Powering Down:
Green IT in
Higher Education
Mark C. Sheehan, ECAR
with
Shannon D. Smith, ECAR
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
4772 Walnut Street, Suite 206
•
Boulder, Colorado 80301
•
educause.edu/ecar
This research study is available online at the
ECAR website (www.educause.edu/ecar). The
content of this study is restricted to authorized
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separately purchased this study. The username
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Powering Down:
Green IT in
Higher Education
EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher
education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.
The mission of the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research is to foster better
decision making by conducting and disseminating research and analysis about
the role and implications of information technology in higher education. ECAR
will systematically address many of the challenges brought more sharply into
focus by information technologies.
Copyright 2010 EDUCAUSE. All rights reserved. This ECAR research study
is proprietary and intended for use only by subscribers and those who have
purchased this study. Reproduction, or distribution of ECAR research studies
to those not formally affiliated with the subscribing organization, is strictly
prohibited unless prior written permission is granted by EDUCAUSE. Requests
for permission to reprint or distribute should be sent to ecar@educause.edu.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Contents
Foreword
............................................................................................................................... 5
IT, Energy, and the Environment • Doing Well by Doing Good? • Many People to Thank
Chapter 1
Executive Summary.................................................................................................. 9
Defining Environmental Sustainability • Methodology • Key Findings • Conclusion
Chapter 2
Introduction and Methodology ............................................................................. 21
Green IT Concepts and Definitions • Study Scope and Objectives • Research Approach •
Overview of Respondents • Study Organization
Chapter 3
Institutional Environmental Sustainability: The Basics ............................................. 31
Key Findings • The Institutional Context • Planning and Education • Organization •
Summary and Implications
Chapter 4
Institutional Environmental Sustainability Initiatives................................................. 47
Key Findings • Tracking Energy Usage • Institutional Involvement • Summary and
Implications
Chapter 5
Central IT’s Role in Greening the Campus............................................................... 61
Key Findings • The Organizational Context • Organization • Summary and Implications
Chapter 6
Central IT Environmental Sustainability Initiatives.................................................... 77
Key Findings • Tracking Central IT Energy Usage • Central IT Involvement • Drivers and
Barriers • Central IT’s Support for Institutional Initiatives • ES Initiatives in the Central IT
Data Center • Summary and Implications
Chapter 7
Distributed IT and Environmental Sustainability..................................................... 103
Key Findings • Distributed IT Resources and Support • Refresh Cycles and Sustainable
Workstation Options • Summary and Implications
Chapter 8
Knowledgeability and Participation...................................................................... 119
Key Findings • Individuals’ Knowledgeability about ES Issues • Participation in IT-Related
ES Initiatives • Summary and Implications
Chapter 9
Assessing Progress............................................................................................... 127
Key Findings • Moving Toward Greater Environmental Responsibility • Change in Specific
Practices • Pride in the Institutional Stance on ES • Summary and Implications
3
Green IT in Higher Education
Chapter 10
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Higher Education IT and the Coming Green Revolution........................................ 147
The Cost of Carbon-Based Power • Higher Education’s Role in the Sustainability
Movement • Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit • Quantifying a Shrinking Footprint • In Search
of a Footprint • Low-Energy Technologies to the Rescue? • Life in a Carbon-Controlled
Economy • Conclusion
4
Appendix A
Institutional Respondents to the Online Green IT Survey....................................... 163
Appendix B
Interviewees in Qualitative Research..................................................................... 167
Appendix C
Supplementary Tables.......................................................................................... 169
Appendix D
Bibliography......................................................................................................... 173
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Foreword
The EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research
(ECAR) was launched on January 1, 2002,
to create a body of research and analysis
on important issues at the intersection of
higher education and information technology
(IT). ECAR is fulfilling its mission through a
program of symposia and the publication of
biweekly research bulletins, detailed quarterly
research studies, occasional papers, executive
roadmaps, and case studies. These publications are designed to highlight effective
practices, lessons learned, and other insights
from the practical experience of campus
leaders. Since ECAR’s inception, 15 symposia
have been held, and more than 400 research
publications have been issued.
IT, Energy, and the
Environment
In 2007, the leaders of the United Nations’
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
for their assessment of the physical science
basis of global climate change.1 That report
concluded that climate change of global and
possibly irreversible scope and nature were
the result of rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), and that human
activity was accountable for this rise in CO2.
The implications of this climate change on
future climatic conditions range from very
bad to dire, depending on which end of the
statistical planning ranges you use. Between
January 2002 and July 2008, mid-grade gasoline in the USA rose from $1.15 per gallon to
over $4.15.2 In 2001, more than 1.5 million
Californians lost power in their homes and
businesses and the state suffered months of
so-called rolling brownouts due to both real
and Enron-constrained energy supplies.
Energy has always factored heavily into the
political economy of the world. As energy
supplies dwindle, and as emerging nations
fan demand for energy to drive their growing
economies, prices rise, interruptions in energy
supply abound, and political and military
tensions escalate. Many, with justification,
view the current conflict in Iraq as revolving
largely around U.S. needs to secure supplies of
oil. A great many futurists identify the quest
for energy (and water) as the defining issue of
this new century. Whether the issue is energy
security or climate change, both roads lead to
the same destination.
Against this backdrop, a group of college
and university presidents and chancellors
expressed their deep concern “about the
unprecedented scale and speed of global
warming and its potential for large-scale,
adverse health, social, economic and ecological effects.” These leaders acknowledged the
scientific consensus of the IPCC and “the need
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
5
Green IT in Higher Education
to reduce the global emission of greenhouse
gases by 80% by mid-century at the latest,
in order to avert the worst impacts of global
warming and to reestablish the more stable
climatic conditions that have made human
progress over the last 10,000 years possible”
(http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment
.org/about /commitment). Arizona State
University President Michael Crow argued
that “more than ever, universities must take
leadership roles to address the grand challenges of the twenty-first century, and climate
change is paramount amongst these.” Today,
nearly 700 college and university presidents or
chancellors have signed the American College
& University Presidents’ Climate Commitment,
pledging to engage in a wide variety of
campus activities to reduce their institutions’
carbon footprint, to lower their use of energy,
and to minimize waste.
At the precise time when our awareness
and consciences have focused on the political
economics of sustainability, experts such
as Simon Mingay, research vice president
at Gartner, began to publish analyses that
concluded that PCs’ and servers’ contribution
to the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas load “is
probably in excess of 2 percent.”3 This breathtaking estimate does not include the cost of
cooling data centers. The energy footprint
left by computing and communications is
complex and controversial. Nevertheless, it is
quite simple to assert that the contribution of
the IT infrastructure and its use to CO2 buildup
and energy consumption is significant (and
growing!). Well-known author Nicholas Carr
has calculated that maintaining an avatar in
Second Life requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of
electricity per year. That is almost equivalent
to the total annual electrical usage of the
average Brazilian. John Buckley, managing
director of carbonfootprint.com, a British
environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and
10g. Simply running a PC generates between
40g and 80g of CO2 per hour, he says. By
6
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
comparison, boiling a kettle of water produces
about 15g of CO2.4 Clearly the higher education IT community can make an important
and lasting impact in the institutional—and
global—sustainability effort.
Doing Well by Doing
Good?
Kathleen Schatzberg, president of Cape
Cod Community College, argued that “we are
in the middle of one of those rare moments
when the right thing to do is also the economically smart thing to do.” In 2007 and 2008,
as energy costs soared, green IT became the
darling of the consulting industry—the proverbial “next big thing.” IT leaders in industry and
in higher education began to examine and
implement a variety of green practices in the
following areas:
•• managing data centers, including equipment selection, cooling of facilities, and
reconfiguring data center floor layouts;
•• virtualizing and consolidating servers and
storage devices and using alternative
storage tactics;
•• eliminating energy leaks;
•• using innovative and more efficient
cooling methods;
•• exploring alternative energy sources,
including renewable energy, for data
centers;
•• managing end-user computing, including
equipment choices, degree of consolidation, and energy practices;
•• altering purchasing practices for IT assets
to include sustainability criteria;
•• encouraging their organizations to
adopt energy-saving settings on their
computers; and
•• encouraging proper disposal and recycling of IT assets.
By the middle of 2008, gasoline prices had
retreated on the heels of a storm of protest
from angry consumers, and the policy accents
on sustainability and climate change shifted
in the U.S. presidential election. The bursting
Green IT in Higher Education
of the global real estate balloon, the failure
of financial derivatives and other investment
intermediaries, and the freezing of the global
credit system in the fall of 2008 rapidly overtook energy and environmental issues on
the top of everyone’s mind. The survey that
underpins this study was conducted against
this backdrop.
That said, the questions that suffuse the
ECAR study of green IT are rooted in the most
basic question of whether one can indeed do
well by doing good. Are green IT investments
and practices actually good for business? Do
they lower the cost of delivering institutional
IT services? Is higher education making the
necessary investments, accounting for the
changes in either greenhouse emissions or
costs, and making the economic and public
policy case for sustainability? Is higher education gaining traction on the President’s
Climate Commitment, or has attention been
forced to shift to the more urgent need to
attend to dwindling endowments, diminished
access to capital, and declining revenues and
affordability? Is the IT role in campus energy
utilization and its potential role in enterprisewide energy management either being
championed by IT leaders or understood by
the campus as a whole? Is IT even a player in
higher education sustainability? Does one’s
status as a player derive from a presidential commitment, or are members of the IT
community in higher education themselves
committed to making a lasting contribution
in this area? And finally, are the IT efforts
in this area largely focused on reforming
practices and investments within the campus
IT organization’s direct control, or is the IT
organization reaching out to bring “energy
smart” thinking and practices to the institution as a whole? One can, in fact, imagine
IT being part of an organization accountable
for developing institution-wide metering,
monitoring, and management systems that
tune the institution constantly from an energy
and emissions standpoint. Similarly, the IT
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
organization can be the standards-setting
entity with regard to computer equipment
purchases and life-cycle management.
Many People to Thank
The ECAR study of green IT was an ambitious undertaking, and, as always, there are
many people to thank. In the course of this
work, we are always reminded that this ECAR
research is community-enabled research—
impossible to perform without the contribution of so many from the EDUCAUSE community. Principal investigator Mark C. Sheehan is
both a tireless and indefatigable analyst and
an artful writer. He is passionate about this
topic and managed this assignment with care
and commitment. The results are evident. In
this case, we had tremendous community
support from the beginning. University of
California, Irvine Vice Chancellor Wendell
Brase and University of Nebraska–Lincoln CIO
Mark Askren consulted early on the design
of our research and survey, and helped us
understand the data that underpins the study.
In this instance, 261 college and university
leaders completed surveys describing their
institutions’ practices and plans in this arena.
Thirty-one senior practitioners participated in
structured interviews to deepen, validate, or
temper our interpretations from the quantitative analysis. We are especially grateful to
David Bodnar of the University of Colorado,
Joyce Dickerson of Stanford University, Larry
Levine of the University of Colorado, Shannon
Roberts from the University of Colorado, Ken
Schuetz of the University of Colorado, and
Randall (Randy) Stiles of Colorado College.
These professionals represented campus IT,
sustainability, and facilities management
organizations in a meeting to review preliminary findings. Their diverse views made a big
difference and we are indebted to them.
To enrich this particular study, we have
added two case studies. At Adelphi University,
ECAR Fellows Bob Albrecht and Judith A.
Pirani reviewed what they concluded was
7
Green IT in Higher Education
a holistic approach to successful green IT
adoption. Adelphi recognized the need to
reengineer many of its business processes, and
its CIO seized this opportunity to introduce
green IT practices as his staff worked with
functional departments across campus to
streamline the ways they did business. They
made impressive gains in power management and paper consumption. The Adelphi
story is also a leadership story, with green
IT momentum coming from Jack Chen, their
CIO; Gayle Insler, Adelphi’s Provost; Bill Pronto,
the Vice President for Administration; and
Tim Burton, Adelphi’s Senior Vice President
and Treasurer. Judith and Bob also reviewed
the ambitious planning work going on at
BCNET among six to eight higher education
entities engaged in a detailed analysis of the
feasibility of virtualizing the University of
British Columbia’s Optical Regional Advanced
Network (ORAN)—which links researchers,
scientists, and educators across the country
and around the world—to increase security,
provide exciting new functionality, lower
energy consumption, and contribute in positive
ways to the ambitious British Columbia goals
for reducing emission of greenhouse gases.
Jay Black, CIO at Simon Fraser University; Ted
Dodds, Vice Provost–Information Technology
of the University of British Columbia; and
Michael Hrybyk, executive director of BCNET,
were extraordinarily helpful to ECAR.
Of course part of the village it takes to
produce an ECAR study is close to home. In
the spirit of “no one knows your faults like
your family,” Bob Albrecht, Phil Goldstein,
Judith Pirani, Gail Salaway, Toby Sitko,
Shannon Smith, Don Spicer, Ron Yanosky,
8
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
and I engage in the collegially self-critical
processes of survey design and testing,
hypothesis development, and reviews of
research prospectuses and data analyses.
We buddy-check one another’s statistical
analyses and even check the links in each
other’s footnotes. It is a remarkable team
that shares a passion for excellence and a
collegiality that is palpable. We are joined in
this effort by a great many on the EDUCAUSE
staff. Lisa Gesner leads our efforts to reach
out to the membership for survey participation and with other key communications.
Gregory Dobbin, Susan Gollnick, and Nancy
Hays oversee a complex team of editors,
compositors, web designers, and printers
who translate the investigators’ work into
really readable products. There are many
more to thank. I hope they know how much
we depend on them and appreciate them.
Richard N. Katz
Boulder, Colorado
Endnotes
1. Climate Change 2007—The Physical Science
Basis, Susan Solomon et al., eds. (Contribution
of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, February 5, 2007), http://www.ipcc-wg1
.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/wg1-ar4.html. Lead
investigator and Nobel Prize winner Susan Solomon
spoke at the 2007 ECAR summer symposium.
2. U.S. Department of Energy, http://www.eia.doe
.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/
mogas_history.html.
3. Elana Varon, “Why Green IT Is Better IT,” CIO.com,
March 28, 2007, http://www.cio.com/article/100557/
Why_Green_IT_is_Better_IT.
4. Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods, “Revealed:
The Environmental Impact of Google Searches,”
Times Online, January 11, 2009, http://technology
.timesonline.co.uk / tol /news / tech _ and _web/
article5489134.ece.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
1
Executive Summary
G
reen IT has always been a good idea.
Conspicuous consumption of resources and
profligate production of waste might make
sense if energy, raw materials, and landfill space
were unlimited, but those conditions have
never really existed on this planet, however
much the behavior of our species implied
they did. Yet despite its importance, widespread environmental awareness—“green”
thinking—is a relatively recent phenomenon,
and its application to information technology
(IT) has so far fallen short of its potential. Even
in higher education, the IT organization is seen
as a junior partner, at best, in the institution’s
overall sustainability efforts.
Environmental sustainability (ES) imperatives have become stronger in the past several
years. Climate Change 2007, the report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change,1 made it clear that global warming
is a real phenomenon caused in large part
by greenhouse gas emissions. It became a
matter of conscience for individuals and institutions to change their practices to minimize
those emissions. At about the same time, an
unprecedented spike in fuel prices stimulated
a similar set of changes, motivated more by
economics than by conscience. Although
prices have dropped since then, $4-pergallon gasoline was a wake-up call that still
rings in many ears and continues to influence
institutional budgets and policies. Finally,
the global recession beginning in late 2008
has eroded endowments, strained governmental budgets, and jeopardized many social
services, including higher education—with
mixed results for green IT initiatives.
IT is a major consumer of energy and, to the
extent that the energy it uses is derived from
nonrenewable resources, is a net contributor
of greenhouse gas emissions and other forms
of waste. Gartner Inc. estimates that the
IT industry overall is responsible for 2% of
global CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to
the impact of the airline industry.2 Gartner
also estimates that “potential power cost and
CO2 emission reductions of 50% are available...by better managing the power usage
of PCs, monitors, and printers—for instance,
by encouraging employees to turn them off.”3
Clearly, each college or university IT organization has a role to play in the institution’s
efforts to combat global warming, reduce
expenditures on energy, and become more
efficient in its use of natural resources and
manufactured goods.
Until now, very little has been published to
summarize green IT practices in higher education. While the literature provides anecdotal
information from individual institutions, little
compilation of current practices has been
done, and advice based on objective evidence
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
9
Green IT in Higher Education
is rare. This ECAR study fills the void with
information about the positions that institutions and IT organizations have taken on green
IT and ES in general, the initiatives they have
taken on, and the influence of both of those
factors on environmental outcomes.
The most fundamental finding of our study
is that campus IT units are being good citizens
in the quest for environmental sustainability
in higher education, but they are not taking
the lead. Enthusiasm about sustainability runs
high, and most institutions have green initiatives under way. Hundreds of college and
university presidents have signed a formal
commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly all institutions are serious
about recycling. But CIOs and other executives
very often lack the basic information about
baseline and ongoing energy use that they
need to inform the ES initiatives they take on.
They point to a lack of funding for their organizations and for their ES initiatives as the biggest
barriers they face in greening their own operations, and they often report that the strategic
guidance the institution provides in this area
is insufficient. Not surprisingly, ES outcomes
are disappointing: While business activities
appear to be greening a little, instructional
and research activities are lagging.
IT practices specifically, but also to more
general activities taking place in business,
instructional, and research contexts.
Defining Environmental
Sustainability
Our study was primarily concerned with
the steps institutions and, in particular, IT
organizations are taking to reduce their
carbon footprint and their contribution to the
e-waste stream. We also sought evidence that
IT is no longer just a collection of expensive
devices that consume electrical power, but is
becoming a source of clean, energy-efficient
alternatives to traditional practices whose
costs are becoming unsustainable. Areas of
survey coverage, which map roughly to the
organization of this study report, include:
•• The institution —the way ES efforts are
organized at the institutional level, and
the status of a selection of broad ES
initiatives.
Two generally interchangeable terms
refer to environmentally sound practices.
Sustainable practices are those that can
be carried out repeatedly and over long
time spans without lasting negative consequences. Increasingly, the term is applied
to practices that impact the natural environment, but historically it has also been
used to describe purely financial practices.
Green practices or initiatives are typically
those that are in harmony with the ideals of
the environmental movement, are good for
the planet, and are environmentally sustainable. In this study, we apply both terms to
10
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Methodology
To study green IT in higher education, we
took a multipart approach that consisted of
•• a literature review to define issues,
examine ES practices, and establish
research questions;
•• consultation with higher education IT
administrators and ES experts to identify
and validate survey questions;
•• a quantitative web-based survey of
EDUCAUSE member institutions that
received 261 responses, 77.8% of which
were from the institutional ClO or
equivalent;
•• qualitative interviews with 26 higher
education IT leaders and staff; and
•• two case studies, one examining the integration of ES into institutional strategies
at Adelphi University and one detailing
the process a consortium of British
Columbia institutions has undertaken
to optimize their use of environmentally
sustainable power sources for a green
data center.
Key Findings
Green IT in Higher Education
The central IT organization —the way ES
efforts are organized within the central
IT organization and the central IT data
center, and the status of IT-related
initiatives.
•• Distributed IT—ES initiatives applied to
IT facilities and desktop computers that
central IT does not control.
•• Grassroots support—how well informed
about ES issues campus constituents are
and how their participation in IT-related
ES initiatives has changed recently.
•• ES outcomes—an assessment of progress
toward the goals of institutional ES and
green IT.
In the following sections, we summarize and
synthesize our main findings.
••
A Green Bandwagon?
Whether one’s politics are red or blue, the
dominant color of the next few years is likely
to be green. Good public relations these days
require that colleges and universities project
responsiveness to environmental concerns,
and many of them find they are looked to as
sustainability leaders in their communities.
Our respondents signaled broad acceptance
of this role; three-quarters agreed that their
executive leaders, students, and CIOs placed
high priority on ES initiatives. Further, most
characterized their institutions and central IT
organizations as being “actively engaged” in
ES initiatives.
Despite this strong show of interest,
however, only 4 in 10 respondent institutions’
chief executives had signed the American
College & University Presidents’ Climate
Commitment. The commitment makes
institutions accountable, in a highly visible
way, for achieving well-planned, measured
carbon-emission goals. We suspect most nonsignatories realize that such goals are out of
their institution’s reach at present.
When it comes to strategic planning for
ES, however, it appears that comparatively
little progress has been made. A completed
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
plan was in place at only a quarter of institutions and in a tenth of central IT organizations. At both levels, just under half reported
plans in progress. (As a predictor of findings
we will discuss below, approximately 1 in
10 respondents did not know the status of
their own institution’s ES strategic plan.)
A lack of planning doesn’t imply a lack of
activity, but it does suggest that many of
the ES efforts being made at institutions
without plans lack the executive imprimatur
that often tips the balance between interest
and commitment.
Green is a dominant color in another sense,
as well. In the United States, at least, green is
the color of money, and in these recessionary
times financial issues have taken very high
priority indeed. For both the institution and
central IT, ES has the earmarks of an unfunded
mandate. Only about half of our respondents
reported the establishment of an institutional
sustainability office to provide guidance and
stability to those efforts; about two-thirds
reported the less expensive approach of
establishing an environmental sustainability
committee. At the central IT level, guidance
of ES initiatives is even less structured. Fewer
than 1 in 10 IT organizations had assigned
a full FTE or more to oversee ES initiatives,
and fewer than a quarter had an internal
committee whose charge included ES.
Clearly, most institutions are feeling
economic pain. Three-quarters of respondents
told us their institution’s financial position
had worsened, at least somewhat, in the 12
months prior to our survey. When asked to
choose the top-three barriers to their central
IT organizations’ ES efforts, respondents most
frequently identified lack of adequate funding
for central IT overall and for central IT’s ES
initiatives in particular. One-third of respondents indicated that economic pressures had
affected their institutional and central IT ES
initiatives, despite the fact that what is good
for the environment is often good for the
pocketbook as well.
11
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Where the Action Is
Perhaps because concerns about it predate
recent concerns about energy and climate,
recycling of decommissioned IT equipment
(e-waste) was the most active initiative, with
most institutions’ central IT organizations
involved in it. Concerns about the climatic
consequences of electrical energy production
and about erratic changes in energy costs are
obvious drivers of many other initiatives. While
it may be unrealistic to imagine a future in
which less energy is used, efforts to minimize
growth in total electrical energy consumption
are practicable, and strong majorities reported
that both their institutions and their central IT
organizations had initiatives under way to do
so. One practical action is to purchase devices
(not just IT devices) that have ENERGY STAR
certification, indicating low energy consumption as compared with similar devices.
Initiatives to purchase ENERGY STAR devices
Naturally, our respondents— mostly
CIOs—were most knowledgeable about
the initiatives under way in their own organizations (see Figure 1-1), and in the central
IT data center “Don’t know” responses
approach or exceed 10% for only two
central IT initiatives but were more common
for our questions about institutional initiatives and were very common (between
20% and 40%) for our questions about
distributed IT initiatives. This, along with our
finding that a tenth of CIOs don’t know the
status of ES strategic planning at the institutional level and other findings discussed
below, builds a convincing case that when
it comes to ES initiatives, many CIOs either
choose to “tend their own gardens” or are
simply not included in initiatives occurring
outside their own units.
Recycle e-waste
(N = 260)
88.1
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 260)
84.2
Purchase ENERGY STAR
products (N = 259)
66.0
Convert to digital
documents (N = 257)
62.6
Adopt virtual
classrooms (N = 259)
32.2
Adopt telecommuting
(N = 256)
31.3
Adopt alternative sources
of electrical power (N = 260)
10%
33.6
0.4
1.2
0.8
10.5
0.4
68.4
69.2
2.7
67.7
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Percentage of Institutions
Under way or completed
No such initiative
Don't know
12
3.9
57.4
23.1
0%
25.1
64.1
28.1
Comply with LEED
standards (N = 260)
0.0
36.2
35.1
Purchase EPEAT
products (N = 258)
0.4
15.8
71.0
Videoconference to
reduce travel (N = 259)
Figure 1-1. Status
of the Central IT
Organization’s
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
11.5
9.2
70%
80%
90%
100%
Green IT in Higher Education
were in place at most institutions and in most
central IT organizations. Videoconferencing to
reduce staff travel and conversion from paper
to digitally imaged document storage were
also commonly reported.
The more common initiatives are inexpensive to implement or are worth some
up-front costs because in the long run
they save money in various ways. Far fewer
respondents reported undertaking initiatives in which change is more expensive or
is harder to achieve because the issues the
initiatives raise are complex and embedded
in institutional culture. Among the 10 institutional and central IT initiatives we asked
about, three that were seldom under way
were adopting virtual classrooms, purchasing
EPEAT-certified computers and monitors, and
adopting telecommuting as an energy-saving
way for employees to work. The first involves
changing entrenched instructional paradigms; the second involves changing established purchasing paradigms for IT devices,
where the trade-offs between capability and
energy consumption may be more difficult
to reconcile than for, say, ENERGY STAR
refrigerators; and the third involves changing
traditional human resource paradigms.
Where change is expensive, fewer undertake it. Included among the least pursued
institutional and central IT initiatives was
the adoption of alternative (clean/renewable) sources of electrical power. For most
institutions, decisions about electrical power
sourcing involve very few decision makers
who often have very few viable options. At
present, the financial costs (and sometimes
the logistical costs) of switching the institution to a green energy supplier are usually
prohibitive. However, with the advent of
regulations involving a carbon tax or a carbon
emissions cap-and-trade scheme, we could
see the scales tip rapidly in favor of green
energy sources.
At a very practical level, the central IT data
center is fertile ground for a variety of low-cost
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
ES initiatives, but in contrast to other domains,
we found that the more popular data center
initiatives were ones that required up-front
capital investments. Most respondents said
local storage for servers was being centralized
onto storage area networks and the like, and
a similar proportion said the number of data
center servers was being optimized through
consolidation and virtualization. A small
majority was also upgrading air temperature
management gear. While these four initiatives
are likely to result in long-term cost savings,
start-up for them is capital intensive, and we
were surprised that in difficult financial times
they were so pervasive.
Initiatives that cost less but involve logistical
or behavioral changes in the data center were
much less popular. We had imagined the
“low-hanging fruit” of data center ES initiatives to be softer initiatives that are mentioned
frequently in the green data center literature,
such as raising machine room thermostat
settings, reducing machine room illumination,
making greater use of outside air for cooling,
and reengineering floor vents. Among the
softer initiatives, the only one undertaken by
a majority was repositioning of servers into
alternating hot and cold rows to make cooling
more efficient.
