 (1.8 million) Kwh is being used

daily just for basic search queries.– The Google Complex itself uses the amount of

power as 3,333 California homes.

Direct Carbon footprint of ICT

Source: Garner report

• However, pollution directly by ICT accounts only 2% of the total worldwide emission.

But ICT can green the environment through many other means

• However, there are substantial inefficiencies in the technology and use behaviors that can be readily addressed

• IT can significantly contribute to control and reduce the 98% of CO2 emissions caused by other activities and industries.

Green ICT

• 2 main approaches:– Green of ICT

• Reducing the burden of ICT on the environment– Green by ICT

• Reducing the burden on the environment by by improving efficiency through the use of ICT

Green of ICT

• Data Center• Logical server hosting• Cloud Computing• ICT equipment recycling

Distribution of Energy consumption

Source: Simon Mingay, Gartner

Data Center

• Using a Data Center enables several dispersed facilities to be consolidated, thereby reducing power consumption while improving efficiency in all aspects including cost, operation and maintenance management.

• Data centers should have efficient power supplies, air conditioning and temperature management with observance of environmental laws and emission standards.

Data Center

• Energy saving design - adopting energy-efficient air-cooling systems in data centre;

Central cooling

Direct cooling to equipment rack

100% volume

<30%-40% volume

Logical server hosting• Hosting service that utilizes server virtualization technology.• Create multiple logical servers on a single server. • Reduce the burden on the environment by improving usage efficiency and reducing power

consumption without any reduction in performance.

Logical server hosting

Comparison of Conventional Server and Logical service hosting

Cloud computing

• “cloud is as a platform”, is the term for networked computers which distribute processing power, applications, and large systems among many machines.

• Cloud-based computation tasks are spread over a distributed cluster, using storage space and computing resources from as many available machines as needed;

ICT equipment recycling

• Donate the used computer to charity organizations and reuse some parts of an obsolete computer after dismantling;

Green by ICT• Mobile data communication

• Paperless communication

• Video conference

• e-Business, e-Government, e-Commerce

• Optimization – transportation and procurement

Mobile data communication

• Mobile data com can be used for work styles leading to the reduction of travel and material consumption, such as using mobile terminals to check company emails while out of the office, connect to the company LAN and use applications.

Paperless communication

• Use E-mail, e-form, blog, Media server

• undertaking e-learning and e-book initiatives, help to reduce paper usage and provide opportunities for

industry development;

• image processing application can help locate and handle waste.

Video conference to reduce travel

• Using mobile, video-conferencing technologies and remote collaboration tools to reduce the need for physical business travels;

Sichuan Hong Kong

e-Business, e-Government, e-Commerce

• Provide forms, consultation paper, policy paper through the web

Transportation Optimization

• ICT facilitate the development of intelligent transport systems, fleet management systems, car navigation systems for transportation optimization to reduce fuel consumption and emission;

• Location based technologies (e.g. global positioning system and RFID) help the optimization

Procurement Optimization

• Encouraging the use of planning and resource management systems to optimize waste collection and disposal.

• E.g.– Enterprise Resource

Planning (ERP) facilitate Just-in-time operation

reduce waste and storage

Summary: The Effects of ICT on Environmental Sustainability

Forum questions

• 1. What is the Current landscape of Green ICT in China, Canada and Hong Kong?– (Each panelist presents 5 minutes)

• 2. What are the problems encountered? What are the possible solutions?– (Each panelist presents 5 minutes)

• 3. The way forward– (Each panelist presents 5 minutes)