About half of our respondents said their
institutions had departmental IT facilities
not managed by the central IT organization.
As mentioned above, many respondents
were unaware of ES initiatives under way
in these distributed facilities, but among
the 100 who were able to speak to them,
majorities reported initiatives under way
to recycle e-waste, optimize numbers
of ser vers through vir tualization and
consolidation, and aggressively manage
PC power consumption. Departmental
efforts to replace CRT monitors with LCDs
were well under way for most units at a
majority of respondent institutions, with
efforts to replace desktop computers with
energy-efficient laptops trailing somewhat.
13
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Initiatives to replace full-function PCs with
thin-client workstations were under way
only in selected units, and then at only a
third of institutions.
Outreach from Central IT
Given CIOs’ role in managing innovation
and directing large and energy-hungry organizations, one might expect to find them in
the forefront of ES initiatives. But our findings
tended to confirm the pattern of IT marginality
that we mentioned at the start of this chapter.
We have seen that the CIO is not always
knowledgeable about ES initiatives occurring
at the institutional or distributed levels, and so
it comes as little surprise that our respondents
seldom characterized the CIO as a leader in
the institution’s ES initiatives (see Figure 1-2).
In fact, a majority characterized the CIO’s
role as no more active than a “participant.”
Consistent with this finding, when asked what
the three primary drivers of their central IT
organization’s ES initiatives were, a majority
selected “participation in institutional initiatives.” (Large percentages also selected “cost
reduction/increased efficiency” and “doing
what’s right for the planet.”)
As the relatively modest roles taken by
CIOs suggest, central IT is acting more as
a good citizen in institutional ES initiatives
than as a change agent. We investigated
IT’s influence through three survey questions: Did central IT support the initiative by
participating in it, by providing technology
solutions/services in support of it to departments/individuals outside central IT, or by
educating departments/individuals outside
central IT about it?
For most initiatives, 9 respondents out
of 10 said central IT supported it by participating in it. Exceptions were the adoption of
alternative sources of electrical power and
adoption of LEED green building standards,
where central IT would naturally have little
influence; for each of these, only a small
majority of respondents said central IT participated. Central IT’s provision of technology
solutions/services in support of ES initiatives
was substantially less pervasive, though still
common. Most frequently supported in this
way were initiatives to convert to digital
documents, videoconference to reduce
travel, and adopt virtual classrooms. All are
initiatives in which central IT would have
50%
43.0
45%
40%
Figure 1-2. Role
of the SeniorMost IT Leader
in Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Efforts
Percentage of Institutions
35%
30%
24.0
25%
20%
15.5
15%
10%
10.1
7.4
5%
0%
No role
14
Observer
Participant
Advisor
Leader
Green IT in Higher Education
particular expertise and to which centrally
provided and/or supported technologies
might bring the greatest advantage. For
these three initiatives as well—and for the
same reasons—central IT was most likely
to provide support in the third way, by
educating other campus entities about it.
Where the CIO played a more active role
in institutional ES initiatives and where the
central IT organization’s ES strategic plan was
more complete, central IT’s support for institutional ES initiatives was significantly richer.
These institutions, while rare at present, may
be showing the way for central IT to emerge
from its junior-partner status in the institution’s pursuit of sustainability.
An added dimension of central IT’s support
for ES is its coordination of ES initiatives that
are under way in distributed IT facilities. While
CIOs knew relatively little about the ES initiatives distributed IT organizations had under
way, where they were aware they were also
often helping out. This is a wise investment
for all concerned because coordination of
distributed initiatives puts central IT in a position to influence behaviors that decrease the
institution’s carbon footprint, by helping stem
the proliferation of departmental server rooms
and computing laboratories, for example.
These are often located in sub-optimal
facilities and may not be managed with ES
concerns in mind.
Getting It Together
It is axiomatic that you can’t manage what
you don’t measure. We heard often in our
discussions with higher education CIOs that
the primary difficulty in benchmarking and
tracking energy consumption was the institutions’ inability to sub-meter electrical energy
consumption at a useful level of granularity.
Managing energy use is key to reducing an
institution’s carbon footprint and controlling
energy expenditures in a shaky economy, yet
most institutions lack the basic infrastructure for setting measurable energy-related
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
goals. For most institutions, then, improving
the granularity and availability of energy
consumption information will be an important
step in addressing the ES demands of the
coming decade.
As past ECAR studies have documented,
measurement of progress toward goals is
often a challenge for higher education IT
organizations, and the ES context is no exception. Some initiatives, like adoption of LEED
green building standards, come with sets of
predefined goals that most implementers
can measure, and where that initiative was
under way at the institutional level, a majority
of respondents reported measured goals in
place. Where initiatives were under way for
adoption of alternative sources of electrical
power and for minimizing growth in electrical
energy use, more than a third of institutions
reported having measured goals in place. But
for the remaining seven initiatives, fewer than
25% of respondents reported measured goals
at the institutional level. At the central IT level
the situation is even worse: Fewer than 15%
of respondents reported measured goals in
place for any of the 10 initiatives.
Measurement of goals is one indicator
of mature practices, but there are others.
And where more mature sets of practices
are applied to ES initiatives, clear benefits
result. For the institution and for the central
IT organization, our survey asked parallel sets
of questions based upon the Carnegie Mellon
Capability Maturity Model Integration literature.4 Specifically, we asked respondents for
their level of agreement with statements that
their ES practices were
•• well organized,
•• applied consistently,
•• well documented,
•• assessed regularly, and
•• closely aligned with strategic objectives.
From the responses, we calculated an ES
practice maturity score for each institution and
its central IT organization. Not surprisingly, we
found that the two scores tracked well with
15
Green IT in Higher Education
each other. Where the institution had invested
in a mature set of practices, the central IT
organization had usually done so as well.
ES practice maturity at both levels is tied to
many other aspects of institutional and central
IT ES efforts, such as ES strategic plan status,
existence of an ES office and committee, and
the role of the CIO in institutional ES initiatives.
And predictably, where measured goals were in
place for more initiatives, the ES practice maturity score was higher at both the institutional
and the central IT levels. These associations
suggest that ES practice maturity runs deep,
drawing from such attributes of institutional
culture as planning, inclusiveness, and accountability. It is one element of a proactive approach
to dealing with environmental concerns and,
not surprisingly, is one of the most powerful
explainers of ES outcomes.
Environmental Sustainability
Outcomes
As we have seen, the approaches the
central IT organization takes toward greening
its practices spring from many sources, ranging
from embedded cultural values, through
economic expedients, to the enthusiasms
of influential individuals. Much of our study
focused on initiatives, which are, by definition,
beginnings. To get a sense of where all the
ES activity we measured has led, we explored
respondents’ sense of the progress their IT
organizations and their institutions had made
toward meeting several high-level goals.
About half of respondents reported that, in
their judgment, the institution had increased
or greatly increased the amount of material
it recycled in the past 12 months. About 4 in
10 reported the same for the central IT organization. This difference is small and probably
reflects recycling opportunities related to the
presence of food service items and the like in
the institution’s waste stream. Only a small
handful of respondents reported that the
amount of material recycled had declined
at either level. Results about the amount of
16
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
material the institution recycled were unrelated to other factors from our survey, but
change in the amount of material the central
IT organization recycled was significantly
and substantially greater where both the
institution and the central IT organization
had initiatives in place to recycle e-waste.
This suggests that one way for central IT to
improve its performance in this high-visibility
ES activity is to put the framework of a formal
initiative around it.
For change in energy efficiency, results
were less uniformly positive. Half of respondents said that in their judgment the energy
efficiency of the central IT data center had
increased in the past 12 months, while 4 in
10 said the energy efficiency of the institution
as a whole had increased. Again, the difference is small; in this case it probably reflects
the rapid turnover in energy-consuming IT
infrastructure, which speeds the influx of
efficient devices. To our surprise, however,
about 1 in 6 respondents said the energy
efficiency of both entities had decreased in
the past 12 months. With pressures—and
opportunities—to improve energy efficiency
looming so large in the year preceding our
survey, any movement in the opposite direction is disturbing. Money seems not to have
been a factor: Change in energy efficiency
varied independently of all the financial
indicators we asked about. Instead, we may
be seeing evidence that at some institutions
entrenched energy use practices are difficult
to change, even when they result in losses
rather than gains in energy efficiency.
Respondents were much more variable in
their agreement that, in the past 12 months,
their institution had significantly changed its
business, instructional, and research activities
to become more environmentally responsible.
Just under half of respondents agreed that
business practices had improved in this way,
which is not an impressive showing, considering the high level of engagement in ES
activity respondents claimed.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Agreement was even weaker that the institution had significantly changed its instructional and research activities to become more
environmentally responsible. Excluding “don’t
know” responses, fewer than a third of respondents agreed that significant change toward
environmental responsibility had occurred in
both types of activities, while nearly equal
numbers disagreed. We understand that business practices are more susceptible to central
management than instructional or research
practices, and so we are not surprised that
ES initiatives were less likely to have led to
perceived change in the latter areas.
“Don’t know” responses about research
activities exceeded 30% of the total, after
excluding institutions where a lack of research
activity generated “does not apply” responses.
No doubt the highly distributed—and highly
independent—nature of research activities helps
explain why so many of our respondents were
unfamiliar with ES practices in that area.
Perceived recent change in energy efficiency
and the amount of material recycled appeared
to vary independently of nearly all other
institutional and central IT characteristics we
measured. Not so for the perceived greening
of business, instructional, and research activities. As Figure 1-3 shows, progress in all three
areas was greater where institutional ES
practice maturity score was higher. The same
was true for central IT ES practice maturity.
Both types of maturity were felt most strongly
in the research area, suggesting that where
the institution really values the components
of ES practice maturity, even the somewhat
refractory research enterprise will participate
more fully.
Other characteristics tied to positive
change in these three activities suggest that
the broader the commitments the institution
and central IT make to ES, the more likely the
three activities are to change in the direction
of environmental responsibility. Among the
most influential characteristics were
•• the completion of institutional and central
IT ES strategic plans,
•• involvement in greater numbers of ES
initiatives (from our list of 10) at each
level, and
4.0
3.75
3.43
3.26
3.0
3.25
2.99
2.96
3.00
Mean*
2.58
2.23
2.0
1.0
Low maturity
Medium maturity
Figure 1-3. In
Past 12 Months,
Institution Has
Significantly
Changed Activities
to Become More
Environmentally
Responsible,
by Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Practice Maturity
Score
High maturity
Business activities
Instructional activities
Research activities
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
17
Green IT in Higher Education
stronger agreement that individuals at the
institution are well informed about both
general and IT-related ES issues.
The way faculty, staff, and students feel
about the ES efforts under way at their institution is an important measure, not only of
the appropriateness, integrity, and success
of those efforts, but also of the institution’s
ability to adapt and evolve its strategies in
response to changing conditions. Just under
half of respondents agreed that faculty, staff,
and students were proud of the institution’s
stance on ES, and most of the rest took a
neutral position. Overall, this was a strong
showing for green pride, and it’s somewhat
surprising in the face of the other, relatively
lackluster, outcomes discussed above. The
same ES-related characteristics of the institution that are positively associated with change
in business, instructional, and research activities—and most of those characteristics at the
central IT level—are also strongly associated
with green pride, reinforcing the message
that where ES efforts throughout the institution are better planned, better informed, and
more actively pursued, outcomes are likely
to benefit.
••
Conclusion
Higher education clearly has taken a seat
on the environmental bandwagon of the 21st
century, but our findings suggest that most
institutions’ engagement in sustainability
efforts is more opportunistic than systemic.
Central IT has the potential to be a leader in
ES initiatives. Its leaders often characterize
their organizations as playing a “transformative” role in achieving the institution’s goals.
But in the context of green IT, our findings
suggest that most are more reactive than
transformative.
Our respondents—most of them CIOs—
readily agreed that their institutions are
participants in institutional initiatives but less
frequently claimed a role in providing the
campus with technical solutions and services
18
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
to assist with them or in educating campus
constituents about them. Fewer than a sixth of
respondents characterized the CIO as a leader
in the institution’s ES initiatives; a majority
chose more passive descriptions: participant,
observer, or no role at all.
Many institutions and central IT organizations are clearly struggling to gain traction
with their ES initiatives. While most central IT
organizations have about as many ES initiatives under way as their parent institutions, IT
was much less likely to have measured goals
in place for them, making accountability for
their accomplishments difficult. Fewer than
half of respondents said their institutions had
made significant progress in the greening
of their business activities in the past year,
and substantially fewer reported progress in
instruction and research.
At most institutions, ES is an unfunded
mandate, and financial obstacles may be
partly to blame for lackluster performance.
Many respondents pointed to a lack of
funding for the central IT organization and
for its ES initiatives as barriers to carrying out
those initiatives. But institutional leadership
is a problem as well, with many respondents
telling us that the strategic guidance the institution provides in this area is insufficient.
To play a more active and effective role in
their institutions’ ES initiatives, CIOs—and
other department heads—will require more
information. At a strong majority of the
institutions we studied, individual units were
neither informed of nor billed for their energy
use, nor had comprehensive energy audits
been conducted in the past 12 months.
Because reduction in energy use is the
bottom line for so many ES initiatives, the
lack of sufficiently granular usage information is a barrier to the management of ES
initiatives—and poorly managed initiatives
are often doomed to irrelevance.
Perhaps because of barriers to communication within the institution, but perhaps
simply because of a lack of interest, respon-
Green IT in Higher Education
dents were commonly uninformed about ES
initiatives and outcomes outside their own
organizations, either at the institutional level
or the level of distributed IT facilities. We
are left with the impression that most CIOs
are tending their own gardens but are not
interested in—or are not included in—the ES
activities of other IT-intensive units or of the
institution as a whole.
Our findings throw some water on the
fiery enthusiasm our respondents expressed
in claiming their institutions and central IT
organizations were “actively engaged” in
ES initiatives and on their strong agreement
that their leaders placed high priority on
ES. Though enthusiasm is important to any
worthwhile enterprise, without hard work it
is seldom sufficient. But there is much good
work to be done in the ES area, and central
IT still has an important role to play in it. Even
without additional financial resources and
strategic guidance from outside central IT,
there is low-hanging fruit to be harvested in
data center energy management. And with
a little outreach from central IT, server and
workstation power management strategies
can be promulgated across the campus,
yielding substantial energy savings.
But more important than these incremental
improvements is the potential for IT to fulfill its
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
promise to transform the enterprise through
the application of the technologies it knows
best. For example, CIOs have the expertise and
the resources to get out in front of energysaving initiatives such as virtual classrooms and
telecommuting, initiatives in which few central
IT organizations now take the lead. And as
regulatory pressures and the emergence of
the smart grid turn energy management into
a data processing and analysis function, CIOs
will be called upon to engage. Those who are
environmentally knowledgeable and whose
organizations are mature, agile, and collaborative will find an opportunity to step up to a
new level of leadership.
Endnotes
1. Climate Change 2007—The Physical Science
Basis, Susan Solomon et al., eds. (Contribution of
Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
February 5, 2007), http://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/
publications/wg1-ar4/wg1-ar4.html.
2. Gartner Inc., “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry
Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions,”
press release, April 26, 2007, http://www.gartner
.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867.
3. Gartner Inc., as quoted in “Green IT: Corporate
Strategies,” Business Week, February 11, 2008,
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/
feb2008/id20080211_204672.htm.
4. CMMI Product Team, Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI), Version 1.1 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie
Mellon Software Engineering Institute, 2002), 25.
19
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
2
Introduction and
Methodology
To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal
is our only legitimate hope of survival.
—Wendell Berry
In the past two years, a perfect storm of
convergent concerns has placed environmental issues squarely in the spotlight for
institutions of all types and sizes. Key elements
of the storm are concerns about the effects
of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on
global climate, volatile energy costs, and the
global recession that began in 2008. Higher
education institutions are especially affected,
because they so often operate with slim financial margins and because their constituents are
so often deeply concerned about social and
environmental issues.
Despite four decades of Earth Days,
several energy crises, and five recessions,1
total primary energy consumption in the
United States has gone from 67.8 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 1970 to
101.6 quadrillion Btu in 2007,2 an increase
of 50%. Population increased by about the
same percentage in that time period, and
so per capita energy consumption increased
only slightly, from 331 million Btu to 337
million Btu.3
If increase in total energy consumption
and static per capita consumption signal
complacency about energy use in the U.S.
general populace between 1970 and 2007,
subsequent events have conspired to raise
awareness, cause concern, and stimulate
action. Climate Change 2007, the report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,4
made it clear that global warming is a real
phenomenon caused in large part by GHG
emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil
fuels to produce energy and from agriculture.
The report’s predictions of emissions-related
disruptions in climate patterns and their
potential economic and social effects have
been taken seriously by most world governments and are behind many recent energy
conservation initiatives.
A spike in fuel prices, culminating with
gasoline prices above $4 per gallon in July
2008, also raised consciousness about energy
consumption and encouraged conservation—
at least for a while.
Finally, the global recession that began in
late 2008 has made nearly everyone more
aware of the costs of goods, services, and
infrastructure, and it has sparked interest in a
wide variety of cost-saving measures including
reduction of energy consumption, reuse and
recycling of manufactured goods, and other
initiatives with positive environmental consequences. Environmental initiatives are also part
of the U.S. federal government’s economic
stimulus package, which promises to increase
the pace of development of energy-conserving
technologies and expand the nation’s capacity
to produce energy by sustainable means such
as wind and hydro power.
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
21
Green IT in Higher Education
Increasing attention is being paid to the
information technology (IT) industry’s role
as a consumer of energy and producer of
GHGs. In 2007, Gartner Inc. estimated that
IT contributes about 2% of global CO2 emissions, roughly equivalent to the contribution
of the airline industry. According to the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE), data centers
alone accounted for 1.5% of all the energy
used in the United States in 2006, or $4.5
billion worth, and in 2009 DOE predicted that
that amount would nearly double by 2011.5
Unfortunately, a substantial fraction of this
energy consumption is unnecessary: A demonstration project at one of the Environmental
Protection Agency’s own data centers in 2009
involved simple, “low-hanging fruit” energy
conservation measures and resulted in a 20%
decrease in energy use, which translated to a
savings of $15,000 per year.6
Because data centers—including those in
higher education—are centrally located and
managed, their energy consumption is likely
to be easier to measure and to minimize than
that of desktop computers. Nevertheless,
there is a great deal to be gained from
engaging in energy-savings initiatives at the
desktop level. One 2009 estimate puts the
cost of energy wasted through inefficient
desktop computing practices at $2.8 billion
per year across all sectors of the U.S. economy.
For a college or university with 1,000 PCs,
this translates into an energy cost of about
$26,000 per year and the unnecessary emission of about 185 tons of carbon.7
Although information about energy
consumption shared within most higher
education institutions is often sparse and
insufficiently granular to inform and support
exemplary management practices, opportunities still exist to realize substantial financial
and environmental benefits through IT-related
energy conservation initiatives. As pressures
to limit GHG emissions grow, the higher
education IT community will naturally be
looked to as a source of rigorous research,
22
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
informed opinion, and practical advice. As
Bill St. Arnaud and colleagues put it recently,
“The message for higher education is clear:
To decrease campus GHG emissions overall
to meet emerging carbon regulation, institutional leaders need to reduce the campus
carbon footprint by decreasing emissions
of their existing cyberinfrastructure while
they simultaneously increase their use of
cyberinfrastructure in areas such as intelligent infrastructure and dematerialization.
In the process, green innovations of campus
researchers can appear on ‘over the horizon’
radar for society as a whole, offering an
essential head start on the socioeconomic
transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon
global system.”8
In anticipation of the changes these pressures will bring, and in acknowledgment of
the perfect storm of concerns the past several
years have raised, ECAR designed this study to
assess the state of our community’s practices
in pursuit of energy efficiency and related
environmental goals.
Green IT Concepts and
Definitions
The role of humans in the environment is a
complex one, chiefly because our intelligence
and our manual dexterity allow us to modify
the planet and its processes to an extent no
other species even approaches. While a fringe
few argue that our species is unsuited to the
planet and that most contemporary human
cultures are destined for collapse, the more
common belief is that a certain level of human
modification of the environment and use of
resources can be sustained indefinitely, and
that our intelligence and technology will help
us identify and attain that level. As it has with
other epochal issues throughout its existence,
higher education will play a key role in finding
the way forward.
The word sustainability is most often used
in three contexts: environmental, economic,
and social. There is significant overlap
Green IT in Higher Education
among them, of course, but in this study we
have focused on its environmental aspects.
Environmental sustainability (ES), as we use
the term here, refers to a set of concepts,
goals, and initiatives whose common thread
is that they can be carried out repeatedly
and over long time spans without lasting
negative environmental consequences. Not
all environmentally sustainable activities are
also financially sustainable, but those that
survive in the higher education context, at
least, tend to be.
We also use the term green as a synonym for
environmentally sustainable, but we realize that
the shorter term carries a few connotations that
environmental sustainability does not. What is
green, in our context, is typically in harmony
with the ideals of the environmental movement,
is good (or better than the alternatives) for the
planet, and is environmentally sustainable.
In IT, ES initiatives usually involve efforts
to minimize either the consumption of
energy or the production of waste. As we
have discussed, data centers and desktop
workstations can be optimized to use less
electrical power and thus—where that
power is generated from fossil fuels—
reduce emissions of GHGs. Other aspects of
IT can help here as well, albeit less directly.
Supported by IT infrastructure and services,
videoconferencing, virtual classrooms, and
telecommuting can all help minimize the
higher education institution’s carbon footprint. By managing the purchase, use, and
disposal of goods such as paper, toner and
ink cartridges, and IT-related hardware, a
college or university can help the environment in two ways. By reducing the volume
of new goods it purchases, it can lessen the
impacts of their manufacture, which include
the production of GHGs and, often, the
release of toxic materials into the environment. And the institution can further reduce
its impact on landfills at home and abroad
by recycling consumables and IT hardware
at the end of their life cycle.
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Study Scope and
Objectives
Virtually any aspect of a college or university’s operations is fair game in a study of
environmental issues, and the challenge is
less in finding interesting topics than in culling
from among the possibilities those that have
the greatest impacts and implications.9 A few
of our survey questions addressed recycling,
particularly in the context of the e-waste
stream—the flow of decommissioned IT
equipment as it makes its way out of the institution. And we asked one small set of questions related to paper management, in the
context of conversion from paper document
storage to digital document storage. But most
of our attention was given to activities related
in some way to the production of GHGs. Given
its political sensitivity, its high visibility, and the
difficulty of addressing it on a global scale,
this is the key issue in ES and we expect it to
remain so for the foreseeable future.
A number of standards exist to help
guide ES initiatives in higher education and
elsewhere. Predictably, the International
Organization for Standardization has a set
of ES standards, the ISO 14000 series.10
Another set, the U.S. Green Building
Council’s LEED certification standards, are
specific to the design and construction
of energy-efficient buildings, including
data centers.11 More specific to the higher
education context, the Association for the
Advancement of Sustainability in Higher
Education has published its Sustainability
Tracking Assessment and Rating System,12
which helps institutions set and meet goals
for a wide range of sustainability activities.
All of these standards helped inform our
survey development.
To keep our study within reasonable
bounds and yet relevant to the major issues
in higher education ES, we focused on the
following main topics:
•• Institutional context —orientation of
executives toward ES; overall engagement
23
Green IT in Higher Education
in ES initiatives; institutional and organizational structures in support of ES.
•• Key resources —financial position and
impact of the economy on institutional
and central IT ES initiatives; status of ES
strategic planning at both levels; maturity
of ES-related practices at both levels.
•• Metrics—energy audit practices; billing
departments for their energy use or
informing them of it; existence of measurable/measured goals for ES initiatives;
LEED green building rating status of the
data center.
•• Initiatives—institutional power generation
and power acquisition practices; status of
specific ES initiatives at the levels of the
institution, central IT, the data center, and
distributed IT facilities.
•• Support —the institution’s efforts to
educate faculty, staff, and students about
ES issues; constituents’ knowledgeability
of and participation in ES activities; central
IT’s support of institutional ES initiatives.
•• ES outcomes—recent change in energy efficiency and recycling practices at the levels of
the institution and central IT; recent change
in business, instructional, and research
practices to become more environmentally
responsible; and faculty, staff, and student
pride in the institution’s ES stance.
A number of other topics emerged from
the qualitative interviews we conducted to
supplement our quantitative survey, and those
are discussed where appropriate throughout
this report.
Research Approach
Our research proceeded along four major
pathways: a literature review, a quantitative
web-based survey of IT leaders at EDUCAUSE
member institutions, qualitative interviews
with IT executives and others at selected
institutions, and case studies.
The literature review helped us identify and clarify the primary issues in ES,
suggested hypotheses for testing, and
24
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
provided supportive findings from studies
conducted previously and in other institutional
contexts. We examined articles and studies
from journalistic, academic, and IT practitioner
sources and drew material from ES practice
recommendations published by various standards bodies.
The ECAR research team designed and
deployed a web-based survey, requesting
responses from the senior-most IT administrators at respondent institutions. A copy of the
survey can be found at http://www.educause
.edu/Resources/GreenITSurvey/172199. At the
end of May 2009, we sent invitations for the
survey to 1,733 EDUCAUSE member institutions in the United States and Canada, and
received 261 qualified responses (a 15.1%
response rate). Appendix A lists the respondents to this survey.
The qualitative interviews we conducted
provided deeper insights into findings from
the quantitative analysis and raised ES issues
we might otherwise have missed. For these
interviews, we spoke with 31 individuals
involved with ES practices at 21 higher education institutions, including CIOs and others.
(Appendix B lists the interviewees.) We
conducted most interviews by telephone.
Finally, we closely examined ES practices at
one U.S. university and among a consortium
of Canadian higher education institutions,
and we present our findings in the case
studies that accompany this report: “Adelphi
University: Implementing a Holistic Green IT
Strategy to Create Institutional Engagement”13
and “BCNET: Building a Multi-Institutional
Shared Green Data Center.”14
Classification Schemes
For purposes of comparison, we grouped
institutions using categories derived from the
2000 edition of the Carnegie Classification
of Institutions of Higher Education,15 developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching. To obtain adequate
numbers for statistical and descriptive
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
purposes, we collapsed the Carnegie 2000
classifications as follows:
•• Doctoral (DR) institutions group the
doctoral-extensive and doctoral-intensive
universities together.
•• Mas ter’s (M A) ins titutions group
master’s colleges and universities I and
II together.
•• Baccalaureate (BA) institutions combine
the three Carnegie 2000 baccalaureate
groups.
•• Associate’s (AA) institutions are the
same as the Carnegie 2000 associate’s
category.
•• Other Carnegie institutions include
specialized institutions and U.S. higher
education offices.
•• Canadian institutions are tracked in a
separate, single category.
Also, as we have done in other ECAR
studies, we analyzed results according to
institutions’ self-reported categorization of
the relative roles of research and instruction
in their institutional missions. As Table 2-1
shows, we provided a choice among four
descriptions and asked each respondent to
select the one that best described their institution. To aggregate institutional mission at
a higher level, we lumped the two categories
in which research was most important into
a single “Research oriented” category and
those in which teaching was most important
into a single “Teaching oriented” category.
These categories avoid the blending of
missions that takes place in the Carnegie
2000 classification, allowing us, for example,
to combine responses from research-focused
master’s and bachelor’s institutions with the
bulk of the doctoral institutions. Where the
mission categories prove to have greater
statistical significance or explanatory power
than the Carnegie classifications, we report
them accordingly.
Analysis and Reporting
Conventions
We adhered to certain conventions in
analyzing the data and reporting the results:
•• Some tables and figures presented in this
study have fewer than 261 respondents
and have been adjusted for missing
information.
•• Sums of percentages in some charts and
tables may not add up to 100.0%, due
to rounding.
•• We analyzed the data for each online
survey question for differences in response
patterns among Carnegie classes, private
and public institutions, and institutions of
varying size. Institution size is determined
by the number of full-time equivalent
(FTE) enrollments. We also looked for
associations between other combinations
of variables as appropriate. We noted
differences that were both meaningful
and statistically significant in the text and/
or the supporting figures and tables. Note
that a statistically significant relationship
between variables does not necessarily
indicate a causal relationship.
•• The Likert scales used in the online
survey are footnoted in the tables and
figures that show results for those
survey questions.
Table 2-1. Categories of Institutional Mission
High-Level Category
Category
Mission
Research essential
Research and teaching are the primary missions, but research is what
really drives faculty and institutional success.
Balanced
Research and teaching are both primary missions, and they are
equally important for faculty and institutional success.
Teaching favored
Teaching is the primary mission, but faculty research is rewarded.
Teaching essential
Teaching is the primary mission, and faculty research does not factor
heavily in faculty and institutional success.
Research oriented
Teaching oriented
25
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Overview of Respondents
larger ones, and more publicly controlled institutions participated than those under private
control. Control was strongly associated with
FTE enrollments, with public control being more
common as enrollments increased.
As discussed above, we collected information about the relative importance of
research and teaching in each respondent
institution’s mission. As Figure 2-3 shows,
doctoral institutions are dominant in the
research-essential and balanced categories.
Master’s and bachelor’s institutions share
dominance where the mission is teachingfavored, and where the mission is teachingessential, associate’s and bachelor’s institutions make up the majority.
Our survey was completed mainly by
respondents holding the title of CIO or
equivalent (77.8%), with other IT administrators and managers making up most of the
remainder (see Figure 2-4). With, at most,
3.1% of respondents representing non-IT
positions, we emphasize that the survey
results reflect a CIO and IT management
point of view.
We distributed our Green IT Survey to the
EDUCAUSE institutional representative at each
member institution. In most cases this was the
CIO; the survey introduction specified that the
survey should be completed by the seniormost IT leader at the institution, assisted when
necessary by other officers responsible for the
information requested.
Of the 261 respondents, 245 were from
the United States or its territories and 16
were from Canada. Figure 2-1 compares the
distribution of survey respondents using the
Carnegie class categories described above,
alongside EDUCAUSE member institutions
and overall U.S. higher education institutions
in each category. The responding schools
mirror the EDUCAUSE membership much
more closely than the overall population by
Carnegie class.
Proportionately, we had the strongest
participation from doctoral institutions, though
nearly equal numbers of master’s and bachelor’s
institutions responded (see Figure 2-2). Smaller
institutions participated more frequently than
1,743
1,800
1,600
Figure 2-1. Survey
Respondents,
EDUCAUSE
Members, and
Higher Education
Institutions, by
Carnegie Class
Number of Institutions
1,400
1,138
1,200
1,000
800
623
600
469
400
200
617
68
372
348
244 266
60
58
253
34
25
0
DR
MA
BA
AA
Carnegie Class
Survey respondents
EDUCAUSE members
Higher education institutions
26
Other Carnegie
16
73
0
Canada
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Figure 2-2. Survey Respondent Institutions, by Carnegie Class, FTE Enrollment, and Institutional Control
70%
58.0
Percentage of Institutions
60%
50%
43.3
42.0
40%
30%
35.3
26.1
23.0
22.2
20%
21.4
15.7
13.0
10%
0%
DR
(N = 68)
MA
(N = 58)
BA
(N = 60)
AA
(N = 34)
Other
(41)
1–4,000 4,001–15,000 More than
(N = 109)
(N = 89)
15,000
(N = 54)
Carnegie Class
Private
(N = 107)
FTE Enrollment
Public
(N = 148)
Institutional Control
Figure 2-3. Survey Respondent Institution Research/Teaching Mission Category, by Carnegie Class
45
41
40
35
35
34
29
Percentage of Institutions
30
25
20
20
17
15
10
10
5
0
4
1
0
12
9
6
4
0
Research essential (N = 29)
7
6
1
Balanced (N = 74)
8
4
7
2
Teaching favored (N = 89)
3
0
Teaching essential (N = 68)
Mission
DR
MA
BA
AA
Other
Canada
27
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
For about a year prior to the release of
our Green IT Survey, the U.S. and world
economies were sliding into recession. We
anticipated that the financial status of the
institutions in our survey population would
affect their ES initiatives and so asked that
respondents characterize their institutions
in terms of recent change in financial
status. As Figure 2-5 shows, economic
Other administrative
management, 0.8%
pain was indeed widespread, with more
than three-quarters of respondents telling
us their institution’s financial position had
worsened at least somewhat.
Study Organization
In the remainder of this report, we present
the results of our quantitative survey and the
qualitative research that supplements it.
Other academic
management, 0.4%
Other IT management, 9.6%
Other, 1.1%
Director of academic
computing or equivalent,
4.6%
Figure 2-4. Survey
Respondent Roles
(N = 261)
Director of administrative
computing or equivalent,
5.0%
Vice president/vice provost
or equivalent, non-CIO,
0.8%
Senior-most IT leader (CIO
or equivalent), 77.8%
Improved greatly, 0.4%
Improved somewhat, 6.2%
Worsened greatly, 25.6%
Stayed about the same,
17.1%
Figure 2-5.
Change in Survey
Respondent
Institutions’
Financial Status in
Past 12 Months
(N = 258)
Worsened somewhat,
50.8%
28
Green IT in Higher Education
As a key to the analyses that follow, Chapter
3 addresses the institutional context in which
ES initiatives take place. In it, we look at leadership’s orientation toward ES and how active the
institution is in pursuing ES initiatives. We also
examine the status of strategic planning for
ES and the existence of supporting structures
such as an ES office and an ES committee. And
we analyze responses to a series of questions
about the maturity of the institution’s ES practices. Chapter 4 discusses specific ES initiatives
that institutions have undertaken to address
ES concerns and addresses mechanisms by
which institutions collect ES metrics, such as
conducting energy audits and monitoring
ongoing use of electrical power in departments
outside the central IT organization.
Chapters 5 and 6 repeat at the central IT
level many of the analyses conducted for the
institution as a whole in Chapters 3 and 4.
There we investigate the role of the CIO in the
institution’s ES initiatives and the CIO’s influence on the central IT organization’s internal
initiatives; we also conduct an analysis of that
organization’s own ES practice maturity. In
addition to reviewing central IT ES initiatives
that are parallel to those of the institution as
a whole, we look at specialized ES initiatives
taking place in the central IT data center.
These include initiatives that involve servers
and data storage devices directly as well as
a group of initiatives related to data center
temperature control and illumination.
For institutions that have IT facilities not
managed by the central IT organization,
Chapter 7 provides a look at initiatives taking
place at that distributed level. Some of these
initiatives overlap with initiatives the institution and central IT organization have under
way, while others overlap with the group of
initiatives taking place in the central IT data
center. In that chapter we look as well at
respondent institutions’ desktop IT equipment
replacement cycles, including the impact on
those cycles of recent economic conditions.
We also analyze the status of institutional
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
efforts to more widely adopt such energysaving alternatives as laptop computers, LCD
monitors, and thin-client workstations.
Chapter 8 investigates respondents’ perceptions of how well informed individuals at their
institutions are about ES issues and how the
participation of faculty, staff, and students in
the institution’s ES initiatives had changed in
the 12 months preceding our survey. In that
chapter we also explore the circumstances and
practices that are significantly associated with
ES knowledgeability and participation.
In Chapter 9, we explore a group of ES
outcomes. These include recent change in
the energy efficiency of the institution and
the central IT data center and the amounts
of material recycled at those two organizational levels. Another set of key outcomes
involves respondents’ perception of the
extent to which the institution had changed
its business, instructional, and research activities in the past 12 months to become more
environmentally responsible. Perception of
the pride faculty, staff, and students felt in
the institution’s stance on ES serves as the
capstone outcomes metric. Throughout the
chapter, we examine the influence of factors
discussed previously in the report upon the
entire set of outcomes.
Finally, in Chapter 10, we offer insight
into the influences that will determine
higher education’s role in ES over the next
5 to 10 years. The imperative to reduce
energy consumption is paramount among
these, and we examine new technologies that promise to assist institutions in
measuring baseline and ongoing energy
use, an area in which they now have few
useful tools. Alternative technologies that
consume less energy than current ones
are also emerging, as are practices such as
the use of cloud resources, which enables
economies of scale in IT applications and
allows power demand to be co-located
with sustainable power generation facilities, leading to new efficiencies.
29
Green IT in Higher Education
Endnotes
1. Robert Kavcic, “Recession Playbook: How Low
Will Stocks Go?” Focus (Montreal, Quebec: BMO
Capital Markets) (February 1, 2008): 5. http://www
.bmonesbittburns.com/economics/focus/20080201/
feature.pdf.
2. U.S. Department of Energy, Annual Energy Review,
2008. Washington, DC., Table 1.3, http://www.eia
.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_9.pdf.
3. U.S. Department of Energy, Annual Energy Review,
2008. Washington, DC., Table 1.5, http://www
.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_13.pdf.
4. Climate Change 2007—The Physical Science
Basis, Susan Solomon et al., eds. (Contribution of
Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
February 5, 2007), http://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/
publications/wg1-ar4/wg1-ar4.html.
5. Paul Scheihing, “U.S. Department of Energy
Data Center Efficiency Program,” presentation
dated April 2009, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/
industry/saveenergynow/pdfs/doe_data_centers_
presentation.pdf.
6. Matthew Wheeland, “Simple Data Center Best
Practices Can Cut Energy Use by 20 Percent,”
Greener World Media Inc. (Oakland, Calif., October
29, 2009), http://www.greenercomputing.com/
blog/2009/10/29/simple-data-center-best-practicescan-cut-energy-use-20-percent.
7. Sumir Karayi, PC Energy Report 2009, 1E, an energy
management software company, http://w w w
.climatesaverscomputing.org/docs/1E_PC_Energy_
Report_2009_US.pdf.
8. Bill St. Arnaud, Larry Smarr, Jerry Sheehan, and
Tom DeFanti, “Campuses as Living Laboratories
for the Greener Future,” EDUC AUSE Review
4 4, no. 6 (N ovember/ December 20 09): 16,
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/
EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume 4 4 /
30
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
CampusesasLivingL aboratoriesfo/185217. A s
examples of dematerialization, the authors cite
digital paper and the elimination of travel.
9. For help in narrowing this study’s scope, we owe a
particular debt of gratitude to Wendell Brase, vice
chancellor for administrative & business services at
the University of California, Irvine, and Mark Askren,
now CIO at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Of particular value was Brase’s document “Fifty
Questions: What Business and IT Officers Need to
Know about Their Campus Carbon Emissions,” http://
www.abs.uci.edu/FiftyQuestions.pdf.
10.International Organization for Standardization,
“ISO 14000 Essentials,” http://www.iso.org/iso/
iso_catalogue/management_standards/iso_9000_
iso_14000/iso_14000_essentials.htm.
11.U.S. Green Building Council, “LEED Rating
Systems,” http://w w w.usgbc.org/ DisplayPage
.aspx?CMSPageID=222.
12.Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in
Higher Education, “Sustainability Tracking Assessment
and Rating System,” http://stars.aashe.org/.
13.Robert Albrecht and Judith A. Pirani, “Adelphi
University: Implementing a Holistic Green IT Strategy
to Create Institutional Engagement” (Case Study 2,
2010) (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied
Research, forthcoming), available from http://www
.educause.edu/ecar.
14.Robert Albrecht and Judith A. Pirani, “BCNET: Building
a Multi-Institutional Shared Green Data Center”
(Case Study 3, 2010) (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center
for Applied Research, forthcoming), available from
http://www.educause.edu/ecar.
15.Alexander C. McCormick, The Carnegie Classification
of Institutions of Higher Education, 2000 Edition
(Menlo Park, CA: The Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, 2000).
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
3
Institutional Environmental
Sustainability: The Basics
Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.
—Victor Hugo
Key Findings
••
••
••
••
••
••
Most respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their institution was actively engaged
in environmental sustainability (ES) initiatives and that executive leadership placed
high priority on ES.
The president/chancellor at only 4 in 10 respondent institutions had signed the
American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment; where that was the
case, the institution showed more enthusiasm about ES.
One-third of respondents indicated that their institutions’ ES initiatives had been
affected by pressures related to the economy in the 12 months prior to our survey.
Strategic planning for ES is not far advanced; while a small majority of all institutions
surveyed reported having such a plan in development, only a quarter had a completed
plan in place.
Only half of respondent institutions had an institutional office for ES, while just under
two-thirds had an institutional ES committee.
Where the institution had a more mature set of ES practices in place, it was significantly more likely to have completed a strategic plan for ES and to have an ES office
and an ES committee.
In higher education, IT-related environmental
sustainability (ES) activities seldom exist in a
vacuum. Instead, they generally take place within
the overall institutional ES context. Because that
context involves aspects of the institution’s underlying policies, services, and physical infrastructure,
the campus IT organization’s ES activities often
reflect—and sometimes help shape—those of
the institution. Hence, we lay the foundations
for this report by describing and analyzing ES
activities at the institutional level.
Most of the institutions represented in our
study appear to be actively engaged in ES
initiatives at some level. Nine in 10 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their
institutions were so engaged, and only a few
disagreed or strongly disagreed (see Figure
3-1). We will see in Chapter 4 that many institutions are engaged in only a few of the 10
representative ES initiatives we asked about,
but every institution responding to our survey
was engaged in at least one.
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
31
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Strongly disagree, 0.8%
Disagree, 5.4%
Neutral, 5.0%
Strongly agree, 35.7%
Figure 3-1.
Institution Is
Actively Engaged
in Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
(N = 258)
Agree, 53.1%
In this chapter we will look at the ways in
which institutional leadership is taking on the
challenges of ES and how the institutions themselves are organized to support that effort.
The Institutional Context
We often find in ECAR research studies
that the engagement of the institution’s
executive leadership in IT initiatives can make
the difference between mediocre outcomes
and exemplary ones. As we begin our discussion of institutional ES initiatives, we find, as
expected, that executive leadership plays a
role well beyond the IT context. Economic
forces are usually a factor in executive decision making, and of course this green IT study
takes place in challenging economic times;
as we will see, at some institutions at least,
ES initiatives appear to have been protected
against the impact of recent economic pressures. Student opinion can also be a powerful
force in influencing executive decision making,
as many of our respondents told us.
Executive Engagement
We evaluated executive leadership’s
engagement in ES in two ways. First, we asked
respondents for their level of agreement with
the statement that their institution’s execu-
32
tive leadership places high priority on ES. As
Figure 3-2 shows, a strong majority agreed
or strongly agreed. On our standard 5-point
agreement scale, responses to this question
averaged 3.93,1 or “agree.” Executive leadership at most of the institutions we surveyed
is perceived to be firmly in the environmental
sustainability camp.
As one might expect, executive leadership
priority and the institution’s active engagement in ES initiatives are closely related. In
general, the greater respondents’ agreement
about leadership priority was, the greater
their agreement was that the institution was
actively engaged in ES initiatives.
The value of executive leadership’s contribution would be difficult to overemphasize.
It can set the tone for the organization’s ES
efforts, as it does at Furman University, where
CIO Fredrick Miller reports, “Our president,
Dr. David Shi, has made it clear that for us
sustainability is not an add-on. It is a part of
what Furman is; it is part of our mission; it
is part of what we do; and it is part of what
differentiates a Furman education from that
of other institutions.” At Stanford University,
a much larger institution, the impact of executive leadership can be still broader. As Joyce
Dickerson, Stanford’s director for sustainable
Green IT in Higher Education
IT puts it, “For us, the importance of ES
comes from the top, from the leadership. For
example, the Stanford Challenge is one of our
fund-raising campaigns and one of the four
things we’re raising money for is sustainability
and the environment. But also the research
and academic sides of the institution have
made this a huge priority, and that spills over
into everything.”
Our second way of gauging executive
leadership engagement in ES was to ask
whether the institution’s president or chancellor had signed the American College &
University Presidents’ Climate Commitment
(ACUPCC) coordinated by the Association for
the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher
Education (AASHE). That formal commitment
obligates signatories to initiate the development of a comprehensive plan to achieve
climate neutrality, immediately initiate two or
more tangible actions to reduce greenhouse
gases (from a list of seven options), and make
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
their action plan and periodic progress reports
publicly available by providing them to AASHE
for posting and dissemination. Because many
of the 236 U.S. single-institution respondents
reported that they did not know whether their
president/chancellor had signed the ACUPCC,
we went straight to the source. The complete
list of ACUPCC signatories is posted on the
web,2 which allowed us to establish authoritatively whether a given institution was an
ACUPCC signatory at the time the survey
was in the field. As Table 3-1 shows, 4 in 10
eligible institutions were signatories and 6 in
10 were not.
We shouldn’t be too surprised by the
relatively low percentage of signatories
compared to the percentage of institutions
where respondents agreed or strongly agreed
that executive leadership placed high priority
on ES (76.5%). The difference is likely more
a reflection of the high bar the ACUPCC sets
than of executive leadership priorities. “The
Strongly disagree, 2.3%
Disagree, 5.4%
Strongly agree, 26.3%
Neutral, 15.8%
Figure 3-2.
Institution’s
Executive
Leadership Places
High Priority on
Environmental
Sustainability
(N = 259)
Agree, 50.2%
Table 3-1. ACUPCC Signatories (N = 236)
ACUPCC Signatory
Percentage of Institutions
No
58.9%
Yes
41.1%
33
Green IT in Higher Education
ACUPCC deliverables are clear-cut,” said
Randy Stiles, vice president for information
management at Colorado College, “and it
makes sense that before signing the agreement the head of the institution would want
to ensure that all the needed resources could
be lined up and that the institution had the
will to live up to the commitment.”
An institution’s status as an ACUPCC signatory is part of a cluster of interrelated traits,
including agreement that executive leadership
places high priority on ES and agreement
that the institution is actively engaged in ES
initiatives. Mean agreement about each of
the latter traits is half a point higher among
ACUPCC signatories than among non-signatories, suggesting that where leadership has
signed the ACUPCC, ES is more a part of
institutional culture. This is clearly the case
in New Hampshire, where Tom Franke, CIO
for the state university system, reports that
“UNH has had a long tradition of environmental awareness and has the oldest office
of sustainability in higher education. UNH
was the first land grant university to sign the
ACUPCC, and it filed a climate action plan in
2009. Sustainability is a high priority for the
president,” who has set university-wide goals
for ES initiatives. These activities reflect the
goals of the ACUPCC program, and from our
survey findings it appears many signatories
are meeting them.
Student Opinion
Respondents were no less positive about
the priority of ES among students than
they were regarding executive leadership.
About three-quarters of respondents agreed
or strongly agreed that their institution’s
students placed a high priority on ES. The
mean response (3.92)3 is nearly identical
to the 3.93 reported for executive priority,
and responses to the two questions are very
strongly associated—agreement about one
is usually accompanied by agreement about
the other.
34
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
As with executive leadership priority,
students placing high priority on ES is related
to agreement that the institution is actively
engaged in ES initiatives, although the association is a little weaker, statistically, than for
executive priority. In many contexts, of course,
executive priorities drive the institution’s activities and not vice versa; in the case of ES initiatives, though, the level of student activity may
mark it as a popular cause and, for marketing
reasons among others, may result in a higher
institutional priority for ES. At Franklin W. Olin
College of Engineering, this dynamic is clear
to Joanne Kossuth, vice president of operations and CIO, and she encourages others to
“Get your students involved. This generation
doesn’t just talk about ES; they want to do
something to help make it happen. It would
be a missed opportunity if you don’t figure out
how to talk with and work with your students.
Let them run with the ball! The students can
also help push the faculty on these issues.”
Supporting this view, we found widespread
agreement that student opinion is influential.
As Figure 3-3 shows, more than two-thirds of
respondents agreed or strongly agreed that
student opinion strongly influences executive
decision making.
Economic Pressures
As Figure 3-4 shows, a third of respondents rejected the idea that their ES initiatives had remained unaffected by economic
pressures in the 12 months preceding our
survey, demonstrating that economic pain is
being felt in the higher education community
and that ES initiatives are not immune to its
effects. Still, we saw in the previous chapter
that three-quarters of respondents reported a
worsening of their institutions’ financial positions in the same time frame. If ES initiatives
were subject to the same economic pressures
as institutions were, overall, we would expect
to see in our survey data a significant association between institutions whose financial
positions had worsened and those whose ES
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Strongly disagree, 1.9%
Strongly agree, 10.1%
Disagree, 3.9%
Neutral, 25.7%
Figure 3-3.
Student Opinion
Strongly
Influences
Executive Decision
Making (N = 257)
Agree, 58.4%
Strongly agree, 3.7%
Strongly disagree, 4.9%
Disagree, 29.6%
Agree, 43.2%
Figure 3-4.
Institution’s
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives Have
Remained
Unaffected
by Economic
Pressures in the
Past 12 Months
(N = 243)
Neutral, 18.5%
initiatives had been affected by economic
pressures. We did not see such an association,
which suggests that at some institutions, ES
initiatives have been protected from those
pressures. Indeed, hard financial times may
even favor ES initiatives, especially those that
offer savings in ongoing costs for little or no
initial investment. To cite just one example,
Jack Chen, CIO at Adelphi University, notes
that “The economic situation has brought
out our creativity in many ways. For instance,
we’re a multisite institution, and we recently
upgraded our videoconferencing gear to make
that a more attractive, cost-saving alternative
to travel.”
Planning and Education
As is the case for executive involvement,
ECAR often finds that the status of planning
activities is linked to an institution’s perfor-
35
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
mance in carrying out its initiatives. Here
again, environmental sustainability conforms
to the broader pattern. As Mark Roman, CIO
at the University of Victoria, stated, “The
most important ES initiative we’ve undertaken is to build green thinking into our fiveyear IT strategic plan. That means building
it into our core information processes, our
management process, our contract negotiations, our operational thought processes, and
our governance model. We want everyone
thinking green and about how we can get
sustainability into our bloodstream.”
An institution also lays groundwork
for success when it educates its various
constituencies about the issues that shape
its initiatives. While many of our respondent
institutions said they were actively engaged
in ES strategic planning and in providing
education on ES practices, these activities
were far from ubiquitous, suggesting that
ES had not yet penetrated deeply into the
culture of many institutions.
Planning for Environmental
Sustainability
A strategic plan that includes ES initiatives
can be very powerful. As Adelphi University’s
Chen says, “We built environmentally sustainable IT into our strategic plan, and as we are
Don't know, 11.5%
implementing those initiatives and seeing the
fruits they generate, we realize how key the
link to our planning process was.” Chen’s point
is developed further in the ECAR case study,
“Adelphi University: Implementing a Holistic
Green IT Strategy to Create Institutional
Engagement.”4 Apparently, though, at most
respondent institutions, planning for ES has
not been a priority until recently. Nearly 2 in
10 had no plan for ES, and a bare majority
had a plan in development (see Figure 3-5).
The remaining respondents had a strategic
plan for ES in place that either stood alone
or, more often, was part of the institution’s
overall strategic plan. Disturbingly, more
than a tenth of respondents—mostly CIOs or
equivalent—did not know the status of their
institution’s plan.
Among the institutions with a strategic
plan for ES in place or under development, a
majority said the plan specifically addressed
the role of IT as a consumer of electrical power
(see Table 3-2). Here again, many respondents
did not know whether the institution’s plan
addressed that issue, indicating that they are
not tuned in to—and presumably were not
included in—this aspect of their institutions’
planning. As one might expect, the level of
development of an institution’s plan made
a significant difference in responses: “Don’t
No plan, 17.2%
Completed plan is not part of the
institution's overall strategic
plan, 7.3%
Figure 3-5. Status
of Institution’s
Strategic Plan for
Environmental
Sustainability
(N = 261)
Completed plan is part of the
institution's overall strategic
plan, 18.0%
Plan is being developed, 46.0%
36
Green IT in Higher Education
know” responses were twice as common
where the plan was under development as
where it was completed.
The status of the institution’s ES plan was
related to agreement that the institution’s executive leadership placed high priority on ES and,
less dramatically, to agreement that students
did. Where there was no plan for ES, mean
agreement that executive leadership places high
priority on ES was 3.13, an eighth of a point
above “neutral” (see Table 3-3). Where a plan
was in progress, mean agreement was a full
point higher. Where the plan was completed,
mean agreement was not significantly higher
than where the plan was in progress, suggesting
that executive leadership got the process rolling
but that its completion related to other factors.
Table 3-3 also shows that agreement about
student priority among those with plans under
way or completed was significantly higher than
where there was no plan.
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Not surprisingly, planning for ES went
hand in hand with actual engagement in
ES initiatives. Respondents from institutions
with plans under way agreed a full point
more strongly that their institutions were
active than did respondents whose institutions had no plan (see Table 3-4). Where a
completed plan was in place, agreement was
even stronger.
Despite the requirement that ACUPCC
signatory institutions develop a comprehensive plan to address climate neutrality,
signatory status was no guarantee that an
institution was actively planning for ES.
Nevertheless, to a significant extent it did
serve as an indicator of that activity. Among
respondents with a strategic plan for ES in
progress and among those with such a plan
already in place, about half were ACUPCC
signatories. But among those with no plan,
only 10.3% were signatories.
Table 3-2. Institution’s Strategic Plan for Environmental Sustainability Addresses IT’s Role
as a Consumer of Electrical Power (Institutions with ES Strategic Plans in Place or Being
Developed, N = 144)
Plan Addresses IT’s Role
Percentage of Institutions
No
27.5%
Yes
53.4%
Don’t know
19.1%
Table 3-3. Executive and Student Priority on Environmental Sustainability, by Status of
Institution’s Strategic Plan for Environmental Sustainability
Executive Leadership Places High Priority on
Environmental Sustainability
Plan Status
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
3.13
45
0.944
Plan is in progress
4.13
120
0.740
Plan is completed (integrated with inst. plan or not)
4.23
65
0.948
Total
3.96
230
0.936
No plan
Students Place High Priority on Environmental
Sustainability
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
No plan
3.47
43
0.882
Plan is in progress
4.05
113
0.766
Plan is completed (integrated with inst. plan or not)
4.11
65
1.002
Total
3.95
221
0.893
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
37
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Environmental Sustainability
Education
Environmental sustainability practices don’t
come naturally to everyone, and because
some practices have deep technical underpinnings that make them difficult to understand
intuitively, it can be useful for an institution
that is serious about ES to provide its constituents with a little education. Tom O’Donnell,
manager of network and server systems at
the University of Maine at Farmington, sees
that effort in a holistic light. “I hear a lot of
IT professionals talk about savings from data
center cooling and things like that, but client
technology uses 3.5 times as much energy
as data centers, so it’s important to educate
everyone. And when you do that, they can
apply that knowledge to non-IT efforts as
well. We are certainly educating faculty
and staff about sustainable IT, but it is the
students who are going to go to jobs in other
workplaces. By educating them, we spread
the seeds of environmental responsibility far
beyond the campus.”
Overall, a small majority of respondents
reported that their institutions provided
education about environmental sustainability practices outside the academic
curriculum to faculty, staff, and students
(see Figure 3- 6). The differences from
constituency to constituency were small
and are probably not meaningful. Half of
Table 3-4. Institution’s Active Engagement in Environmental Sustainability Initiatives, by
Status of Institution’s Strategic Plan for Environmental Sustainability
Institution Is Actively Engaged in Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives
Plan Status
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
No plan
3.31
45
1.041
Plan is in progress
4.29
120
0.571
Plan is completed (integrated with inst. plan or not)
4.62
66
0.651
Total
4.19
231
0.840
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
70%
60%
57.3
57.1
Faculty (N = 220)
Staff (N = 233)
50%
Percentage of Institutions
Figure 3-6.
Constituencies to
Which Institution
Provides
Extracurricular
Education about
Environmental
Sustainability
63.6
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Constituency
38
Students (N = 220)
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Organization
respondents reported providing such education to all three constituencies, while just
over a third provided it to none.
Logically, institutions whose respondents
agreed more strongly that executive leadership placed high priority on ES much more
often reported that the institution provided
extracurricular education about ES to one
or more of the three constituencies. Student
priority on ES, however, was not significantly
associated with the number of constituencies
the institution educated in this way.
As we expected, ES education was one of
the tangible activities that a planning process
appeared to stimulate. As Figure 3-7 shows,
the status of the institution’s strategic plan
for ES was strongly related to the provision
of extracurricular ES education.
ACUPCC signatory institutions were somewhat more likely to provide extracurricular ES
education to at least one constituency; 75.3%
of signatories did so, whereas 57.6% of nonsignatories did. The difference is not great, but
it does reinforce the idea that a formal, public
executive commitment to ES often goes hand
in hand with ES education efforts.
In many contexts, when issues arise that
would benefit from formal initiatives undertaken by the institution, it is often desirable—
even necessary—for an organizational
structure to be put into place around those
issues. Within such a structure, decisions can
be made about which initiatives to engage
in, and cooperation among participants can
be facilitated and mediated. Leadership for
the effort and management of the required
resources can be vested in this structure
as well. In this section, we investigate the
existence of two such institutional-level organizational support structures, the ES office
and the ES committee, and we construct a
metric—the institutional ES practice maturity
score—by which we can compare the process
frameworks within which respondent institutions’ ES efforts are carried out.
Organizational Support
Most kinds of change can benefit from the
creation of organizational structures to focus
engagement in the cause and to coordinate
activities related to it. As a way of organizing,
90%
80%
83.3
75.0
75.0
Percentage of Institutions
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
25.0
25.0
16.7
20%
Figure 3-7. Status
of Extracurricular
Environmental
Sustainability
Education,
by Status of
Institution’s
Strategic Plan for
Environmental
Sustainability
10%
0%
No plan (N = 44)
Plan is in progress (N = 108)
Plan is completed (N = 60)
Plan Status
No Extracurricular Education
Extracurricular Education for 1–3 Constituencies
39
Green IT in Higher Education
legitimizing, and empowering the institution’s
ES efforts, many institutions have established
offices—and officers—to coordinate those
efforts. Although Stanford University is one of
only a few institutions that have, to date, established an even more specialized institutional
position titled director of IT sustainability, many
more have positions that embrace sustainable
IT among other ES responsibilities.
Among our survey respondents, only half
(48.6%) reported having institutional offices
whose primary responsibility is oversight of
overall ES initiatives. Slightly more (63.6%)
have committees that guide ES initiatives.
As Table 3-5 shows, the presence of an ES
office seems to facilitate the establishment of
an ES committee. Among respondents who
answered our questions about both entities,
most who reported an institutional ES office
also reported an institutional ES committee;
fewer than half of institutions without an ES
office have an ES committee. (Of the entire
population of respondents to these two questions, 30.0% have neither an ES office nor an
ES committee.)
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Our respondents’ ES offices most often
report to the vice president or vice chancellor
for business affairs or to the office of facilities services (see Table 3-6). Because facilities
services offices usually report to the vice
president/chancellor for business affairs, these
results suggest that at a majority of institutions, ES activities are solidly in the institutional
operations reporting line. The office less often
reports to the executive vice president/chancellor, president/chancellor, or vice president/
chancellor for academic affairs. It reports to
student affairs, risk management, and central
IT at one institution each.
The existence of an ES office and an ES
committee is tied strongly to the status of the
institution’s ES strategic plan, either by encouraging the development of a plan or by growing
out of the planning process. Where an ES
office is in place, 42.7% of respondents report
a completed ES strategic plan; where no such
office exists, only 16.7% report a completed
plan. Similarly, where an ES committee is in place,
34.3% report a completed strategic plan, versus
15.1% where no such committee exists.
Table 3-5. Existence of Institutional Environmental Sustainability Committee, by Existence of
Institutional Environmental Sustainability Office
Committee Exists
Office Exists
No
Yes
No (N = 119)
56.3%
43.7%
Yes (N = 104)
14.4%
85.6%
Table 3-6. Office to Which Head of Environmental Sustainability Office Reports (Institutions
with ES Office, N = 115)
Office
40
Percentage of Institutions with Office
Vice president/vice chancellor for business affairs
33.0%
Facilities services
28.7%
Executive vice president/vice chancellor
11.3%
President/chancellor
10.4%
Vice president/vice chancellor for academic affairs
7.0%
Vice president/vice chancellor for student affairs
0.9%
Risk management
0.9%
Central IT
0.9%
Other
7.0%
Green IT in Higher Education
Naturally, a number of institutional offices
are represented on ES committees; the mean
is 6.78 offices5 and the median is 6 out of the
15 entities we asked about. Table 3-7 lists the
offices we asked about and the percentage
of respondent institutions that include them
on their ES committees. The facilities services
office is most frequently represented, followed
by faculty and students. Business affairs,
student affairs, central IT, and academic affairs
are all represented at a majority of institutions.
Many respondents indicated that offices we
did not name are represented on their ES
committees as well, suggesting that our list
overlooked one or more key offices.
With two exceptions, the makeup of
the ES committee appears to vary in few
significant ways with the other institutional
characteristics discussed in this chapter. One
exception is that a central IT voice on the
committee seems to encourage the institution’s ES strategic plan to address the role of
central IT as a consumer of electrical power.
This phenomenon is familiar to the University
of New Hampshire’s Tom Franke. “Before the
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
establishment of the UNH Energy Task Force,”
he reports, “IT was considered to be on the
sidelines in regards to ES. IT was perceived as
one more place the task force had to go to
beg for some cooperation. As a new member
of the task force, we turned that around, said
we believed in ES too, and stepped up to take
the lead on it in IT.”
We also found that where an institutional
ES office existed, it was more common for
academic departments to be represented on
the ES committee.
Institutional ES Practice
Maturity
While a definitive assessment of
ES-related process maturity at respondent
institutions was well beyond the scope of
this ECAR study, some indication, at least,
of that characteristic can be gleaned from
a few well-chosen questions. Drawing from
the Capability Maturity Model Integration
literature, 6 we developed five questions
about ES practices. The questions asked
respondents to rate:
Table 3-7. Offices Represented on Institutional Environmental Sustainability Committee
(Institutions with ES Committee, N = 145)
Office
Percentage of Institutions
Facilities services
90.3%
Faculty
80.7%
Students
77.2%
Business affairs
62.1%
Student affairs
60.7%
Central IT
57.9%
Academic affairs
53.8%
Academic departments
45.5%
Executive vice president/chancellor
31.0%
Public affairs
30.3%
Research
24.8%
President/chancellor
22.1%
Risk management
18.6%
Health services
11.0%
Public utilities (suppliers)
2.1%
Other
20.7%
41
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
how well organized institutional ES practices were,
•• how consistently they were applied,
•• how well documented they were,
•• how regularly they were assessed, and
•• how closely they were aligned with the
institution’s overall strategic objectives.
Figure 3-8 presents the results and Table
3-8 presents the mean responses. The means
are all in the vicinity of “neutral,” and we do
not consider the differences among them to
be significant.
We developed an ES practice maturity score
for each respondent institution by calculating
the mean value of each respondent’s answers
to our five maturity questions.7 This resulted
in a range of scores between 1.0 and 5.0 (see
Table 3-9), which we divided into three groups:
“low,” for institutions where responses averaged lower than half a point below neutral
(in the direction of “disagree”); “medium,”
where responses averaged between half a
point below and half a point above neutral;
and “high,” where responses averaged higher
than half a point above neutral (in the direction of “agree”). Respondent institutions
were well distributed among the three levels
of maturity. This score will be of use in later
chapters because it is strongly associated with
many other characteristics of the institution
and the central IT organization.
Focusing on institutional characteristics
••
Figure 3-8. Characteristics of Institutions’ Environmental Sustainability Practices
50%
44.5
45%
Percentage of Institutions
40%
34.1
35%
29.4
30%
25%
5%
0%
25.4
23.3
24.9
33.5
27.0
9.6
4.9
3.6
Well organized
(N = 249)
4.5
Applied consistently
(N = 245)
5.2
5.2
Well documented
(N = 248)
9.4
7.2
5.1
5.3
Assessed regularly
(N = 237)
Closely aligned with
the institution’s overall
strategic objectives
(N = 245)
Characteristics of Practices
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
Table 3-8. Agreement about Institutional Environmental Sustainability Practices
Characteristics of Practices
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Well organized
3.24
249
1.000
Applied consistently
3.00
245
0.917
Well documented
2.96
248
0.985
Assessed regularly
3.06
237
1.004
Closely aligned with the institution’s overall strategic objectives
3.27
245
1.018
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
42
35.5
16.3
15%
10%
22.9
20.1
20%
35.9
34.7
32.5
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
discussed in this chapter, we found that
respondents from institutions with a higher
ES practice maturity score tended also to
report significantly higher mean agreement
that executive leaders and students place high
priority on ES initiatives and that the institution
is actively engaged in ES initiatives. Where ES
practice maturity score was higher, the institution also provided extracurricular ES education
to a greater number of constituencies. As
shown in Figure 3-9, institutions with higher
scores also reported more frequently that they
had completed ES strategic plans, whether
stand-alone or integrated into the institution’s
ES strategic plan, and that their institutions
had both ES offices and ES committees.
Some or all of these institutional characteristics may either drive or be driven by the institution’s ES maturity; we cannot say for certain
from our data which way causality operates.
But it is clear that such characteristics as
having an ES plan, providing extracurricular ES
education, having an office that oversees ES
initiatives, and having a committee to guide
ES initiatives all go hand in hand with an institution’s management of ES practices in ways
that are reflected in our summary measure of
ES practice maturity.
Summary and
Implications
It is clear that environmental sustainability
(ES) is a concern at most of the institutions that
responded to our green IT survey. Almost 9 in
10 respondents reported that the institution
was actively engaged in initiatives to address
those concerns. In the fact that three-quarters
of those respondents said the institution’s
executive leadership placed high priority on
ES, we find evidence that executive opinion
can be a powerful driver of an institution’s
engagement in ES.
Table 3-9. Institutional Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Score (N = 250)
Institutional ES Practice Maturity Score
Percentage of Institutions
Low (1.00–2.49)
22.6%
Medium (2.50–3.50)
41.8%
High (3.51–5.00)
31.4%
90%
81.7
80%
72.2
64.9
Percentage of Institutions
70%
60%
47.4
50%
41.0
42.9
40%
27.6
30%
20%
21.1
14.8
10%
0%
Institution has a completed ES plan
(stand-alone or integrated)
Institution has an office that
oversees ES initiatives
Figure 3-9.
Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Characteristics,
by Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Practice Maturity
Score
Institution has a committee that
guides ES initiatives
Characteristics of Institution
Low maturity (1.00–2.49, N = 54)
Medium maturity (2.50–3.50, N = 94)
High maturity (3.51–5.00, N = 71)
43
Green IT in Higher Education
At only 4 in 10 institutions had the
president/chancellor signed the American
College & University Presidents’ Climate
Commitment, perhaps reflecting more the
rigor of that commitment’s deliverables
than the level of interest of higher education
leaders. But where the ACUPCC had been
signed, we were significantly more likely to
find that executive leadership placed high
priority on ES. And at signatory institutions,
respondents were significantly more likely
to agree that the institution was actively
engaged in ES initiatives.
Students are very often engaged in
ES, according to our respondents, with
about three-quarters agreeing or strongly
agreeing that students place high priority
on it. Most respondents reported that
student opinion strongly influenced executive decision making at their institutions.
Influence often flows the other way, as
well, in creating student /administration
synergies: A majorit y of respondent s
reported that the institution provided
extracurricular ES education to students.
Small majorities also reported training
faculty and staff in this way.
The importance of executive commitment
to ES was reflected in a number of findings.
Reports that executive leadership placed high
priority on ES frequently occurred in association with reports of completed ES strategic
plans, suggesting a connection between
leadership and planning in which we suspect
the causal agent was the executive-level
commitment. Where an institution’s leader
was an ACUPCC signatory, it was more
common for the institution to have an ES
strategic plan under way or completed, likely
because creation of a comprehensive plan
to achieve climate neutrality is an ACUPCC
requirement. Several other associations
with strategic planning for ES speak to the
value of an organized approach to ES; for
example, respondents with completed plans
more often reported that the institution was
44
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
actively engaged in ES initiatives and that
the institution provided extracurricular ES
education to faculty, students, and staff.
ES is recognized widely, if not universally,
as a set of issues worthy of the institution’s
attention, time, and effort. Many institutions provide organizational support for
ES in the form of an ES office (about half
of respondent institutions) and/or an ES
committee (about two-thirds), but 30.0% of
respondents have neither of these. Planning
is another indicator that an institution is
taking an issue seriously. We found that
institutional strategic plans for ES, ES offices,
and ES committees are often mutually reinforcing: Where a strategic plan for ES was
in place, the existence of ES offices and ES
committees was reported at least twice as
often as where there was no plan.
Characteristics of mature organizations are
significantly associated with an institution’s
involvement in the aspects of ES discussed
in this chapter. Respondents shared with us
their level of agreement that their institution’s ES practices were well organized,
consistently applied, well documented, regularly assessed, and closely aligned with the
institution’s overall strategic objectives. From
each respondent’s mean responses to these
questions, we constructed an ES practice
maturity score. We found that higher scores
went hand in hand with many indicators of
engagement in ES, including agreement that
executive leaders and students place high
priority on ES initiatives, that the institution
is actively engaged in ES initiatives, that the
institution has completed an ES strategic
plan, that the institution provides extracurricular ES education, and that an ES office
and/or an ES committee exists.
Endnotes
1. Standard deviation, 0.918.
2. ACUPCC website signatories page, http://www
.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/html/signatories
.php. The list used for this study was downloaded
June 30, 2009, just after our survey terminated.
3. Standard deviation, 0.904.
Green IT in Higher Education
4. Robert Albrecht and Judith A. Pirani, “Adelphi
University: Implementing a Holistic Green IT
Strategy to Create Institutional Engagement”
(Case Study 2, 2010) (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE
Center for Applied Research, forthcoming).
5. Standard deviation, 2.923.
6. CMMI Product Team, Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI), Version 1.1 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Mellon Software Engineering Institute, 2002), 25.
7. Responses to all five of our maturity questions
demonstrate a high level of statistical comparability,
supporting our summarization of them into this
composite score. Perhaps the greatest value of a
composite score is in simplifying graphic portrayal
of associations between ES practice maturity and
other data.
45
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
4
Institutional Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in
numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your
knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
—William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824–1907)
Key Findings
••
••
••
••
••
••
Most institutional department heads can know little about their unit’s energy consumption; while
partial energy audits had taken place widely in the past 12 months, full audits were comparatively
rare, and at most institutions departments were neither informed of how much electrical power
they used nor billed for it.
At the institutional level, respondents often reported ES initiatives under way that were inexpensive
or offered future savings; less common were initiatives that required up-front expenditures or challenged business practices.
Respondents (mostly CIOs) were frequently uninformed about institutional ES initiatives; “don’t know”
responses exceeded 15% of the total for 4 of the 10 institutional initiatives we asked about.
Significantly more ES initiatives were under way where there was an institutional ES office, where
there was an institutional ES committee, and where the ES practice maturity score we computed
for the institution was higher.
Measured goals for institutional ES initiatives were rare; only for compliance with green building
standards, adopting clean/renewable sources of energy, and minimizing growth in total electrical
energy consumption were such goals in place at more than a third of respondent institutions.
Financial incentives to departments that participate in ES initiatives were also rare; only for the adoption of virtual classrooms did more than a tenth of respondents report having them.
As we will see in this and following chapters,
the environmental sustainability (ES) initiatives undertaken by the institution don’t just
set the context for the central IT organization’s initiatives. They also provide, through
their associations with other characteristics
of the institution’s ES practices, significant
insights into the quality of the ES outcomes
our respondents told us their institutions
were experiencing. In this chapter, we look at
whether the institution establishes a baseline
for energy use and then tracks ongoing use
through periodic audits of energy consumption and by billing departments for their
electronic energy usage. For many institutions,
on-site generation of electrical power is a part
of the ES landscape, and so we investigate our
respondents’ practices related to it. Finally, we
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
47
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
examine a number of initiatives through which
institutions are taking responsibility for their
environmental impacts. Specifically, we look
at the institution’s pursuit of 10 representative
ES initiatives, the status of its goals for them,
and the existence of institutional incentives to
departments for participating in each.
consumption per unit time, but we wanted
to know how granular information about
ongoing power consumption was and
whether that information was made available
at the departmental level. As will become
clear, we found that detailed information
about power usage is rare.
Tracking Energy Usage
Establishing a Baseline
As the quotation that opens this chapter
suggests (and as it has been stated more
succinctly since the time of Lord Kelvin), an
institution cannot manage what it does not
measure. Our conviction that this point is not
lost on our survey respondents was reinforced
many times in our qualitative interviews. For
example, when asked what was the most
important IT initiative under way at Athabasca
University, CIO Brian Stewart said, “The first
thing is metering, measuring, getting to know
your costs. You can’t accomplish anything
without knowing where you are. That’s the
cornerstone of everything we need to do.”
Institutions can measure their usage of
energy by conducting a formal audit, and
while we found that a small majority of our
respondent institutions have done that in the
past 12 months, many respondents reported
that they had not or that they did not know
if they had. We assume that all institutions
are aware of the total cost of their energy
Effecting change in anything that can
be measured is aided by first measuring its
starting condition—establishing a baseline—
and then repeating the measurement at
reasonable intervals to see if, and in what
direction, change is occurring. Nevertheless,
while 82.4% of the institutions responding to
our survey have a goal of minimizing growth
in their total electrical energy consumption, it
is the rare one that has, in the past 12 months,
conducted a comprehensive energy audit,
whether to generate a baseline or to measure
change against one. As Figure 4-1 shows, only
about half of institutions had undergone any
level of institutional energy audit in the year
preceding our survey. Partial audits were not
uncommon, but full institutional audits were
rare. The narrowness of the time frame we
asked about—the 12 months prior to our
survey—may be responsible for an underrepresentation of audit activities, especially
because an expensive, time-consuming,
No audit, 18.9%
Don't know, 28.2%
Figure 4-1. Status
of Institutional
Energy Audit in
Past 12 Months
(N = 259)
All parts audited, 12.4%
Some parts audited, 40.5%
48
Green IT in Higher Education
comprehensive energy audit is unlikely to be
an annual activity. Interestingly, though, 73
respondents—more than a quarter of the
overall respondent population—said they
didn’t know if the institution had undergone
such an audit, reinforcing our suspicion that
institution-wide energy audits at whatever
frequency simply aren’t a common practice.
Conducting an audit may seem an onerous
job, but sometimes help is available from
unexpected sources. At Stanford University,
where ES projects are well advanced, Joyce
Dickerson, director for sustainable IT, has
enlisted the aid of the electrical power utility
that supplies the campus. “Before we undertook our project on cooling the campus’s
many data centers,” she said, “we took
extensive baseline measurements. The power
utility helped us by establishing usage prior
to the project and then by coming back to
measure usage after implementation of our
initiatives.” In Stanford’s case, and no doubt
many others’, conducting an audit in concert
with a provider has financial advantages. As
Dickerson reports for her institution, “If our
initiatives meet their goals, we will be eligible
for financial incentives from the utility.”
As one might expect, where recent energy
audits had occurred, respondents were more
likely to agree that the institution was actively
engaged in ES initiatives and that executive
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
leadership placed high priority on ES than
were respondents at institutions where no
audit had occurred in the past 12 months.
As Table 4-1 shows, among institutions that
had undergone partial or full recent audits,
mean agreement on those two points is
half a point higher than among institutions
that had undergone no audit. (For this and
subsequent analyses, we excluded “don’t
know” responses to the question about
energy audits.)
It was also significantly more common for
institutions with ES offices and ES committees to have conducted energy audits.
Among respondent institutions without ES
offices, 58.1% had conducted either partial
or full audits, while 86.5% of those that
did have ES offices had done so. Similarly,
50.9% of respondents without ES committees had undergone partial or full audits,
while 84.2% with them had done so. “Don’t
know” answers about audit status were less
frequent where there was an institutional ES
office or committee, suggesting that such
organizations may enhance respondent
awareness of audit activities. We speculate
that accountability concerns are behind the
statistically significant associations between
committee/office and audit status; where an
ES committee and/or an ES office exists, a
measure of responsibility for monitoring the
Table 4-1. Institution’s Executive Leadership Places High Priority on Environmental
Sustainability and Institution Is Actively Engaged in Environmental Sustainability Initiatives,
by Status of Institutional Energy Audit in Past 12 Months
Executive Priority on ES
Status of Institutional Energy Consumption Audit
No audit in past 12 months
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
3.59
49
0.934
Partial or full audit in past 12 months
4.09
136
0.890
Total
3.96
185
0.926
Institutional Engagement
No audit in past 12 months
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
3.83
48
1.018
Partial or full audit in past 12 months
4.34
137
0.752
Total
4.21
185
0.856
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
49
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
institution’s ES performance is also likely to
exist. Accountable individuals or groups would
naturally want to have baseline information
about electrical energy consumption and to
reexamine it periodically, and our findings here
show that they tend to get it.
Similarly, the maturity of the institution’s ES
practices was, on average, significantly greater
where energy audits had occurred in the past
12 months. Mean agreement that ES practices
were well organized, applied consistently,
well documented, assessed regularly, and
closely aligned with the institution’s strategic
objectives was significantly higher among
institutions that had conducted a partial or
full audit.
Monitoring Ongoing Use
Even without a periodic audit, an institution
spreads awareness of energy consumption if
it informs departments of their energy usage.
The message is more pointed, of course, if that
information arrives in the form of a bill based
on metered electrical power usage. Strong
arguments can be made for making sure
this information is shared. For example, Alan
Crosswell, associate vice president and chief
technologist at Columbia University, lays the
groundwork for such an argument by pointing
out that “there is a clear financial benefit to
saving electricity. The things that you can do
to reduce power consumption have a huge
benefit, and they typically pay for themselves
in a short time frame.” Nilda Mesa, Columbia’s
assistant vice president for environmental
stewardship, brings the point home by adding
that “it is important to collect the appropriate
data to quantify savings. People do not realize
how it all adds up.”
Nevertheless, few institutions share this
information. Most respondents to our survey
told us the institution neither billed departments other than central IT for the electrical
power they use nor informed them of the
amount they use (see Figure 4-2). One in 10
said departments were informed of usage
but not billed, and very small percentages
reported metered billing for actual usage
and flat-rate billing. “Don’t know” responses
were few, even though most respondents
were from the central IT organization,
suggesting that the institution’s method of
billing departments other than central IT is
usually common knowledge.
Flat fee, 1.2%
Metered billing for actual
usage, 3.3%
Other, 2.4%
Not billed but informed of
usage, 9.4%
Figure 4-2.
Method by Which
Departments
Other Than
Central IT Are
Billed for Electrical
Power (N = 245)
Not billed and not informed
of usage, 83.7%
50
Green IT in Higher Education
In Chapter 6 we will discuss a number
of barriers to the central IT organization’s
sustainability efforts. Lack of information
about central IT’s own power consumption
was not on the list of barriers we asked about,
but it is one that came to light in our qualitative research. It is at the core of a concern
that Portland State University’s CIO, Sharon
Blanton, shared with us, and it is one that we
feel sure would be echoed by many of our
respondents. “The absence of metrics about
our own electrical power consumption,”
Blanton said, “is one of the biggest barriers
we face in getting heavily into ES projects.
We don’t know how much electricity we
use now; we don’t see the bills because our
facilities aren’t sub-metered. We can guess at
our usage, but we’d be much better off if we
could see the numbers.”
Institutional Involvement
Concerns about pollution, climate change,
and unsustainable consumption of resources
are common among higher education institutions. But concern alone does little to align
institutional practices with ES strategies; in
most cases, some sort of action is required.
In the climate change arena, as we saw in
Chapter 3, the American College & University
Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC)
provides a template for action, requiring
signatories to develop a comprehensive action
plan to achieve climate neutrality, initiate
tangible actions to reduce greenhouse gases,
and become accountable by publishing their
action plan and periodic progress reports.
Among the “tangible actions” an institution can take is to adopt alternative (clean/
renewable) sources for the electrical power it
consumes. For many institutions, this initiative
can take place through ordinary transactions
in the energy marketplace. But for about
a quarter of the institutions in our survey
population, where the institution generates
its own power, any change toward environmental sustainability is likely to have profound
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
economic, environmental, and social implications. We look at the state of this practice in
the following section.
Whether the institution generates its own
electrical power or not, it has many other
opportunities to influence the effect its operations have on the environment. We identified
10 initiatives addressing a wide spectrum of
ES issues and asked each respondent in our
survey population to report whether the
institution and the central IT organization
were engaged in them, what the status of
institutional and central IT goals for them was,
what kinds of support central IT provided for
them, and whether financial incentives existed
for departments to participate in them. Our
findings about these tangible actions at the
institutional level are reported below as well.
The central IT organization’s corresponding
initiatives are the subject of Chapter 6.
On-Site Electrical Power
Generation
About a quarter of respondents reported
that their institutions produce a portion of
the electrical power they use on site (see
Figure 4-3). Larger institutions are significantly
more likely to do so than smaller ones. Not
surprisingly, on-site power generation also
appears to go hand in hand with the level of
organization of the institution’s ES efforts.
For example, respondents whose institutions have an ES committee were more than
twice as likely as others (33.6% vs. 13.9%) to
report that they generated their own electrical
power. A similar association existed between
power generation and the existence of an
institutional office overseeing ES initiatives.
Of the institutions that generate their own
electricity, about half do so in a green way.
Thirty-three electricity-generating respondents (13.5% of the grand total) reported
that at least some of the power they generate
involves renewable sources such as wind,
solar, hydro, or biomass. On-site generation of
energy from renewable resources appears to
51
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
On-site generation, some
renewable, 13.5%
On-site generation, nonrenewable, 11.0%
Figure 4-3.
Status of On-Site
Generation of
Electrical Power
(N = 245)
No on-site generation,
75.5%
be an element of respondents’ sense that the
institution is environmentally active. Where
generation using renewable sources occurs,
mean agreement that the institution is actively
engaged in ES initiatives is more than half a
point stronger than where sources are nonrenewable (see Table 4-2).
Ten Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives
In addition to on-site generation of electrical power, our survey assessed respondent
institutions’ involvement in 10 important ES
activities:
•• adopting alternative (clean/renewable)
sources of electrical power,
•• minimizing growth in total electrical
energy consumption,
•• recycling decommissioned IT equipment
(e-waste),
•• complying with the U.S. Green Building
Council’s LEED standards for new
construction,
•• purchasing ENERGY STAR–certified products in all areas for which such ratings
exist,
•• purchasing computers and/or monitors
with Electronic Product Environmental
Assessment Tool (EPEAT) ratings of silver
or better,
52
converting from paper document storage
to digitally imaged document storage,
•• reducing staff travel through video­
conferencing,
•• adopting virtual classrooms as an energysaving alternative to on-campus classroom instruction, and
•• adopting telecommuting as an energysaving way for employees to work.
Many of these initiatives represent best
practices in environmentally sustainable
IT—we chose them for our survey for that
reason—and despite the diversity we will
see below in their adoption, many respondent institutions have been vigorous in
their pursuit of these initiatives and others.
For example, Columbia University, in New
York City, is a participant in the PlaNYC
Challenge (ht tp: // w w w.nyc.gov/ html /
planyc2030/html/home/home.shtml), an
initiative announced on Earth Day 2007
whose goal is for area colleges and universities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2017. As Columbia’s Nilda
Mesa points out, “Our buildings account
for 90% of Columbia’s greenhouse emissions. We do not have a lot of impact from
transportation. So as we look to reduce the
electrical demands from our buildings, IT is
a natural place to probe further.”
••
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 4-2. Institution Is Actively Engaged in Environmental Sustainability Initiatives, by
Institution Generates Electrical Power from Renewable Sources
Institutional Engagement
Power Generation from Renewable Sources
None
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
4.22
27
0.698
At least some
4.67
33
0.645
Total
4.47
60
0.700
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
At Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering,
transportation is seen as a more significant
part of the institution’s carbon footprint, so
videoconferencing is seen as a contributor
to ES practices. “We’re using videoconferencing more for student-sponsored projects,
for example,” said Joanne Kossuth, vice
president of operations and CIO, “as a way
of reducing travel. Faculty are making more
use of webinars, as well. IT has had to make
some adjustments to bandwidth allocations,
but we haven’t found we needed any external
connectivity upgrades to allow for more
videoconferencing.”
For similar reasons, the University of New
Hampshire is refining its telecommuting
policy as an enhancement to its sustainability
efforts, and in the process has encountered
interesting social and technical issues. Nancye
Jenkins, director of telecommunications and
client services, observes that “IT people tend
to telecommute all the time, but when you
consider the consequences of campus-wide
telecommuting, new issues come to light. For
example, what are the security implications?
What are the users’ home networks like? Do
they broadcast everything or are they using
VPNs? To address these concerns, we’re trying
to develop a security model within the teleworking policy. There are so many variables
that come into play in what, at first glance,
seem to be a straightforward initiative.”
For the overall survey population, Figure
4-4 shows the status of these initiatives and
the others on our list, in descending order
of engagement by the study population.
Initiatives to recycle e-waste and minimize
growth in total electrical energy consumption
were under way at over 75% of respondent
institutions. Conversion from paper to digital
document storage, purchase of ENERGY
STAR products, compliance with LEED green
building standards, and use of videoconferencing to reduce staff travel were also
being pursued by majorities of respondents.
Adoption of renewable energy sources, adoption of virtual classrooms, and purchase of
computers and monitors with EPEAT ratings of
silver or better were under way at about a third
of respondent institutions. Telecommuting as
an energy-saving way for staff to work is
substantially the least commonly reported of
these 10 initiatives.
Figure 4-5 gives a sense of how formally
the institutional ES initiatives are being
approached by reporting whether goals for
the initiative are in place and whether progress toward those goals is being measured. In
this figure we look only at institutions whose
respondents reported initiatives under way,
excluding considerable numbers of “don’t
know” responses. Note that for initiatives with
low N values, our interpretations are necessarily less certain than where N is higher. In
the figure, we have reordered the initiatives
in descending order of formality.
Initiatives with Measured Goals
The most formalized initiative was compliance with LEED standards, with a small
majority of those with such initiatives under
way reporting that documented goals are in
place and progress toward them is measured.
The LEED standard encourages a formal
53
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Minimize growth in
electrical energy use
Figure 4-4. Status
of Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
(N = 261)
71.3
Purchase ENERGY
STAR products
70.9
27.6
Videoconference
to reduce travel
Adopt alternative sources
of electrical power
26.4
76.2
20%
30%
40%
Comply with LEED
standards (N = 144)
50%
2.3
60%
70%
54.9
Adopt alternative sources of
electrical power (N = 78)
Adopt virtual
classrooms (N = 82)
20.7
Convert to digital
documents (N = 178)
Purchase EPEAT
products (N = 83)
14.5
Purchase ENERGY STAR
products (N = 177)
13.6
Adopt telecommuting
(N = 53)
13.2
Videoconference to
reduce travel (N = 159)
7.5
0%
46.6
25.6
52.1
17.1
62.2
30.9
52.8
19.3
66.3
36.7
49.7
17.0
69.8
17.6
10%
33.3
18.2
16.3
20%
100%
24.3
21.8
35.2
22.4
90%
20.8
44.9
Recycle e-waste
(N = 219)
80%
Percentage of Institutions
Actively engaged
Not actively engaged
Don't know
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 176)
5.0
41.4
21.5
10%
17.2
60.5
32.2
0%
3.1
47.5
34.5
Adopt telecommuting
Figure 4-5.
Status of Goals
for Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
23.4
34.5
35.2
Purchase EPEAT products
17.2
11.1
62.5
Adopt virtual classrooms
1.1
11.9
65.5
Comply with LEED standards
8.8
16.1
75.1
Convert to digital documents
1.5
12.6
85.8
Recycle e-waste
74.8
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of Institutions
Documented goals are in place and progress is measured
Documented goals are in place but progress is not measured
No documented goals
approach, and so this finding does not surprise
us. Adopting alternative (clean/renewable)
electrical power sources and minimizing
growth in total electrical power consumption
were also fairly well formalized, with more
54
than a third of respondents reporting that
their goals for the initiative are measured.
Progress toward these initiatives lends itself
well to measurement, encouraging the formation of goals and subsequent measuring of
Green IT in Higher Education
progress toward them. Using measured goals
to track the recycling of e-waste, the most
commonly adopted initiative, and tracking
the adoption of virtual classrooms, one of the
least commonly adopted initiatives, has been
taken on by nearly 2 in 10 respondents. All
other initiatives are tracked with measured
goals by very few respondents. Whether this
represents difficulty of measurement, lack
of quantitative focus, or some other factor
undoubtedly varies among respondents.
Initiatives with Unmeasured Goals
Unmeasured progress toward documented goals occurs frequently for initiatives
involving the purchase of ENERGY STAR
products, conversion to digital document
storage, and recycling of e-waste. These
initiatives lend themselves well to quantitative goal-setting, but measuring actual
compliance may be made difficult by their
distributed nature; disparate institutional
entities may have independent initiatives for
these goals, and communication about them
is not likely to be perfect. (Substantiating
this, as we will see in Chapter 7, purchase
of ENERGY STAR products and recycling of
e-waste were the two non–central IT initiatives most often reported to be coordinated
by an entity other than central IT or the
institutional ES office.) For all other initiatives,
fewer than 20% of respondents reported the
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
intermediately formal condition of having
unmeasured goals.
Initiatives with No Goals
For most of our 10 initiatives, majorities or
near majorities of respondents said no documented goals were in place. The exceptions
were complying with LEED standards, for which
only a quarter of respondents with initiatives
under way had no goals, and adopting alternative sources of electrical power, for which
a third of respondents had no goals. Having
documented goals and measuring them are
elements of process maturity, but it was only
for the two initiatives just mentioned and
that of minimizing growth in total electrical
energy consumption (for which nearly half of
respondents had no goals) that the formality of
ES initiatives was significantly associated with
the institution’s ES practice maturity score. For
each of these three more frequently formalized
goals, the higher the institution’s ES practice
maturity score was, the more likely the institution was to report measured goals for it. For
these initiatives, at least, formal goal-setting
and maturity of ES practices tend to go hand
in hand.
As Table 4-3 indicates, all institutions
reported they were engaged in at least one
of our 10 ES initiatives. The mean number
of initiatives under way was 5.541 and the
median was 6.
Table 4-3. Number of Institutional Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
Under Way (N = 261)
Institutional ES Initiatives Under Way
Percentage of Institutions
1
3.8%
2
4.6%
3
8.8%
4
13.0%
5
16.5%
6
22.2%
7
11.5%
8
11.9%
9
5.0%
10
2.7%
55
Green IT in Higher Education
Larger institutions report being engaged
in a greater mean number of ES initiatives
than smaller institutions, perhaps because
they have more resources to apply to ES
initiatives or perhaps because their cumulative environmental impact is more substantial
and calls out for more mitigation. Among the
smallest institutions, the mean number of ES
initiatives under way (from our list of 10) is
4.65.2 The largest institutions, by contrast,
report being engaged in a mean of 6.703
initiatives, a difference of 2.05. Presumably
because of similar factors—more resources
or greater need for mitigation—we also
found that, on average, doctoral institutions have more initiatives under way than
other Carnegie classes, public institutions
have more under way than private ones,
and institutions whose mission is research
focused have more ES initiatives under way
than institutions whose mission is focused
on instruction.
The institution’s activity in pursuing ES
initiatives appears to invoke more organizational structure at the institutional level, to be
encouraged by such structure, or both. The
number of ES initiatives in which the institu-
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
tion is actively engaged is significantly greater
where the institution has an ES office and an
ES committee (see Table 4-4). Such bodies
generate ideas, focus attention on specific
projects, and provide a measure of accountability. Likely for similar reasons—better
organization and greater accountability—the
institution’s ES practice maturity score is also
tied to the number of initiatives the institution engages in.
We also found that the more ES initiatives
the institution has under way, the more likely
the institution is to measure progress toward
meeting those initiatives’ goals. Because
goal-setting and assessment of progress
are characteristics of process maturity, this
finding bears out the connection reported
just above between ES practice maturity
score and number of ES initiatives. Finally, the
mean number of ES initiatives the institution
is engaged in is significantly higher where
the institution has had a recent partial or full
energy audit and where it provides extracurricular education about ES to a greater number
of institutional constituencies; all three characteristics speak to a heightened intensity in
the institution’s approach to ES.
Table 4-4. Number of Institutional Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Under Way, by
Existence of Environmental Sustainability Office and Committee, and by Environmental
Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Number of Initiatives
Institution Has an ES Office
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
No
4.84
133
1.969
Yes
6.44
117
1.950
5.59
250
2.114
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Total
Institution Has an ES Committee
No
4.67
83
2.055
Yes
6.23
145
1.989
Total
5.66
228
2.144
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
4.71
59
1.912
Medium (2.50–3.50)
5.65
109
1.974
High (3.51–5.00)
6.33
82
1.969
Total
5.65
250
2.040
Institutional ES Practice Maturity Score
Low (1.00–2.49)
*Scale: 1–10 initiatives
56
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Financial Incentives for ES
Initiatives
and their faculty, involved in developing
materials to deliver effective instruction
through electronic media.
Within our survey population, institutional financial incentives to departments for
participation in ES initiatives were substantially
more common among doctoral institutions
and institutions with more than 15,000 FTE
students. Leaders at larger, more academically
complex institutions may find it more difficult
to inspire widespread voluntary cooperation
with ES initiatives than those at smaller institutions, and thus may need to offer financial
incentives more often. At smaller institutions,
particularly small liberal arts colleges, an
institution-wide enthusiasm for shared goals
may be easier to generate, and peer pressure
to participate in institutional initiatives may be
greater, making financial incentives less necessary. As shown in Figure 4-7, 3 in 10 doctorals
provided incentives for one or more initiatives,
followed by substantially fewer associate’s,
master’s, and bachelor’s institutions. Similarly,
3 in 10 institutions with more than 15,000 FTE
students provided incentives for at least one
initiative, with progressively fewer institutions
doing so as size decreased.
One way in which an institution can
encourage departments to undertake worthwhile initiatives is to offer financial incentives to those that participate. In the case
of certain ES initiatives, the economic rationale for this practice is solid. For example,
spending a little on incentives to minimize
growth in total electrical energy consumption
is likely to result in cost savings that exceed
the incentive outlay and at the same time
benefit the environment while helping the
institution meet its ES goals.
We found, however, that the practice
of providing incentives to departments is
quite rare. As Figure 4-6 shows, the only
initiative for which more than 10% of the
institutions actively engaged in it provide
such incentives is the adoption of virtual
classrooms as an energy-saving alternative to on-campus classroom instruction.
By subsidizing the adoption of virtual
classrooms, these 11 institutions appear
to recognize both the value of allowing
students to take classes without traveling
to campus and the work, for departments
Adopt virtual
classrooms (N = 78)
14.1
Adopt alternative sources
of electrical power (N = 81)
8.6
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 175)
5.7
Convert to digital
documents (N = 167)
Figure 4-6. Status
of Institutional
Financial
Incentives to
Departments for
Participation in
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
5.4
Videoconference to reduce
travel (N = 149)
4.7
Purchase EPEAT
products (N = 77)
3.9
Adopt telecommuting
(N = 52)
3.8
Recycle e-waste
(N = 214)
3.3
Comply with LEED
standards (N = 132)
3.0
Purchase ENERGY STAR
products (N = 171)
1.8
0%
2%
4%
6%
8%
10%
12%
14%
16%
Percentage of Institutions
57
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
35%
25%
Percentage of Institutions
Figure 4-7.
Institutions with
Incentives to
Departments
in Place for
One or More
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives, by
Carnegie Class and
Institution Size
(FTE Enrollment)
20%
15%
17.0
12.5
10.5
10%
6.6
5.1
5%
0%
AA (N = 34)
BA (N = 60)
MA (N = 58)
Carnegie Class
Summary and
Implications
An overview of institutional environmental
sustainability (ES) initiatives helps provide
the context for the IT-specific initiatives we
will discuss in later chapters and can provide
insight into the ES-related outcomes institutions are realizing. In this chapter we looked
at the status of respondent institutions’
recent energy audits, their electrical power
billing practices, their own generation of
electrical power, and the characteristics of
10 sample ES initiatives that many of them
had undertaken.
In overview, what we found was that
many institutions are in the dark about their
electrical energy use. Few had conducted
recent, comprehensive energy audits, and
even fewer were providing non-IT departments with information about their ongoing
energy use. While all institutions were
actively engaged in at least 1 of the 10 ES
initiatives we asked about, institutions did
not often have goals in place for them, and
where they did, actually measuring progress
toward achieving the goals was rare. Very
few institutions provided financial incentives
for any of the ES initiatives on our list.
58
29.6
29.4
30%
DR (N = 68)
1–4,000
(N = 109)
4,001–15,000
(N = 89)
More than 15,000
(N = 54)
Institution Size (FTE Enrollment)
Conducting an initial audit of the energy the
institution uses establishes a baseline against
which the results of subsequent audits can be
used to measure the success of energy-related
ES initiatives. We asked respondents whether
their institution had conducted partial or full
energy audits within the preceding 12 months
and found that about half had; about 1 in 8
had done a full audit and 4 in 10 had done
a partial one. A quarter said their institutions
had conducted no energy audit in that time
frame, and the remaining quarter selected the
“don’t know” response.
While a periodic energy audit provides
coarse-grain feedback about energy use, institutions can provide their constituent departments more precise and potentially timelier
feedback, as well as an incentive to conserve
energy, by billing them for their actual use of
electrical power. This practice is rare among
our respondents, though, with only 3.3%
reporting measured billing and most of the
rest (83.7%) reporting they were neither billed
for their electrical power use nor informed of
the amount they used.
While nearly any institution’s energy use
can be calculated at a gross level from its
periodic bills for electricity and other fuels,
Green IT in Higher Education
our survey responses suggest that it is more
difficult—and less likely—for an institution
to know at a detailed level which parts of
the organization use how much energy. The
highly distributed nature of most academic
institutions ensures this. We know from our
qualitative interviews that it is rare for electrical power usage to be sub-metered—that
is, to be measured at a level below that of
the building. No doubt this helps explain
why most institutions do not bill departments
individually for their electrical power usage or
even inform them of it.
With neither audit nor billing information to
guide them, many of our respondents would
have difficulty reporting actual savings in their
energy use over time. A certain amount of
progress can be identified when workstations,
servers, and other devices are replaced with
models that are known to be more energy
efficient. But without actual metering of
consumption at a detailed level, the ES gains
achieved by softer, more behavioral initiatives are impossible to measure and difficult
to estimate.
About a quarter of respondents reported
that their institution generated at least some
of its own electrical power, with about half
of that group reporting the use of renewable sources such as sun, wind, water, and
biomass. The future of green IT is likely to
engage institutions in the pursuit of clean,
sustainable energy. Institutions that are now
generating their own power by use of fossil
fuels are likely to find their reliance on those
fuels burdensome; those that are now using
sustainable fuels for power generation are a
step ahead.
Respondent institutions had undertaken a
mean of 5.54 of our 10 sample ES initiatives.
Six of these initiatives were under way at half
of institutions or more: recycling e-waste,
minimizing growth in electrical energy use,
converting from paper to digital document
storage, purchasing ENERGY STAR products,
complying with LEED green building stan-
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
dards, and videoconferencing to reduce staff
travel. The remainder, under way at fewer
than one-third of institutions, were adoption
of alternative (clean/renewable) sources of
electrical power, adoption of virtual classrooms, purchasing computers and/or monitors
with EPEAT ratings of silver or better, and
adopting telecommuting as an energy-saving
way for staff to work. The mean number of ES
initiatives under way varied by demographics,
being significantly greater among doctoral
institutions, larger institutions (FTE students),
public institutions, and those whose mission
was focused on research.
As mentioned above, we believe that
the pursuit of clean, renewable sources of
energy is in the future for most institutions,
and if we were to repeat our survey in a few
years, we would expect to see a majority
of institutions with such an initiative under
way despite its difficulty and expense. In
the meantime, the average institution can
increase its engagement in sustainable IT
by building ES standards into purchasing
processes. Other avenues for short-term
gains in the pursuit of ES can come from
softer activities. Adopting telecommuting has
potential for reducing energy consumption
not just for the institution but also for the
individual, and with a beneficial effect on the
carbon footprint of the entire community.
We discuss other energy-saving initiatives
related to both infrastructure and behavior
in the context of central IT and distributed
data centers in Chapters 6 and 7.
At the institutional level an organized
approach to ES seemed to encourage more
activity; the number of ES initiatives under
way was significantly greater where there
was an ES office and an ES committee and
where the institution’s ES practice maturity
score was higher. Where the institution had
more ES initiatives under way, respondents
were more likely, on average, to report that
the institution had documented, measured
goals in place for those initiatives and that the
59
Green IT in Higher Education
institution provided extracurricular education
about ES to faculty, staff, and students.
Rounding out our examination of institutional ES initiatives, we found it was rare for
the institution to offer financial incentives to
departments that participate in environmental
sustainability initiatives. Respondents told us
the adoption of virtual classrooms was encouraged in this way at 14.1% of the institutions
that had such initiatives under way, presumably in the form of subsidies for faculty to
develop electronically delivered instructional
materials. Otherwise, only for adoption of
alternative (clean/renewable) energy sources,
minimization of growth in total electrical
energy consumption, and conversion from
paper to digitally imaged document storage
were incentives in place at more than 5.0% of
the institutions that had those initiatives under
way. While still very rare, incentives for participation in ES initiatives were most common
among doctoral institutions and those with
more than 15,000 FTE students.
Although they are apparently not much used
by executives at our respondent institutions,
incentives to individuals and organizations for
participation in ES initiatives are pervasive at
the national, state/provincial, local, and private
(e.g., utilities) levels 4 and represent signifi-
60
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
cant elements of many ES strategies outside
higher education. As we discussed in this
chapter, higher education institutions’ ability
to measure energy consumption below the
gross institutional level is often severely limited
and probably explains why so few incentives
exist in that context. Where implementation
of sub-metering is possible or where it can be
retrofitted (perhaps subsidized by government
or the local power utility), incentives should
be much easier to implement.
Even without the ability to measure bottomline energy savings, it is entirely feasible
to evaluate departments’ compliance with
behavioral goals, such as implementing power
management software, reducing consumption
of paper and toner, and increasing purchases
of energy-efficient hardware. Basing incentives
for ES initiatives on such assessments should
be well within the reach of every institution
and has potential to enhance the institution’s
attainment of its ES goals.
Endnotes
1.
2.
3.
4.
Standard deviation, 2.109.
Standard deviation, 1.905.
Standard deviation, 2.062.
For examples of the incentive programs available in
the United States, see the online Database of State
Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency, http://
www.dsireusa.org/.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
5
Central IT’s Role in Greening
the Campus
It’s a job that’s never started that takes the longest to finish.
—J. R. R. Tolkien
Key Findings
••
••
••
••
••
••
Enthusiasm about the central IT organization’s engagement in environmental sustainability (ES) initiatives was more muted than about the institution’s engagement, with only half as many respondents
“strongly agreeing” that central IT was actively engaged.
Only 15.5% of respondents said the CIO was a “leader” in the institution’s ES initiatives, and despite
the information and resources a CIO can bring to ES projects, just a quarter said the CIO was an
“advisor.” Most of the rest said the CIO was only a “participant.”
Strategic plans for ES, both completed and in progress, were less common among central IT organizations than among institutions; nearly half of central IT organizations reported having no such
plan. Where a plan existed, however, the CIO was more apt to place high priority on ES initiatives
and to take a more active role in institutional ES initiatives.
Guidance of ES initiatives had less structure at the central IT level than the institutional: Fewer than
1 in 10 IT organizations had assigned a full FTE or more to oversee ES initiatives, and fewer than 1
in 4 had an internal committee whose charge included guiding them.
Central IT’s ES practice maturity score tracks well with the institution’s; where the institution had
invested in a mature set of ES practices, the central IT organization had usually done so as well.
Where central IT’s ES practice maturity score was higher, more respondents agreed the CIO placed
high priority on ES, the institution was more likely to be actively engaged in ES initiatives, the number
of central IT staff assigned to oversee the organization’s ES initiatives was significantly higher, and
the proportion of central IT purchasing decisions in which ES factored significantly was higher.
In 2009, EDUCAUSE Quarterly published
a series of four “Sustainability” columns,
written by Wendell Brase, vice chancellor
for administrative and business services
at the University of California, Irvine, and
Mark Askren, now CIO at the University of
Nebraska. In their first column, Brase and
Askren pointed out that “media coverage
of sustainability and ‘green’ issues is hard to
ignore these days. But less clear is a specific
understanding of what this agenda means
within higher ed IT organizations.... Although
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
61
Green IT in Higher Education
IT might not be the largest component in your
institution’s greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory,
it probably constitutes the fastest growing
element in your carbon footprint.”1
One of the key questions this ECAR study
of green IT set out to answer is what role
the central IT organization plays—and can
play—in the institution’s efforts to become
more environmentally responsible. Just as a
number of factors underlie effective environmental sustainability (ES) involvement at
the institutional level, similar factors lay the
groundwork for central IT’s participation.
Before dealing with the specifics of central
IT’s involvement in ES, the topic of the next
chapter, we look here at central IT’s basic
ES processes and at certain commonalities
between those processes and the institutional
ones we have examined so far.
We saw in the previous chapters that many
aspects of institutional ES engagement are
significantly associated with the orientation
of leadership toward ES issues, the status of
strategic planning for ES, and the organizational framework established to support ES
initiatives. At the level of the central IT organization, the importance of parallel factors is
also clear. Organizational structures such as
staff assigned to oversee ES initiatives, the
existence of an internal ES committee, and
attention to ES considerations in purchasing
decisions can be important. As was the case
at the institutional level, the maturity of central
IT’s ES practices is clearly tied to a number of
other factors and, as we will see in subsequent chapters, offers insight into successful
ES outcomes for both the organization and
the institution.
The Organizational
Context
As we did at the institutional level (see
Chapter 3), we also asked our survey respondents if the central IT organization was actively
engaged in ES initiatives. While their answers
no doubt reflect a variety of factors, the influ-
62
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
ence of the central IT organization’s leadership
is bound to be an important one. We gain
insight into that dynamic from responses to
our questions about the priority the seniormost IT leader places on ES and the role of that
leader in institutional ES initiatives—questions
to which most of our respondents could speak
authoritatively, given that they occupied that
position themselves.
We see planning as another element of
leadership, both deriving from and contributing to senior IT staff’s involvement in institutional and central IT ES activities, and so in
this section we also examine the status of the
central IT organization’s strategic plan and its
associations with other ES-related organizational characteristics.
Central IT’s Engagement in ES
Initiatives
Respondents seemed reluctant to tout their
central IT organization’s engagement in ES.
Paralleling our questions about the institution as a whole, we asked if the central IT
organization was, overall, “actively engaged
in ES initiatives.” While nearly three-quarters
of respondents agreed (55.3%) or strongly
agreed (17.1%) that it was, mean agreement about engagement at the institutional
level was substantially greater, at 4.172 on
our 5-point agreement scale, than for the
central IT organization, where the mean was
a noticeably lower 3.78.3 As shown in Figure
5-1, neutral responses explain most of the
difference, being much more common for
central IT’s involvement than for the institution as a whole.
These differences signal a sense among
our respondents (mostly IT professionals) that
central IT is playing less of a role in ES initiatives than other elements of the institution.
Perhaps this is because there is simply a larger
role for other parts of the institution to play in
ES initiatives than for central IT, but it is also
very likely that much of central IT’s potential
for engagement has not yet been realized.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
60%
53.1
55.3
Percentage of Institutions
50%
40%
35.7
30%
18.7
20%
10%
0.8
0%
2.3
Strongly disagree
5.4
6.6
Disagree
17.1
Figure 5-1.
Institution
and Central IT
Organization Are
Actively Engaged
in Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
5.0
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
Institution (N = 258)
Central IT (N = 257)
Institutional planning for ES appears to
stimulate central IT’s engagement in ES. Where
the institution had a strategic plan under way
or in place, agreement was stronger that the
central IT organization was actively engaged
in ES initiatives. This parallels our finding for
institutional engagement.
CIO’s Priority on
Environmental Sustainability
As they did for the institution’s executive
leadership, a strong majority of respondents
told us their institution’s senior-most IT leader
(CIO or equivalent) placed high priority on
environmental sustainability. Unlike their
evaluation of the priority the institution’s
executive leadership placed on ES, for more
than three-quarters of respondents—those
who identified themselves as their institution’s CIO—this was a personal assessment.
About half of respondents agreed that the
CIO placed high priority on ES, and a bit more
than a quarter strongly agreed (see Figure
5-2). The two sets of answers were similar
to one another, and we do not consider the
small percentage differences between them
to be meaningful.
Our findings suggest that the CIO is generally in tune with the ES sensibilities of institutional leadership. As was the case with our
finding about executive leadership’s placing
high priority on ES, agreement that the CIO
places high priority on ES is significantly
stronger where respondents agree that the
institution is actively engaged in ES initiatives.
Unlike our finding that executive leadership’s
ES priority varies significantly by institutional
mission, that factor appears not to affect the
CIO’s ES priority significantly. Nor is there a
significant association between the CIO’s ES
priority and the institution’s status as a signatory of the American College & University
Presidents’ Climate Commitment.
On average, as an institution’s ES practice
maturity score increases, so does the respondent’s level of agreement that the CIO places
high priority on ES (see Table 5-1). We are
tempted to speculate from this finding that
an exceptionally mature set of institutional
ES processes triggers something in CIOs that
makes them more sensitive to ES issues and
raises the priority of those issues in the CIO’s
mind. We understand, however, that a more
ES-mature institution may be better able to
63
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
60%
53.3
50.2
Figure 5-2.
Leaders Place
High Priority on
Environmental
Sustainability
Percentage of Institutions
50%
40%
30%
26.3
20%
15.8
10%
2.3
0%
5.4
26.3
14.3
5.0
1.2
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
Institution's executive leadership (N = 259)
Senior-most IT leader (N = 259)
Table 5-1. Senior-Most IT Leader Places High Priority on Environmental Sustainability, by
Institutional Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Institution’s Senior-Most IT Leader Places High Priority
on ES
Institutional ES Practice Maturity Score
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
3.69
59
0.969
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.96
109
0.781
High (3.51–5.00)
4.33
81
0.671
Total
4.02
249
0.830
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
recruit and retain a CIO whose ES sensitivities are already high. It seems less likely that
causality would run in the direction of environmentally sensitive CIOs’ strongly influencing
the ES maturity of the institution, although it
is not impossible; nor is it impossible that an
unknown third factor drives both the priority
the CIO places on ES and the institution’s ES
practice maturity score. The next section also
discusses results that bear on this question.
The CIO’s Role in Institutional
Environmental Sustainability
Initiatives
When respondents assessed the role the
CIO plays in institutional ES efforts (and
64
this was usually a self-assessment), fewer
than one-sixth characterized themselves as
leaders (see Figure 5-3). Instead, they most
frequently chose the more passive role of
“participant” or the intermediate role of
“advisor.” Even more passive roles were
surprisingly common, with nearly a fifth of
respondents reporting the CIO had “no role”
at all or was merely an “observer.”
The role the CIO can play in institutional ES
initiatives depends on many factors, ranging
from the personal to the institutional, but
there is good agreement that a role exists and
that it can be a positive one. Gartner Inc. is
encouraging, stating that “going green makes
good business sense, and CIOs have an impor-
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
50%
43.0
45%
40%
Percentage of Institutions
35%
30%
24.0
25%
20%
15.5
Figure 5-3. Role
of the SeniorMost IT Leader
in Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Efforts (N = 258)
15%
10%
10.1
7.4
5%
0%
No role
Observer
tant role to play in helping their enterprise
deliver necessary change. CIOs can provide
tools, provide management insight and lead
change, depending on the scope of initiatives under consideration and IT’s capacity to
participate.”4
In their first EDUCAUSE Quarterly column,
Brase and Askren shared some advice for
CIOs, urging their active participation in
campus-wide sustainability efforts. As they
put it, “IT leaders bring a lot of intellect
to this challenge. For one thing, IT leaders
understand scale—relevant because attaining
carbon-neutrality is a massive problem that
demands large-scale solutions. In addition, IT
leaders bring to work every day an inherent
drive to solve complex, multifaceted problems
using technology. Again, a basic match! IT
leaders like to bring facts, data, and expertise
to bear on problems—exactly what is needed
for climate solutions.”5
None of the active roles the CIO can play
are possible in a vacuum. On ES matters, as
on others, the CIO interacts with a host of
colleagues across the institution. One particularly appropriate ally is the head of the institution’s ES oversight office. At most of the 117
Participant
Advisor
Leader
respondent institutions that have organized
oversight in this way, respondents tell us that
the head of the office works closely with the
CIO. A majority of respondents agree (44.8%)
or strongly agree (15.5%) that that is the case.
Fewer than a quarter (21.6%) are neutral
on the question, and only 18.1% disagree
or strongly disagree. This suggests that the
insights and solutions IT can bring to bear on
such institutional environmental parameters
as power consumption and the production
of e-waste are often known resources to the
head of the institutional ES office, where one
exists, and that the CIO is plugged in to what
is happening on campus.
Beyond this relationship, central IT’s influence on ES matters can extend into the
departmental IT sphere when the CIO reaches
out, and particularly where the CIO is willing
to take a leadership role. For example, at
Columbia University, Alan Crosswell, associate
vice president and chief technologist for the
university’s central IT organization, explains
that “the IT Leaders Council is how central
and departmental IT specialists coordinate ES
activities around the campus. The CIO heads
it. Many schools, most notably our profes-
65
Green IT in Higher Education
sional schools, have their own IT groups, and
a lot of research groups manage their own
IT activities, so a presence on the IT Leaders
Council brings the CIO a lot of institution-wide
perspective.”
At a slim majority (53.8%) of institutions
in our study population, the CIO is a member
of the president/chancellor’s cabinet and as
such might be expected to have more influence over the institution’s ES practices than
elsewhere. This is borne out to some extent
by our finding that central IT is a member of
the institution’s ES committee significantly
more frequently where the CIO is a cabinet
member (67.8% of institutions) than where
that is not the case (43.1%). Emphasizing the
importance of institutional-level executive
support, our survey data show a trend toward
more active CIO involvement in ES initiatives
where the institution’s executive leaders place
high priority on ES.
In encouraging a leadership role for the CIO
in ES, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering’s
Vice President of Operations and CIO Joanne
Kossuth points out, “It’s a way for CIOs to
find other strategic partners in the institution. It is another way for IT to contribute to
the institutional bottom line besides cutting
budgets and dealing with reduced resources.
I think it is a way for people to see CIOs as
something other than the ‘IT guy.’ As green
technology cuts across the institution, it
gives CIOs the opportunity to interact more
with people on campus. People can begin to
understand that the CIO brings a skill set that
isn’t just applicable to technology—systems
thinking, logic skill set—and it can be applied
to other areas.”
To help the IT leader gain entrée into an ES
leadership role, Greg Day, director of desktop
support /user services for Shippensburg
University, suggests doing some research
about other institutions’ green or ES activities,
deciding what is economically feasible, and
then choosing a few appropriate projects.
“For example,” he said, “our institution’s
66
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
paper reduction project was easy to do, and
we got a lot of very positive feedback after we
implemented it. It’s also a good idea to share
information about ES projects with other institutions. I’ve found it really useful to meet with
my colleagues from the state university system
at least twice a year for that purpose.”
Economic Pressures
As we discussed in Chapter 3, colleges
and universities are dealing with the current
financial crisis in a variety of ways, sometimes
affecting their ES activities. While 46.9% of
respondents agreed or strongly agreed that
their institutional ES initiatives had remained
unaffected by economic pressures in the 12
months preceding our survey, in fully a third
of cases economic pressures had had an
impact. Brase and Askren, in the second of
their EDUCAUSE Quarterly “Sustainability”
columns, expressed optimism. “Actually,” they
wrote, “energy-saving retrofit projects are
still fundable, even in today’s credit market,
if projected costs and benefits are based on
an ‘investment grade’ analysis.” But they
offered caveats as well and followed with a
cautionary note: “At a time of fiscal conservatism, [the] drawbacks [to these projects] will
loom even larger. Budget and finance officers
have good reason to be extra conservative
these days.”6
Our data show considerable uniformity in
the way economic forces are impacting both
institutional and central IT ES initiatives. About
half of respondents agreed or strongly agreed
that central IT’s ES initiatives have remained
unaffected over the past 12 months, while
3 in 10 expressed some pain by disagreeing
or strongly disagreeing (see Figure 5-4).
Responses to the two questions are tightly
linked, statistically: Where times are tough for
the institution’s ES projects, they tend also to
be tough for central IT’s.
We reported in Chapter 2 on respondents’
assessment of change in their institution’s
financial situation in the past 12 months (refer
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
60%
48.6
50%
Figure 5-4.
Institutional
and Central IT
Organization
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives Have
Remained
Unaffected
by Economic
Pressures in the
Past 12 Months
Percentage of Institutions
43.2
40%
29.6
30%
24.1
18.5
20%
10%
0%
4.9
19.8
5.1
Strongly disagree
3.7
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
2.3
Strongly agree
Institution (N = 243)
Central IT (N = 257)
to Figure 2-5). There was no significant association between change in financial status and
agreement that institutional ES initiatives had
remained unaffected by the year’s economic
pressures, but for central IT ES initiatives
there was. Among the 194 institutions whose
financial position had worsened or greatly
worsened, more than 4 in 10 respondents
(44.8%) agreed or strongly agreed that their
central IT ES initiatives had been unaffected
by economic pressures in the past 12 months.
While not a majority, this is a surprisingly large
group, indicating that ES initiatives had been
spared during particularly tough financial
times. More intuitively, among the relatively
few institutions where financial position had
remained about the same or had improved
to some extent, majorities of respondents
said central IT ES initiatives had been unaffected. In many cases, presumably, central
IT ES initiatives have been spared because
they were not only green, but also financially
advantageous. As Columbia University’s
Crosswell put it, “From the IT perspective,
it’s fairly easy to make the case for sustainability initiatives, especially when they result
in energy efficiency.”
Strategic Planning for ES
Within Central IT
At most institutions, the central IT organization is no stranger to strategic planning.
While rapid change in technology makes
even the near future difficult to predict,
the inevitability of that change and of costs
associated with it make an IT strategic plan
the hallmark of a well-run organization.
Including ES elements in the IT strategic
plan is more of a novelty, though, and many
CIOs can tell stories like this one from Jack
Chen. At Adelphi University, where Chen is
CIO, “In the past, IT’s planning efforts never
focused on ES initiatives specifically. At the
institutional level, the focus on ES had to
do more with building, grounds, and facilities initiatives. But IT came on the institution’s radar when they realized the amount
of energy that IT uses, not only for data
production or data centers, but to power the
IT equipment all around the campus. IT has
always been part of the university’s strategic
plan, so we were eager to be included in the
institution’s ES work, too. IT is a big area,
and we realized that we could generate
substantial savings. We did not want to just
67
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
talk about it; we really wanted to practice IT
ES, and the best way to leverage our efforts
was through planning.”
At many respondent institutions, planning for ES was under way within the central
IT organization, but it was a less common
practice and was substantially less likely to
have resulted in a completed plan than at
the institutional level. Central IT units with
no plan at all make up nearly half of the
respondent population, compared with the 2
in 10 institutions that have no plan (see Figure
5-5). Even where central IT was engaged in
ES planning, plan development appears slow:
Central IT’s plan was four times more likely to
be in progress than to be completed. In some
of these cases, of course, the central IT organization’s progress may be dependent on a
slower-moving institutional planning process.
Understandably, very few of our mostly CIO
respondents were unaware of the status of
the central IT organization’s ES plan.
The CIO’s orientation toward ES initiatives
makes a significant difference in ES planning
activities. Where agreement that the CIO
places a high priority on ES is stronger, both
the institution’s and the central IT organiza50%
44.4
45%
46.0
tion’s strategic plans for ES tend to be more
complete. There is a similar relationship
between ES strategic plan status and the role
the CIO plays in ES initiatives: On the whole,
the more complete the ES plan, the more
active a role the CIO plays.
The absence of an institutional strategic
plan for ES seems to impede, though not
always to stop, development of a parallel
central IT plan. Among the 45 respondents
who reported no institutional ES plan, none
reported a completed central IT ES plan and
fewer than one-third (31.1%) had such a plan
in progress.
Understandably, central IT’s strategic ES
planning appears to go further when that unit
is included in institutional ES deliberations.
Where central IT is represented on the institution’s ES committee, nearly twice as many
institutions report having plans in development (57.8%) or completed plans (18.1%) than
where central IT is not represented (31.7% and
10.0%, respectively).
As it did with the institution’s ES strategic plan status, the institution’s provision
of extracurricular ES education varies with
central IT’s ES plan status. Where there is
43.2
Figure 5-5. Status
of the Institution’s
and the Central
IT Organization’s
Strategic Plans for
Environmental
Sustainability
Percentage of Institutions
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
18.0
17.2
15%
9.3
10%
5%
0%
7.3
1.5
No plan
Plan is being developed Completed plan is part of
the institution's overall
strategic plan
Institution (N = 261)
Central IT (N = 259)
68
11.5
Completed plan is not
part of the institution's
overall strategic plan
1.5
Don't know
Green IT in Higher Education
no plan, 50.0% of respondent institutions
provide at least some such education; where
a plan is being developed or is completed,
three-quarters of respondents (75.5% and
76.0%, respectively) report providing it. We
cannot be certain what drives this association,
but it is clear that central IT’s ES planning and
the institution’s provision of extracurricular
ES education are complementary activities at
many respondent institutions.
Organization
Central IT leadership and, at least to a certain
extent, institutional culture are reflected in the
organizational structures the central IT organization has put in place to support ES efforts.
Our survey questions approached this topic
from two angles: the assignment of central IT
staff to oversee the organization’s ES initiatives,
and the establishment of a committee internal
to the central IT organization to guide those
initiatives. While establishment of these entities
is no doubt a reflection of leadership priorities, it goes further in suggesting the extent
to which senior IT leaders have delegated
responsibility for ES efforts.
This section also addresses the impact of ES
considerations upon the central IT purchasing
process, providing a window into the will-
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
ingness of the IT organization to put its ES
priorities to work in ways that involve its own
purse strings.
Finally, this chapter ends with a consideration
of the ES practice maturity score of the central
IT organization. As we did for the institution
as a whole, we constructed that metric from
responses to a number of questions based
on the Capability Maturity Model Integration
literature7 and use it to compare the process
frameworks within which the central IT organization’s ES efforts are carried out.
Internal Organizational
Support
Clearly, among our respondents, the oversight of central IT’s ES initiatives is seldom a
full-time job. In just over half of our respondents’ central IT organizations, no member
of the staff is assigned to oversee ES initiatives (see Figure 5-6). Most of the rest say
that responsibility is assigned to “less than 1
FTE,” suggesting that it is only one part of an
individual’s duties or a small part of several
individuals’ duties. Surprisingly, large institutions are not significantly more likely to assign
staff to this responsibility than small ones,
nor is Carnegie class or institutional control
significantly associated with that practice.
More than one FTE, 4.0%
One FTE, 2.4%
None, 51.8%
Less than one FTE, 41.9%
Figure 5-6.
Number of
Staff Assigned
to Oversee
the Central IT
Organization’s
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
(N = 253)
69
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Few of our respondent institutions have a
committee internal to central IT that guides
that organization’s ES initiatives. Only a quarter
reported having such a committee, and most
of them reported that their ES initiatives were
guided by a committee that also guided other
initiatives (see Figure 5-7). A committee may be
more necessary where there are more hands
involved. Recall that 63.6% of respondents
reported an institutional-level ES committee—
more than twice as many as reported one in
central IT. While this suggests a lack of organized attention to internal IT projects, it is at
least partly a function of institution size: Only
14.0% of institutions with 4,000 or fewer
FTE students report any sort of internal ES
committee, while 39.6% of institutions larger
than 15,000 FTEs do.
As one might expect, central IT organizations with a strategic plan for ES are
more likely than others to have an internal
committee that guides ES initiatives. Among
those with no plan, only 8.7% had such a
committee; where a plan was under way, 3 in
10 had an ES committee; and where central
IT had a completed ES strategic plan, exactly
half had such a committee.
The presence of an internal central IT ES
committee to guide ES initiatives appears
to influence the organization’s assignment
of staff to oversee ES initiatives. Where no
committee existed, only 4 in 10 respondents
reported any central IT staff with ES oversight
responsibility; where there was a committee,
nearly three-quarters reported that at least
a fractional staff member was assigned to
oversee ES initiatives.
ES and the IT Purchasing
Process
“Follow the money” is good advice in
most investigations, and this one is no exception. Our survey asked the extent to which
ES was a factor in central IT purchasing
decisions, and we found that it varied
substantially among our respondents. As
Figure 5-8 shows, for nearly 2 in 10 institutions, ES was not a significant factor in any
of those decisions. At these institutions,
we suspect price and performance are still
the overwhelming considerations, although
compatibility with existing equipment and
staff expertise no doubt plays a frequent
role, as would contractual considerations. A
plurality of respondents said ES was a significant factor in a few of their purchasing decisions, suggesting that at these institutions ES
issues are on the radar screen at least. Taking
Committee guides only
ES initiatives, 5.4%
Figure 5-7.
Existence of
an Internal
Committee That
Guides the Central
IT Organization’s
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
(N = 257)
Committee also guides other
initiatives, 17.1%
No committee, 77.4%
70
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
these two groups together, we see that for
more than two-thirds of respondent institutions, ES is really not a controlling issue in IT
purchasing decisions. Just over a quarter of
respondents reported that ES was significant
in many decisions, but far fewer were willing
to say ES figured significantly in most decisions and even fewer said ES influenced all
or nearly all of them.
As one might suspect, it appears that ES
is a more influential purchasing factor where
the central IT organization is doing more
planning for ES and taking more actions
related to it. As Table 5-2 shows, the mean
proportion of purchasing decisions ES influences is smaller (1.89, just under “a few”)
where the role of the CIO in institutional
45%
ES initiatives is passive, is somewhat larger
where the CIO is a participant in those initiatives, and is greatest (closer to “many” than
to “a few”) where the CIO takes an active
role. We also found that ES influenced a
larger proportion of purchasing decisions
where agreement was stronger that central
IT was actively engaged in ES initiatives and
where the status of central IT’s strategic plan
for ES was more advanced.
Central IT ES Maturity
As we did for the institution as a whole
(see Chapter 3), we asked a series of
questions about characteristics of the
central IT organization’s ES practices with
an aim to determining the maturity of
41.0
40%
Percentage of Institutions
35%
28.5
30%
Figure 5-8. Central
IT Purchasing
Decisions in Which
Environmental
Sustainability Is a
Significant Factor
(N = 256)
25%
20%
19.1
15%
7.8
10%
3.5
5%
0%
None
A few
Many
Most
All or nearly all
Number of Purchasing Decisions
Table 5-2. Central IT Purchasing Decisions in Which Environmental Sustainability Is a
Significant Factor, by Role of the Senior-Most IT Leader in Institutional Environmental
Sustainability Efforts
Role of the Senior-Most IT Leader in Institutional
ES Efforts
Proportion of Purchasing Decisions
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Passive (no role + observer)
1.89
45
0.982
Participant
2.31
109
0.910
Active (advisor + leader)
2.62
101
0.999
Total
2.36
255
0.990
*Scale: 1 = none, 2 = a few, 3 = many, 4 = most, 5 = all or nearly all
71
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
those practices. Here again, we asked
for respondents’ level of agreement with
statements that central IT’s ES practices
were well organized, consistently applied,
well documented, regularly assessed, and
closely aligned with the institution’s overall
strategic objectives. In addition, we asked
for their agreement with a sixth statement,
that central IT’s ES practices were closely
aligned with central IT’s own strategic
objectives. Figure 5-9 shows the responses,
and the means are presented in Table 5-3
(for supporting statistical information, see
Appendix C).
As the means show clearly, responses about
the central IT organization’s ES practices are
weighted more toward “disagree” for the
institution as a whole.
In a few areas, mean agreement is about
half a point higher for the institution than for
Figure 5-9. Characteristics of the Central IT Organization’s Environmental Sustainability Practices
50%
46.5
45%
40.2
40%
37.9
35.2
Percentage of Institutions
26.6
23.7
25%
19.8
19.1
20%
13.3
15%
0%
35.3
31.6
31.3
29.7
30%
5%
36.5
36.0
34.0
35%
10%
46.5
8.2
3.9
9.8
7.8
4.3
1.6
Well organized
(N = 256)
1.6
Applied consistently
(N = 256)
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
1.6
Well documented
(N = 256)
5.6
4.7
4.0
2.8
1.2
Assessed regularly
(N = 256)
Closely aligned with
central IT's overall
strategic objectives
(N = 253)
Characteristics of Practices
Closely aligned with
the institution’s
overall strategic
objectives (N = 252)
Table 5-3. Characteristics of the Institution’s and the Central IT Organization’s
Environmental Sustainability Practices
Institution
Central IT Organization
Mean*
Mean*
Well organized
3.24
2.79
Applied consistently
3.00
2.91
Well documented
2.96
2.50
Assessed regularly
3.06
2.54
Closely aligned with the institution’s overall strategic
objectives
3.27
3.21
Closely aligned with central IT’s overall strategic objectives
N/A
3.09
Characteristics of Practices
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
72
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
central IT. ES practices appear to be a little
better organized and documented at the
institutional level, and assessed a little more
regularly. Each is a characteristic that could
be enhanced by the application of more staff
resources and, as we have seen, the central
IT organization was less likely to have staff
or a committee assigned to overseeing ES
initiatives than the institution was.8 Where
central IT had assigned staff to oversee ES
initiatives or had a committee to guide them,
mean agreement about each of these three
characteristics was significantly greater.
In two of the remaining areas—the characteristics “applied consistently” and “closely
aligned with the institution’s overall strategic
objectives,” means are not significantly
greater for the institution than for central IT.
However, we have some evidence that these
characteristics, as well, may benefit from the
application of staff resources in that their
means are significantly higher where central
IT has assigned staff to oversee ES initiatives
or has a committee to guide them.
As we did at the institutional level, we
calculated a mean ES practice maturity score
60%
for each respondent institution’s central IT
organization. Recall that each institution’s
ES practice maturity score is the mean of its
responses to the first five characteristics listed
in Table 5-3. In calculating the central IT organization’s ES practice maturity score, we had
an additional characteristic to work with—the
alignment of the organization’s ES practices
with its own overall strategic objectives. Thus,
the central IT ES practice maturity score is the
mean of responses about six characteristics
rather than five.
Figure 5-10 shows the distributions side
by side. Low scores were more common
for central IT, and high scores were less
common. These differences are likely a
factor of critical mass—all else being equal,
institutions have more minds and bodies
to apply to a problem like ES, and to the
development of more mature practices.
Institutions overall may also face a wider
range of pressures to develop such practices. Working more in isolation, the central
IT organization appears, in the average case,
more likely to employ ad hoc ES practices.
Reinforcing this is our finding that a strategic
54.0
50%
Percentage of Institutions
43.6
40%
32.8
29.9
30%
23.6
20%
14.6
Figure 5-10.
Environmental
Sustainability
Practice Maturity
Scores for the
Institution and
the Central IT
Organization
10%
0%
Low (1.00–2.49)
Medium (2.50–3.50)
High (3.51–5.00)
ES Practice Maturity Score
Institution (N = 250)
Central IT (N = 257)
73
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
plan for ES is substantially less likely to exist
in the central IT organization than in the
institution overall (refer to Figure 5-5).
Not surprisingly, central IT’s ES practice
maturity score is significantly higher where
the institution’s score is “high” than where
it is “low.” Good practices seem to breed
good practices.
As with institutional characteristics and ES
practice maturity score (refer to Figure 3-9),
reports about several central IT organizational
characteristics vary with that organization’s
maturity. As Figure 5-11 shows, where maturity is “high,” respondents more often say
the CIO is a “leader” in institutional ES initiatives and that central IT has completed an ES
strategic plan, charged a committee to guide
ES initiatives, and assigned staff to oversee
ES initiatives.
For the first three of these characteristics, “low” responses are few and “high”
responses are much more frequent even than
“medium” ones. The difference between
“low” and “high” is particularly striking in
the case of completed central IT ES strategic
plan: No institution with “low” maturity has
one, but more than 4 in 10 institutions with
“high” maturity do. Presumably this reflects
the fact that planning is intrinsic to process
maturity. The associations between maturity
and ES committees and ES staffing reflect
our discussions above about the needs of all
the maturity characteristics we considered for
focused human attention. In later chapters we
will see that meeting those needs appears to
accelerate progress toward ES goals.
Enthusiasm about ES goes hand in hand
with central IT’s ES practice maturity. As one
would hope, we found that where central
IT’s ES practice maturity score was higher,
respondents agreed more strongly that the
CIO placed high priority on ES and that the
central IT organization was actively engaged
in ES initiatives. Central IT’s ES practice
maturity score varied in a similar way with
agreement that the institution’s executive
leadership placed high priority on ES initiatives and that the institution was actively
engaged in them.
As Table 5-4 shows, the mean proportion
of central IT purchasing decisions in which
ES factors significantly was also substantially
greater where central IT’s ES practice maturity score was higher, demonstrating that the
80%
60%
Percentage of Institutions
Figure 5-11.
Central IT
Organization
Environmental
Sustainability
Characteristics,
by Central IT
Organization’s
Environmental
Sustainability
Practice Maturity
Score
70.3
70%
50%
42.1
39.5
40%
30%
20.9
20%
10%
0%
13.5
8.7
7.7
23.4
11.5
0.0
CIO a leader in institutional
ES initiatives
Central IT has a completed
ES plan
Central IT has an
ES committee
Characteristics of Central IT Organization
Low maturity (1.00–2.49, N = 77)
Medium maturity (2.50–3.50, N = 177)
High maturity (3.51–5.00, N = 37)
74
56.9
52.6
Central IT assigned
staff to ES
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 5-4. Proportion of Central IT Purchasing Decisions in Which Environmental
Sustainability Factors Significantly, by Central IT Organization’s Environmental
Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Proportion of Purchasing Decisions
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
Central IT ES Practice Maturity Score
1.94
78
0.873
Medium (2.50–3.50)
2.38
138
0.938
High (3.51–5.00)
3.18
38
0.865
Total
2.37
254
0.988
*Scale: 1 = none, 2 = a few, 3 = many, 4 = most, 5 = all or nearly all
application of ES criteria to purchasing decisions is often a characteristic of institutions
with more mature central IT ES practices.
All of these findings speak to a higher level of
engagement in ES activities among those who
take the trouble—and commit the resources—
to conduct their ES practices in a way that, as
we have defined it, is more mature.
Summary and
Implications
Where our survey asked parallel questions
about the involvement of the institution and the
central IT organization in ES initiatives, responses
were generally similar. It is understandable that
the IT organization might lag the institution in
some initiatives, especially those where economies of scale at the institutional level help offset
the initiatives’ start-up costs. But central IT is traditionally a fertile area for innovation and, as we will
see more vividly in the next chapter, the relevance
of ES initiatives to the central IT mission is strong.
And so we were surprised that respondents were
less emphatic that the central IT organization was
actively engaged in ES initiatives than that the
institution as a whole was.
At both levels—the institution and the
central IT organization—many respondents
indicated that their ES initiatives had been
affected by pressures related to the economy
in the past 12 months.
The senior-most IT leader (CIO) was seldom
seen as a leader in the institution’s ES initiatives.
Despite the CIO’s potential to bring experience,
perspective, and resources to those efforts,
nearly a fifth of respondents said the CIO had
“no role” or was merely an “observer,” and
another 4 in 10 characterized the CIO’s role as
no more than a “participant.” At nearly 2 in
10 respondent institutions, it appears to be a
struggle for the CIO to interact constructively
with the head of the institutional office that
oversees overall ES initiatives; fortunately, most
of the rest of our respondents said the two
officers work closely together.
Overall, our respondents were upbeat about
generalities such as central IT’s engagement in
ES initiatives, whether the senior-most IT leader
placed high priority on ES, and how active a
role the senior-most IT leader played in the
institution’s ES efforts. But lackluster responses
to the more detailed questions we asked throw
that general impression into doubt.
Strategic planning for ES is the first area in
which positive responses for the central IT organization were surprisingly few. Such plans, both
completed and in progress, are less common
at the central IT level than at the institutional;
nearly half of central IT organizations have no
such plan. Nevertheless, planning for ES within
central IT seems to be key to the more general
assessments of central IT’s involvement. For
example, agreement about the CIO placing
high priority on ES was nearly a full point higher
where an ES plan had been completed than
where there was no plan. Similarly, the more
complete the ES strategic plan, the more active
a role the CIO was said to play in the institution’s ES initiatives. These findings suggest that
devoting the resources needed to complete an
ES strategic plan would have allowed many
of the institutions in our survey population to
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Green IT in Higher Education
report more positively about other ES-related
organizational characteristics.
Another surprise was how seldom central
IT organizations had dedicated organizational
resources specifically to ES. Very few central IT
organizations had assigned full-time staff to
oversee their ES initiatives. Having an internal
committee to guide central IT ES initiatives
was even less common, with 8 in 10 respondents reporting no such committee. Both the
assignment of staff to ES initiatives and the
existence of an internal ES committee were
significantly more common where central IT’s
ES strategic planning was more advanced,
pointing toward a cluster of traits that more
profoundly engaged institutions share.
We will see in Chapter 6 that well over
two-thirds of respondents said their central IT
organization had its own initiative under way to
purchase ENERGY STAR products and about 3 in
10 reported initiatives to buy computers and/or
monitors with EPEAT ratings of silver or better.
These percentages are essentially the same as
for institutions overall. Thus, we were surprised
to find that it is relatively uncommon for ES to
be a significant consideration in the central IT
organization’s purchasing decisions. Exactly 6
in 10 respondents told us it was either not a
significant consideration in those decisions or
was a consideration in only a few of them. Only
1 in 10 said ES was a significant consideration
in most, nearly all, or all such decisions. Clearly,
the ENERGY STAR initiatives of many of our
respondents have had little impact at the central
IT level, given that ES is so seldom a significant
factor in a majority of purchasing decisions.
Leadership and planning appear to make a
difference: On average, where the CIO’s role in
the institution’s ES initiatives is more active and
where the central IT ES strategic plan is more
advanced, ES is a significant factor in a greater
proportion of those decisions.
As we did for the institution as a whole, we
constructed an ES practice maturity score for
central IT out of respondents’ answers to a set
of diagnostic questions. Overall, mean central
76
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
IT ES practice maturity scores are lower than
those for the institution as a whole, though
where the institution’s score is higher, central
IT’s tends to be higher as well. As one might
suspect, central IT ES practice maturity is
significantly associated with many of the other
characteristics of the central IT organization we
addressed. Where maturity is higher, the CIO
places higher priority on ES, the institution is
more likely to be actively engaged in ES initiatives, central IT’s strategic planning for ES is
further along, the likelihood that central IT has
an internal ES committee is greater, the number
of central IT staff assigned to oversee the
organization’s ES initiatives is higher, and the
proportion of central IT purchasing decisions in
which ES factors significantly is higher.
Endnotes
1. Wendell Brase and Mark Askren, “Where Does Your
Institution Stand?” EDUCAUSE Quarterly 32, no. 1 (2009),
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/
EDUCAUSEQuar terlyMagazineVolum /
WhereDoesYourInstitutionStand/163861.
2. Standard deviation, 0.816.
3. Standard deviation, 0.888.
4. Andy Rowsell-Jones and Simon Mingay, “Going
Green, the CIO’s Role in Enterprisewide Environmental
Sustainability” (executive summary), Gartner EXP
Premier (Stamford, CT: Gartner Inc., May 2008):
http://www.gartner.com/resources/157800/157868/
executive_summary_going_gree_157868.pdf.
5. Brase and Askren, “Where Does Your Institution
Stand?”
6. Wendell Brase and Mark Askren, “Does the Fiscal
Crisis Mean Postponing Green IT Improvements?”
EDUCAUSE Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2009), http://
w w w.e d u c aus e.e d u / ED U C AUS E+ Q ua r te r l y /
EDUCAUSEQuar terlyMagazineVolum /
DoestheFiscalCrisisMeanPostpon/174586.
7. CMMI Product Team, Capability Maturity Model
Integration (CMMI), Version 1.1 (Pittsburgh: Carnegie
Mellon Software Engineering Institute, 2002), 25,
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/reports/02tr012.pdf.
8. Note that in the institutional context we asked, “Has
your institution established an office whose primary
responsibility is oversight of overall environmental
sustainability initiatives?” In the central IT context, the
parallel, but certainly not identical, question was, “How
many central IT staff are assigned to overseeing that
organization’s environmental sustainability initiatives?”
We feel a comparison of the “yes/no” responses to the
institutional question with a “some/none” reduction of
the responses to the central IT question is valid in that
each represents the respective entity’s commitment of
staff to oversight of ES initiatives.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
6
Central IT Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
—Demosthenes
Key Findings
••
••
••
••
••
••
CIOs are often poorly informed about their own organization’s use of electrical power: Respondents said
recent, comprehensive energy audits for central IT facilities were very rare, and central IT was seldom
billed for or informed of its ongoing energy consumption.
Central IT organizations had more ES initiatives under way, on average, where the CIO played an active
role in institutional ES initiatives, where the central IT strategic plan was more complete, and where an
internal committee oversaw central IT’s ES initiatives.
Goal-setting for central IT’s environmental sustainability (ES) initiatives was very rare; however, where
the institution had measured goals for its ES initiatives, the central IT organization was more likely to
have measured goals for its own.
In respondents’ eyes, the top barriers to central IT ES initiatives stemmed from institutional sources:
a lack of adequate funding for central IT and its ES initiatives and lack of guidance from institutional
strategic objectives.
More than a third of respondents did not know what percentage of the electrical power available in
their central IT data center was in use. Among those who did know, excess capacity was not abundant:
4 in 10 said more than 80% was in use.
Where ES initiatives were under way in the central IT data center, capital-intensive ES initiatives such as
server virtualization dominated; initiatives involving energy-saving changes in practices were less common,
with majorities of institutions missing out on those low-cost opportunities to improve efficiency.
We begin this chapter with a look at
energy audits and billing practices, two
avenues through which the central IT
organization can obtain information about
its own consumption of electrical power.
Upon that basis, either independently or
following the lead of other institutional
units, central IT can construct a set of
goals for energy use, develop a strategy for
achieving them, and define a set of metrics
to aid in assessing progress.
We also examine the environmental
sustainability (ES) initiatives the central IT
organization has taken on. Some of these are
unique to IT, but others parallel those of the
institution as a whole, including many that we
explored in Chapter 4 of this report; we look
at these in a comparative context. To assess
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
77
Green IT in Higher Education
our hypothesis that central IT facilitates or
enables some institutional ES initiatives, we
look at several different paths of central IT
support for those efforts. We also explore
some of the factors that drive central IT’s ES
initiatives as well as barriers that the organization confronts in pursuing them.
Diving still deeper into the practices of
the central IT organization, we look at a
selection of data center equipment characteristics, including the age of the servers it
houses and the adequacy of the electrical
power supply to the facility. We discover
how the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED
standards come into play with regard to
existing and planned data center facilities.
And finally, we outline a series of datacenter-specific initiatives and examine the
status of their adoption at our respondent
institutions.
Tracking Central IT
Energy Usage
Energy usage is tied intimately to most
ES goals. Other IT-related ES impacts pale
in importance when compared with the
environmental costs of the energy that IT
infrastructure consumes. This ES truism
applies more broadly than to IT infrastructure, of course, and is one of the reasons the
American College & University Presidents’
Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) focuses so
sharply on energy sources and uses. Just as
institutions do, the central IT organization
can establish a baseline level of usage of
electrical power and can periodically audit
its usage to track its performance against
ES goals. As we will see, both the scale and
the frequency of energy-assessment activities are disappointing, as they were for the
institution as a whole. In the first section of
this chapter, we look at formal energy audits
as a potential tool for assessing energy use
and at the way the institution bills—or does
not bill—central IT for electrical power as a
more granular assessment tool.
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Formally Auditing Central IT
Energy Use
Just as it is for the institution as whole,
measurement of the central IT organization’s
energy consumption is an important early
step in an effort to reduce that consumption
or—more realistically—to limit its growth.
As we will see later in this chapter, 84.2% of
respondents to our survey told us that their
central IT organization had an initiative under
way to minimize growth in total electrical
energy consumption. This is not meaningfully
more than the 82.4% who told us their overall
institutions were actively engaged in the same
initiative and clearly reflects good intentions
on the part of a majority of central IT organizations. However, we also found that only
about half as many central IT organizations
were auditing any part of the organization’s
energy use on an annual or more frequent
basis (see Figure 6-1). Of course it is possible
to minimize growth in energy consumption
without knowing what current consumption
is, but assessment and accountability are
impaired without that basic information. As
we saw in Chapter 4, a similar lack of correspondence between energy-saving initiatives
and comprehensive energy audits exists at the
institutional level.
Our survey question about a central IT
energy audit included a little more detail than
the similar question for the overall organization. Most respondents reporting a central IT
audit told us the audit included at least some
of the organization’s facilities that housed
servers. “Don’t know” responses for central
IT were, at 4.3%, far fewer than for the
institution as a whole (28.2%), which is likely
explained by the fact that most respondents,
through their association with the IT organization, would have access to information
specific to it.
Where respondents said a central IT energy
audit had taken place, the overall level of ES
activity of the institution appears greater.
Among the 137 institutions that had not
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
undergone a recent central IT energy audit,
the mean number of ES initiatives the institution was engaged in (from the list of 10
discussed in Chapter 4) was 4.901; among
the 109 institutions that had undergone a
recent partial or full central IT energy audit,
the mean number of initiatives engaged in
was significantly higher, at 6.42.2
Where respondents agreed or strongly
agreed that the senior-most IT leader placed
high priority on ES and that the central IT
organization was actively involved in ES initiatives, the central IT organization was more
likely to have undergone at least a partial IT
audit than where respondents did not agree
with those statements. Reports of a recent
central IT energy audit also varied with the
role of the CIO in institutional ES initiatives:
As Table 6-1 shows, where the CIO was in a
passive role (“no role” or “observer”), fewer
than 2 in 10 respondents reported a partial or
full audit; where the CIO was a “participant”
in or “advisor” to institutional ES efforts, the
percentage of respondents reporting audits
more than doubled. Predictably, where the
CIO was a “leader” in the institution’s ES
efforts, a strong majority of respondents
reported that central IT had undergone a
recent partial or full energy audit.
Adding to the list of practices that vary with
audit status, we find that audits were also
significantly more common where central IT
had an internal committee to guide ES initiatives and where the institution and the central
IT organization had made more progress on
their ES strategic plans. Finally, the higher the
Don't know, 4.3%
All, 3.5%
Some, including all facilities
that house servers, 11.7%
Some, including some
facilities that house
servers, 21.8%
None, 53.3%
Figure 6-1. Central
IT Facilities
Undergoing
Energy Audit in
Past 12 Months
(N = 257)
Some, not including facilities
that house servers, 5.4%
Table 6-1. Central IT Facilities Undergoing Partial or Full Energy Audit in Past 12 Months, by
Role of Senior-Most IT Leader in Institutional Environmental Sustainability Efforts
Role of the Senior-Most IT Leader
Central IT Facilities Undergoing
Partial or Full Energy Audit
No role + observer (N = 41)
17.1%
Participant (N = 104)
46.2%
Advisor (N = 60)
46.7%
Leader (N = 40)
62.5%
79
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
little better. More granular sub-metering
within a building is rare, and as we learned
in Chapter 3, its lack can stand in the way of
effective engagement in ES initiatives.
Our survey data show that in most cases
the institution bills central IT for its electrical
power in the same way it bills (or doesn’t bill)
other departments. As we saw in Chapter 4,
at most respondent institutions, departments
other than central IT are neither billed for
electrical power nor informed of the amount
of power they use. Figure 6-2 shows that
billing for central IT’s electrical power use
follows a very similar pattern.
Among the 200 respondents who told
us departments other than central IT were
neither billed nor informed of their usage,
only 19 respondents (9.5%) reported that
central IT is billed differently from other
departments (see the first row of numbers
in Table 6-23). In 13 of those cases, central
IT was not billed but was only informed of
its power usage; at only four was central IT
billed a flat fee, and at only two was it billed
for actual usage. At 14 of the 23 institutions
where other departments were not billed
but were informed of usage, the same
institution’s and the central IT organization’s
ES practice maturity scores, the more likely a
partial or full central IT energy audit was. The
differences were somewhat more dramatic
for central IT’s ES practice maturity score;
where it was “low,” just under a quarter of
respondents (23.0%) reported a recent partial
or full central IT energy audit; more than twice
as many respondents reported a recent audit
where maturity was “medium” (50.0%) or
“high” (64.9%).
Monitoring Ongoing Energy
Use
Measuring the amount of electrical power
the central IT organization uses is one of the
prerequisites for any ES initiative that aims
to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions in an informed way.
At many institutions, that level of measurement is not available. Some institutions have
only a small number of highly centralized
electrical power meters serving the entire
campus, making detailed billing difficult or
impossible. Where multiple meters exist,
they may be at the level of the building
rather than the department, which is often
90%
80%
79.4
83.7
Figure 6-2.
Method by Which
the Central IT
Organization
and Other
Departments Are
Billed for Electrical
Power
Percentage of Institutions
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
11.7
10%
0%
9.4
2.4
Not billed and not
informed of usage
Not billed but informed of
usage
Central IT (N = 248)
Departments other than central IT (N = 245)
80
1.2
Flat fee
4.0
3.3
Metered billing for actual
usage
2.4
2.4
Other
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 6-2. Method of Billing Central IT for Electrical Power, by Method for Billing Other
Departments
Central IT
Other
Departments
Not billed and Not billed but
not informed
informed of
of usage
usage
Flat fee
Metered
billing for
actual usage
Don’t
know
Total
Not billed and not
informed of usage
178
13
4
2
3
200
Not billed but
informed of usage
8
14
0
1
0
23
Flat fee
1
0
2
0
0
3
Metered billing for
actual usage
0
1
0
7
0
8
Don’t know
7
0
0
0
7
14
194
28
6
10
10
248
Total
method was used for central IT. Among the
three institutions where other departments
were billed a flat fee, two billed central IT
the same way. And among the eight institutions where other departments were billed
for actual usage, seven billed central IT the
same. Only 14 said they didn’t know what
method was used for billing departments
other than central IT, and 10 said they didn’t
know how central IT was billed. Among
the 10 who didn’t know how the central IT
organization was billed, half were CIOs.
Only five respondents told us their
central IT organizations paid a premium
to receive more of their electrical power
from renewable sources such as wind,
solar, hydro, or biomass than is ordinarily
supplied by the institution (33 told us they
didn’t know). The future of this practice
doesn’t look much brighter, with only 10
respondents telling us they expected their
central IT organizations to begin paying
for cleaner power in this way in the next
three years, including seven who said they
did not now pay a premium for renewable
power and three who said they did not
know what their current status was. The
rarity of sub-metering makes this practice
difficult or impossible for individual departments to carry out, which helps explain
how uncommon the practice is.
Central IT Involvement
As we did in Chapter 4 at the institutional
level, we will discuss here a number of initiatives the central IT organization can take on
to address concerns about pollution, climate
change, and unsustainable consumption of
resources. These initiatives include strategies
for using more environmentally sustainable
sources of electrical power in addition to
central IT’s own versions of the 10 institutional ES initiatives we addressed in Chapter
4. Finally, in a later section of this chapter, we
will address a number of initiatives that are
being undertaken on a smaller scale: that of
the central IT data center.
Co-Location of IT Equipment
Near Generation Facilities
In Chapter 4, we discussed the institution’s
on-site generation of electrical power—and in
particular generation from renewable sources
such as wind, solar, hydro, or biomass—as a
way in which the institution can reduce the
financial cost and the environmental impact
of its energy consumption. At a scale more
appropriate for the central IT organization,
another way of shifting from nonrenewable
to renewable electrical power sources is to
move power-hungry equipment out of the
central IT data center and co-locate it in a data
center near facilities that generate power from
81
Green IT in Higher Education
renewable sources. Such projects undertaken
by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo
along the Columbia River have caught the
public eye4 in recent years and may serve as
inspiration to some higher education central
IT organizations to seek their own sources
of inexpensive, renewable energy. To assess
current practices, we asked four questions:
•• In pursuing its environmental sustainability goals, has your central IT organization contracted to co-locate some or all
of its own equipment near facilities that
generate electrical power from renewable sources?
•• Asked of those who responded “no” to
the question above: In the next three
years, to pursue its environmental sustainability goals, do you expect your central
IT organization to begin contracting to
co-locate some or all of its equipment
near facilities that generate electrical
power from renewable sources?
•• In pursuing its environmental sustainability goals, has your central IT organization outsourced any services to providers
who locate their equipment near facilities that generate electrical power from
renewable sources?
•• Asked of those who responded “no”
to the question above: In the next
three years, to pursue its environmental
sustainability goals, do you expect
your central IT organization to begin
outsourcing any services to providers
who locate their equipment near facilities that generate electrical power from
renewable resources?
Only 10 of the respondents to our survey
(3.9%) have contracted to co-locate some
or all of their equipment near sources of
renewable energy in pursuing their ES goals.
Others may have taken on this initiative for
reasons apart from ES goals and, because
the wording of our question tied the practice
to those goals, not reported it. Most of the
10 institutions that are now co-locating for
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
ES reasons are doctoral institutions. Because
so few institutions are engaged in this practice, we can’t be certain, but it does appear
that institutions offering post-baccalaureate
degrees are leading the way. The distribution
of co-locators by other demographic factors—
institution size, control (public vs. private),
and research vs. teaching mission—showed
no clear trends.
Seventeen institutions reported that they
planned to begin, in the next three years,
to contract to co-locate some or all of their
equipment near sources of renewable energy,
in pursuit of their ES goals. The mix of institutions was broader here; although it was
dominated by doctoral institutions, it also
included four master’s institutions, a bachelor’s institution, three associate’s institutions,
and three others.
Outsourcing services to providers who
locate their equipment near facilities that
generate electrical power from renewable
resources is an example of the strategies
ECAR probed in its 2009 research study,
Alternative IT Sourcing Strategies: From the
Campus to the Cloud. Among that study’s
conclusions was that “long term, it...seems
promising for institutions to turn to cloud
services as part of their overall sustainability
initiatives or to participate in economies of
scale that can help to contain IT costs. Shared
data centers, data storage, and [software as
a service] continue to look like areas where
growth in the use of alternative sourcing/
cloud computing seems likely.”5
At the time of our survey, only 15 respondents said they were outsourcing services
to providers whose facilities are located
near renewable power sources. Most were
doctoral and master’s institutions. The group
of 11 respondents expecting to outsource
services to co-locating providers in the next
three years was dominated by doctorals
but included representatives of all other
U.S. Carnegie classes. Because many higher
education institutions have outsourced their
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
e-mail systems to Google or Microsoft,
when those companies’ Columbia River data
centers come fully online, more institutions
would be able to answer the last of these
four questions positively.
Central IT’s Engagement in
Institutional ES Initiatives
In Chapter 4, we examined 10 specific ES
initiatives under way at the institutional level.
At many institutions, the central IT organization has its own versions of those initiatives
under way, and we discuss them here. (In
the next section of this chapter we will also
discuss a number of data center–specific
initiatives.) As we reported in Chapter 4, the
mean number of initiatives the institution as a
whole was “actively engaged in”6 was 5.54.7
For the central IT organization, the mean
number of initiatives under way or completed
was a slightly lower 5.18,8 probably reflecting
a reduced applicability of some of these initiaRecycle e-waste
(N = 260)
tives to the central IT organizational context.
Figure 6-3 presents the status of the central
IT organizations’ ES initiatives in descending
order of activity/completion. For half of the
initiatives, majorities of central IT organizations reported that the initiative was under
way or completed. Recycling e-waste and
minimizing growth in total electrical energy
consumption were reported by more than
three-quarters of respondents. Smaller majorities reported having initiatives under way or
completed for purchase of ENERGY STAR
products, videoconferencing to reduce staff
travel, and conversion from paper document
storage to digitally imaged document storage.
These are all initiatives in which central IT
would predictably have a significant stake,
both for its own benefit and as a source of
expertise for the institution. Demonstrating
some congruity between the priorities of
central IT and the larger institution, majorities
of respondents also told us the institution as a
88.1
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 260)
11.5
84.2
Purchase ENERGY STAR
products (N = 259)
15.8
71.0
Videoconference to reduce
travel (N = 259)
Convert to digital
documents (N = 257)
32.2
Adopt telecommuting
(N = 256)
31.3
Adopt alternative sources of
electrical power (N = 260)
10%
0.8
57.4
0.4
69.2
2.7
67.7
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Figure 6-3. Status
of the Central IT
Organizations’
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
10.5
68.4
23.1
0%
1.2
64.1
28.1
Comply with LEED
standards (N = 260)
0.4
36.2
35.1
Purchase EPEAT
products (N = 258)
3.9
33.6
62.6
Adopt virtual
classrooms (N = 259)
0.0
25.1
66.0
0.4
9.2
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of Institutions
Under way or completed
No such initiative
Don't know
83
Green IT in Higher Education
whole was actively engaged in all five of these
initiatives (refer to Figure 4-4).
Only small numbers of respondents told us
they had initiatives under way or completed in
the adoption of virtual classrooms, purchase
of EPEAT-certified products, adoption of
telecommuting as an energy-saving way for
employees to work, adoption of alternative (clean/renewable) sources of electrical
power, and compliance with LEED green
building standards. The central IT organization’s stake in adoption of virtual classrooms
is understandably smaller than its stake in the
initiatives discussed in the previous paragraph.
Central IT’s role in adopting virtual classrooms
is likely to involve advice and support for the
institution’s instructional initiatives. Even at
the institutional level, though, active engagement in such an initiative was reported by
relatively few respondents.
We are more surprised that respondents
so seldom reported central IT involvement in
initiatives to purchase EPEAT-certified products. We would expect its involvement to be at
about the same level as its involvement in the
purchase of ENERGY STAR products because
the two initiatives deal with similar issues and
similar devices. We see a parallel difference in
institutional engagement in these two initiatives, suggesting that EPEAT certification is
simply less familiar to our respondents than
is ENERGY STAR.
Adoption of telecommuting as an energysaving way for employees to work may be a
little easier for central IT staff than for other
departments. Nevertheless, our data suggest
that telecommuting is not an especially
compelling initiative at either the institutional
or the central IT level.
As we saw earlier in this chapter, it is relatively uncommon for central IT organizations
to be billed for their electrical power consumption, or even to be informed about how much
they consume. Provision of electrical power to
the central IT organization is normally the job
of the institution, and it seems reasonable,
84
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
as our data show, that central IT is relatively
unlikely to be involved in selecting the source
of its own electrical power.
Of our 10 initiatives, the one respondents were least likely to say central IT had
completed or had under way was an initiative
to comply with LEED green building standards.
At the institutional level, nearly three times as
many respondents reported active engagement in complying with these standards. The
much larger showing for LEED initiatives in the
institutional context doubtless reflects how
many building projects the average institution
is involved with, compared with the average
central IT organization.
We did not include questions in our survey
about institutional or central IT engagement
in paper-recycling initiatives, assuming that
most, if not all, institutions were engaged in
this early-emergent green activity. Predictably,
we did hear a lot about such initiatives in our
qualitative interviews. For example, at Adelphi
University, CIO Jack Chen said, “Six years ago
central IT implemented a print management
software tool in the central IT–managed
computer labs that allotted a page quota
for each student. This didn’t just save paper,
but it significantly reduced our toner bill. At
present, we calculate our savings to be about
$56,000 a year. In tandem with the success of
these central IT efforts, programs to reduce
paper consumption across the campus have
resulted in savings of $200,000 on paper and
mailing alone.”
With regard to managing institutional paper
consumption, Howard Community College
in Columbia, Maryland, has taken the adage
“you can’t manage what you don’t measure” a
step further than many institutions. According
to Sung Lee, director of student computer
support, “Our paper usage continues to grow
up, no matter what we do, but we recently
implemented a tool that lets IT audit print
volume per individual and per department.
It is an eye-opener!” The IT department now
provides an audit report for all paper usage
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
to the appropriate senior manager, which has
stimulated a great deal of discussion. “It’s a
very sticky subject,” said Lee, “because many
instructors print out handouts for their classes.
For areas that really want to reduce their
printing, we try to assist them with technological solutions, but we are pinning most of
our hopes on educating faculty and staff about
how much they are printing.”
Goals for Central IT’s Initiatives
Several of our findings so far have raised
questions about respondents’ assertions that
the institution and the central IT organization are “actively engaged in ES initiatives.”
Another such finding is the status of the
central IT organization’s goals for the 10 broad
ES initiatives. Unlike institutional ES initiatives,
central IT initiatives were all very likely to have
no documented goals (compare Figure 6-4
with Figure 4-5). With two exceptions, where
central IT did have goals, progress toward
meeting them was a little more likely to be
unmeasured than to be measured. The exceptions were the purchase of ENERGY STAR and
EPEAT-certified products; for these initiatives
goals were substantially more likely to be
unmeasured than to be measured.
These findings suggest that central IT’s own
ES initiatives are less formally structured than
those of the institution as a whole, possibly
reflecting an IT organization’s relatively small size
and a comparative lack of priority, focus, and
resources applied to ES initiatives. The findings
may also reflect a correspondence between the
ES goals of the IT organization and the institution. As Table 6-3 shows, where respondents say
the institution has no measured ES goals, only
7.8% report that central IT has measured goals
for one or more initiatives; where respondents
say the institution has measured goals for two
or more ES initiatives, nearly eight times as many
respondents (61.4%) say central IT has measured
goals for one or more initiatives.
Adopt virtual
classrooms (N = 90)
14.4
Adopt alternative sources
of electrical power (N = 72)
13.9
16.7
69.4
Recycle e-waste
(N = 214))
13.6
17.8
68.7
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 216)
13.4
Convert to digital
documents (N = 157)
12.1
Comply with LEED
standards (N = 60)
8.3
Purchase ENERGY STAR
products (N = 176)
6.8
Videoconference to reduce
travel (N = 166)
6.6
17.8
67.8
19.4
67.1
13.4
Figure 6-4.
Status of Goals
for Central IT
Organizations’
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
74.5
11.7
80.0
19.3
73.9
7.2
86.1
Adopt telecommuting
(N = 76) 5.3 5.3
89.5
Purchase EPEAT
3.9
products (N = 76)
15.8
0%
10%
80.3
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of Institutions
Documented goals are in place, and progress is measured
Documented goals are in place, but progress is not measured
No documented goals
85
Green IT in Higher Education
Several characteristics of the central IT organization are significantly associated with the
number of initiatives the central IT organization has under way or has completed. We see
in Table 6-4 that, on average, more central IT
ES initiatives are under way where the CIO’s
role is more active, where the central IT strategic plan for ES is more complete, where
the organization has an internal committee
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
to oversee ES initiatives, and where ES is a
factor in a larger proportion of IT purchasing
decisions. Whether these organizational
characteristics drive the number of initiatives
central IT engages in or vice versa we cannot
determine from our data, but it is clear that
this is a cluster of characteristics that highly
engaged IT organizations tend to share.
Similarly, as Table 6-5 shows, the number
Table 6-3. Number of Environmental Sustainability Initiatives for Which the Central IT
Organization Has Measured Goals, by Number of Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
for Which the Institution Has Measured Goals
Measured Central IT ES Goals
Measured Institutional ES Goals
None
One
Two or More
None (N = 115)
92.2%
6.1%
1.7%
One (N = 62)
74.2%
14.5%
11.3%
Two or more (N = 83)
38.6%
30.1%
31.3%
Table 6-4. Number of Environmental Sustainability Initiatives the Central IT Organization
Has Under Way, by Organizational Characteristics
Number of Central IT ES Initiatives
Organizational Characteristic
Mean*
N
Std.
Deviation
Role of the Senior-Most IT Leader in Institutional ES Efforts
No role + observer
4.04
45
2.184
Participant
5.11
111
2.262
Advisor
5.53
62
2.062
Leader
6.25
40
1.971
Total
5.20
258
2.245
No plan
4.23
115
2.158
Plan being developed
5.88
112
1.927
Status of the Central IT Organization’s Strategic Plan for ES
Plan completed (either part of IT overall plan or stand-alone)
6.75
28
1.936
Total
5.23
255
2.235
Existence of Internal Committee That Guides the Central IT Organization’s ES Initiatives
No committee
4.81
199
2.154
Dedicated committee or broader committee exists
6.57
58
2.018
Total
5.21
257
2.245
Proportion of Central IT Purchasing Decisions in Which ES Is a Significant Factor
None
3.59
49
2.020
A few
5.20
105
1.987
Many
5.79
73
2.205
Most, nearly all, or all
6.59
29
2.027
Total
5.22
256
2.240
*Scale: 0–10 initiatives
86
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 6-5. Number of Environmental Sustainability Initiatives the Central IT Organization
Has Under Way, by Institutional and Central IT Organizations’ Environmental Sustainability
Practice Maturity Scores
Central IT ES Initiatives Under Way
Maturity Score
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Institutional ES Practice Maturity Score
Low maturity (1.00–2.49)
4.49
59
2.200
Medium maturity (2.50–3.50)
5.38
109
2.112
High maturity (3.51–5.00)
5.73
82
2.217
Total
5.28
250
2.209
Central IT ES Practice Maturity Score
Low maturity (1.00–2.49)
4.35
96
2.052
Medium maturity (2.50–3.50)
5.37
121
2.082
High maturity (3.51–5.00)
6.87
39
2.154
Total
5.22
256
2.238
*Scale: 0–10 initiatives
of initiatives the central IT organization has
under way varies with both the institution’s and
(more dramatically) the central IT organization’s
ES practice maturity score. Speculating about
causality here, it seems likely that the characteristics that make up the institution’s own
ES practice maturity score—being well organized, consistently applied, well documented,
regularly assessed, and closely aligned with
the institution’s overall strategic objectives—
may give that organization a special boost in
taking on additional ES initiatives. We are less
inclined to speculate that a greater number of
initiatives, by itself, could somehow improve
the organization’s ES practice maturity. It may
be, though, that both of the quantities involved
here are boosted by a third factor such as the
first three central IT organization characteristics
reported above in Table 6-4. In any case, it
seems clear that the mean number of initiatives
the IT organization has under way goes hand
in hand with ES practice maturity at both levels
of the organization.
Drivers and Barriers
While most of us might agree that reducing
GHGs and sending less toxic material to
landfills are “the right things to do,” the
logistical, financial, and human resource
implications of participating in such initiatives
may be daunting, especially in fiscally challenging times. From our survey respondents,
we learned that central IT organizations are
drawn into ES initiatives by a number of means
and for a number of reasons. We asked each
respondent to select up to three primary
drivers for the central IT organization’s ES
efforts from a list of 11. Results, presented in
Table 6-6, make it clear that central IT leaders
see green IT as “good business,” given that
more than three-quarters of respondents
selected “cost reduction/increased efficiency”
as a primary driver of central IT ES efforts. A
majority selected a more social/cultural driver,
“participation in institutional initiatives,” and
nearly half selected the more ethics-related
driver, “doing ‘what’s right’ for the planet.”
(These three drivers were selected together by
19.2% of the respondent population.) About
a third of respondents selected an infrastructure-related driver, “power/cooling constraints
in existing facilities.” Much smaller numbers
of respondents selected the remaining named
drivers, and only three respondents selected
“other,” which suggests that our list was fairly
comprehensive.
Two associations support our intuition
that better organization of an institution’s
ES efforts stimulates central IT’s participation
in them. Among respondents who said the
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Green IT in Higher Education
institution’s strategic plan for ES was being
developed or was completed, more than twothirds selected participation in institutional
initiatives as a primary driver; of those who
said they had no institutional ES strategic
plan, just less than one-third selected that
driver. Similarly, among respondents who said
their institution had a committee to guide ES
initiatives, 7 in 10 selected participation in
institutional initiatives as a primary driver; of
those reporting no such committee, only 4 in
10 chose that driver. Not surprisingly, where
this driver was selected, the mean number of
initiatives the institution was actively engaged
in was significantly higher (6.009) than where
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
it was not (4.9210). We found no other interesting associations between primary drivers
of central IT ES efforts and the study findings
discussed so far.
Just as certain factors spur the pursuit of ES,
others act to impede it. We asked respondents
to select up to three primary barriers to the
central IT organization’s ES efforts from a list
of 11 items. As Table 6-7 shows, there was
less consensus among respondents about
barriers to ES efforts than about drivers. A
small majority said lack of adequate funding
for central IT overall was one of their top-three
barriers, and 4 in 10 cited lack of funding
specifically for central IT’s ES efforts.
Table 6-6. Primary Drivers of Central IT Organizations’ Environmental Sustainability Efforts
(N = 261)
Driver (Select up to three)
Percentage of Institutions
Cost reduction/increased efficiency
77.4%
Participation in institutional initiatives
57.9%
Doing “what’s right” for the planet
49.4%
Power/cooling constraints in existing facilities
34.1%
Responding to concerns of internal constituents (faculty, staff, students)
13.8%
Achieving central IT organization’s strategic objectives
12.3%
Compliance with legal and regulatory requirements
9.2%
Compliance with institutional or system policy requirements
6.1%
Improving public relations
5.4%
Recruiting environmentally concerned IT staff
0.4%
Other
1.1%
Table 6-7. Primary Barriers to Central IT Organizations’ Environmental Sustainability Efforts
(N = 261)
Barrier (Select up to three)
Lack of adequate funding for central IT overall
88
Percentage of Institutions
51.0%
Lack of adequate funding for central IT’s environmental sustainability efforts
41.8%
Lack of guidance from institutional strategic objectives
28.4%
Lack of return on investment
20.7%
Lack of participation from necessary individuals/departments
16.9%
Central IT’s environmental impacts are not considered significant
12.3%
Difficulty developing central IT policies and procedures
11.9%
Environmentally unconcerned institutional culture
10.7%
Lack of guidance from central IT strategic objectives
7.3%
Environmentally unconcerned central IT organizational culture
3.4%
Other
9.6%
Green IT in Higher Education
Lack of funding for central IT’s ES efforts
appears to be more often chosen as a top
barrier at public institutions than at private
ones. Nearly half of respondents from public
institutions cited it as a top-three barrier,
while fewer than one-third from private
institutions did so.
While few respondents selected a lack
of guidance from central IT’s own strategic
objectives as a top-three barrier to organizational ES efforts, lack of guidance from institutional strategic objectives appeared more
problematic, with a bit more than a quarter
of respondents selecting it. Surprisingly, the
existence of an institutional strategic plan for
ES made no significant difference in respondents’ selection of this barrier. This suggests
that institutional planning speaks too vaguely
about the IT-related specifics of the institution’s
ES aspirations to be of much help to those
responsible for central IT’s ES initiatives.
Only about 2 in 10 selected lack of return
on investment as a top-three barrier, implying
that a strong majority of respondents do see
substantial potential benefit in undertaking
IT-related ES initiatives.
The remaining initiatives, selected by fewer
than 2 in 10 respondents, all revolve to some
extent around institutional and organizational
culture. A substantial 9.6% cited “other”
barriers, suggesting that our list failed to
include at least one significant barrier.
Central IT’s Support for
Institutional Initiatives
A key question in this ECAR study was what
the central IT organization was doing in support
of ES at the institutional level. Three principal
components of that support, we felt, were the
organization’s own participation in institutional
ES initiatives, its provision of technology solutions and infrastructure in aid of those initiatives, and its work to educate departments
outside central IT about the initiatives.
As Table 6-8 shows, with only two exceptions
among our 10 representative initiatives, majorities
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
of central IT organizations contributed to their
institutions’ efforts in each of the three ways.
Those exceptions occurred in educating departments other than central IT about
•• adopting renewable power sources
(43.7%), which, because of its significance well beyond IT-related matters,
is arguably more within the purview of
facilities services or the administrative vice
president; and
•• complying with LEED green building standards (23.0%), which again is applicable
well outside the IT sphere and may be
more within the purview of the institution’s architect, facilities services organization, or administrative vice president.
Participating
In general, the most frequently reported
way for central IT to support institutional ES
initiatives was through its own participation in
them. Except for adoption of virtual classrooms,
adoption of alternative sources of electrical
power, and compliance with LEED standards,
at least 9 in 10 respondents from institutions
that were actively engaged in each ES initiative said central IT supported it by participating
in it. A relatively high 81.8% reported that
central IT participates in adopting virtual classrooms. We don’t think of central IT as having
a formal academic mission of its own that
would involve classrooms and so we suspect
the high frequency of responses here has to
do with central IT’s support for institutional
learning management systems, which may be
considered a kind of virtual classroom, or with
central IT’s role in helping instructors build and
manage classroom spaces in virtual worlds such
as Second Life.
Adopting renewable power sources and
complying with LEED standards were the
institutional initiatives in which central IT participated least, although majorities are still represented. Ordinarily, adopting renewable power
sources would be carried out at a level well
above that of the IT organization, and at about
89
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 6-8. Central IT Organizations’ Support for Institutional Environmental Sustainability
Initiatives
Type of Support*
Participating
in Institutional
Initiative
Providing
Technical
Solutions/
Services
Educating
Other
Departments
about
Initiative
Recycle e-waste (N = 214)
97.3%
70.6%
68.4%
Minimize growth in electrical energy use (N = 191)
94.3%
81.7%
59.7%
Initiative (Descending Order of Institutional
Engagement)
Convert to digital documents (N = 176)
89.9%
92.1%
83.0%
Purchase ENERGY STAR products (N = 177)
95.6%
73.2%
63.3%
Comply with LEED standards (N = 152)
55.8%
51.3%
23.0%
Videoconference to reduce travel (N = 157)
97.5%
96.8%
86.6%
Adopt alternative sources of electrical power (N = 87)
68.5%
68.2%
43.7%
Adopt virtual classrooms (N = 86)
81.8%
94.4%
83.7%
Purchase EPEAT products (N = 76)
97.4%
75.0%
59.0%
Adopt telecommuting (N = 52)
90.4%
84.6%
54.7%
*Only institutions “actively engaged” in each initiative are included in the sums on which these percentages are
based.
a third of respondent institutions it appears
that central IT does not actively participate in
that process. Participating in compliance with
LEED standards suggests an active building or
remodeling project under way, and it seems
reasonable that nearly half of our respondents
should not be engaged in one.
Providing Technology Solutions/
Services
Providing technology solutions/services
that support institutional ES initiatives was, on
average, done a little less frequently by central
IT organizations than just participating in those
initiatives. At least 9 in 10 respondents whose
institutions were engaged in these initiatives
said central IT supported them by providing
technology solutions/services for videoconferencing, adopting virtual classrooms, and
converting from paper document storage
to digitally imaged documents. The infrastructure and hardware required for formal
videoconferencing are still not quite at the
consumer-grade level, and so it is little wonder
that central IT is so pervasively involved in
enabling this initiative. Adoption of virtual
classrooms and conversion from paper to
90
digital document storage are also infrastructure intensive and have fairly steep learning
curves, which helps explain the prominence
of these initiatives on the list that central IT
supports by providing technology solutions/
services. Some aspects of telecommuting
involve technologies that are more at the
commodity level (remote login, file sharing,
telephony), but we suspect it is the videoconferencing component of telecommuting
that caused more than 8 in 10 respondents to
report that central IT played an enabling role.
The University of New Hampshire’s experience is an example. According to Nancye
Jenkins, director of telecommunications and
client services, “The high oil prices of 2008
motivated faculty and staff to increase their
use of videoconferencing. Now there is a
system-level initiative to develop a unified
solution, and the central IT organization is
deeply involved.”
It is no surprise that IT plays an enabling role
in efforts at a majority of institutions to minimize growth in electrical energy use. At many
institutions, central IT provides consulting as
well as hands-on services to departments
and individuals that want to configure their
Green IT in Higher Education
desktop and laptop computers and peripherals to use less energy. At some institutions,
central IT plays a role at a deeper level, helping
to configure power-hungry heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems to avoid
wasting energy. Stanford University’s Joyce
Dickerson provides this example: “IT can be a
real enabler for energy reduction by providing
management systems that monitor energy
usage and turn things on and off in ‘smart’
ways. Our institution’s Sustainable Energy
Management Division is creating front-end
dashboards that faculty and staff, as well as
building managers, can look at to know ‘how
is my building doing.’”
The stakes for ES at Canadian institutions
have been raised in a way that may soon
impact those in the United States and elsewhere. Mark Roman, CIO at the University of
Victoria in British Columbia, points out that
“the Province has asked all the institutions
to be carbon neutral by 2010. If we’re not
carbon neutral, then we have to pay a tax.
The tax cannot be paid by government money.
Information Systems is directly involved,
because we have to put in place the software
to measure compliance with that directive and
to report on that progress.”
Between two-thirds and three-quarters of
respondents report that central IT also provides
technology solutions or services for purchasing
products with EPEAT ratings of silver or better
and ENERGY STAR products, for recycling
e-waste, and for adopting alternative sources
of electrical power. Again, probably because
LEED compliance so often falls within the
purview of facilities services or the office of
the institutional architect, only about half of
respondents tell us central IT provides technical
solutions or services to support it.
Educating Other Departments
Although percentages are generally lower
than for the other types of support, majorities of respondents still report a role for
central IT in providing education about 8 of
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
our 10 ES initiatives. Some CIOs see this role
as an element of outreach. For example, at
Syracuse University, Christopher M. Sedore,
vice president for IT and CIO, explains, “ES
can be a marketing issue. Sometimes we
need to connect the dots a little for users,
explaining why a certain behavior is producing
an unsustainable outcome. People sometimes
do not grasp that.”
Central IT appears to have the most to offer,
educationally, for initiatives involved with
videoconferencing to reduce travel, converting
to digital documents, and adopting virtual
classroom technologies. Predictably, because
central IT is so expert about IT equipment and
is responsible for so much of it throughout
its life cycle, a role for central IT in educating
about recycling e-waste was also reported by
a strong majority of respondents.
At between half and two-thirds of institutions, respondents told us central IT played
an educational role in initiatives to purchase
ENERGY STAR products, purchase products
with EPEAT ratings of silver or better, and
adopt telecommuting. Minimizing growth
in total electrical energy use is also in the
group of initiatives for which moderate
numbers of central IT organizations provide
educational support. One important venue
for this kind of support is during student
orientation. As Columbia University’s Alan
Crosswell explained, “We set up ‘greening
stations’ during new student orientation to
help students reset their computers’ power
settings. In each residence hall, the EcoRep—a
student employee working in partnership
with our Department of Housing and Dining
and Office of Environmental Stewardship to
provide peer-to-peer ES resources for residents—promotes changing power settings, as
well, and the central IT organization’s website
has instructions to enable students to reset
their computers’ power settings themselves.
It’s a small thing, but if you multiply a few
watts here and a few watts there by 8,000
students, it’s significant!”
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Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Presumably because adopting alternative
sources of electrical power and complying
with LEED green building standards are
outside the traditional purview of central IT,
that organization was reported least often to
be active in educating about both initiatives.
As we will see in later chapters, the central
IT organization’s support for institutional ES
initiatives is sometimes a significant factor in
positive ES outcomes. The associations are
easiest to see in relation to the mean percentages of institutional initiatives the central IT
organization reported supporting in each of
the three ways we asked about (see Table
6-9). A potential explanation for the variation
in these numbers is the central IT organization’s standing relative to the form of support.
On average, central IT supports the highest
percentage of initiatives when it is required
to play no unique role but simply participates
like any other department; it supports an
intermediate percentage of initiatives where
its role is to provide technologies and services
that it is uniquely equipped to provide; and it
supports the smallest percentage of initiatives
when it takes the role of educator, a set of
responsibilities that may be on the periphery
of central IT’s mission at many institutions.
As Figure 6-5 shows, where central IT ES
practice maturity score was higher, respondents reported a significantly greater mean
percentage of institutional ES initiatives for
which central IT provided support in the form
of technical solutions/services and education.11
Table 6-9. Institutional Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Supported by the Central IT
Organization
Type of Support
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Participating in institutional initiative
84.4%
260
0.218
Providing technical solutions/services
73.1%
260
0.290
Educating other departments about initiative
58.7%
258
0.317
*Scale: 0–100%
100%
82.9
76.7
76.0
80%
Mean Percentage of Initiatives
Figure 6-5.
Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
Supported by
the Central IT
Organization,
by the Central IT
Organization’s
Environmental
Sustainability
Practice Maturity
Score
65.3
61.0
60%
47.5
40%
20%
0%
Providing technical solutions/services
Educating other departments about initiative
Type of Support
Low maturity (1.00–2.49, N = 78)
Medium maturity (2.50–3.50, N = 139)
High maturity (3.51–5.00, N = 38)
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Green IT in Higher Education
In this we see evidence that organizations
whose ES practices are more mature are
more likely to apply their particular expertise
to nurture the ES initiatives of the institution.
From that follows the suggestion that the
central organization that wishes to position
itself as a stronger partner in the institution’s
ES initiatives may wish to develop in itself the
characteristics we have outlined as defining
ES process maturity.
We also found, as might be expected,
that central IT supported the institution’s ES
initiatives more fully where the CIO played a
more active role in those initiatives and where
the central IT organization’s ES strategic plan
was more complete, where the institution
provided extracurricular ES education for a
larger number of constituencies, and where
the institutional ES practice maturity score was
higher. These findings suggest a cluster of
traits shared by institutions that have successfully engaged the central IT organization in
supporting overarching ES initiatives. Where
IT is not as engaged in those efforts as it—or
the institution—might like, assessing these
characteristics may help identify points of
leverage for enhancing IT’s support.
ES Initiatives in the
Central IT Data Center
In the next chapter, we will look at ES initiatives occurring in a distributed manner outside
the central IT organization, but before we do,
we want to show what central IT is doing in its
own data center. Most of the electrical energy
consumption that may give central IT a larger
carbon footprint than other campus departments takes place there, and that is one of the
places where central IT may be able to make
substantial ES gains. In this section, we will
examine the status of nine typical data center
initiatives. To set the scene for that discussion,
we begin by establishing how many of our
respondent institutions had central IT data
centers on site, what some characteristics of the
servers in those data centers were, and where
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
LEED green building certification comes into
play, both in existing data centers and in plans
for remodeling them or building new ones.
Servers and Electrical Power
Demand
Nearly all (96.2%) of the respondent
institutions had central IT data centers.
Being without such a facility seems to be a
phenomenon of smaller institutions; of the 10
institutions that did not have central IT data
centers, 8 had 4,000 or fewer FTE students,
1 had between 4,001 and 15,000 students,
and 1 had more than 15,000. Most of the
computing capacity of the central IT data
center was of fairly recent vintage: As Figure
6-6 shows, a majority reported the average
age of the servers there to be 2–3 years).
Our survey asked what approximate
percentage of the central IT data center’s
electrical power capacity was in use. Obviously,
two quantities are required to answer that
question: the total amount of electrical power
available and the amount used per unit time.
Most CIOs know or can look up the quantity of
power available; this is essential information for
capacity planning and load management, and
even if those functions are performed for the IT
organization by another entity, the information
should be at or near the CIO’s fingertips.
Information about the amount of power
the gear in the data center consumes is the
more difficult quantity to obtain. We saw
at the beginning of this chapter that more
than half of the central IT organizations in
our study had undergone no energy audit
at all in the past 12 months and that nearly
8 in 10 are neither billed for nor informed of
their ongoing electrical power usage. Even
where data about central IT electrical power
consumption is available to the CIO, it may
include departmental electrical consumption
unrelated to the data center—devices in staff
offices and common areas, for example—
and thus be of little use in answering questions like ours.
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Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Nevertheless, 60.6% of our respondents had
a sufficient sense of both capacity and usage
to provide us with approximate percentages
of data center electrical power capacity in use
at the time of our survey (see Figure 6-7). The
mean percentage among those who reported
one was 64.1%.12 Over-provisioning of data
center electrical power seems not to be widespread: Only 18.3% of respondents said that
half or more of their data center’s capacity was
unused. Nearly a quarter said more than 75%
was in use, suggesting that growth in demand
needs to be curbed at many institutions to
avoid an expensive increase in capacity.
LEED Green Building
Certification
As we saw above (refer to Figure 6-3), ES
initiatives related to compliance with LEED
green building standards were those that
50%
43.9
45%
40%
Figure 6-6.
Average Age of
Servers in Central
IT Data Centers
(N = 237)
Percentage of Institutions
35%
27.8
30%
25%
20%
16.0
15%
10%
5%
0%
5.5
0.4
Less than
one year
2.5
2.1
One year
Two years
Three years
Four years
Five years
Six years
1.3
Seven years More than 10
years
0–25%, 6.5%
26–50%, 11.8%
Figure 6-7.
Approximate
Percentage of
Central IT Data
Center Electrical
Power Capacity in
Use (N = 246)
Don't know, 39.4%
51–75%, 18.7%
76–100%, 23.6%
94
0.4
Green IT in Higher Education
the central IT organization was least likely
to have under way for itself, and it was least
likely to be supporting them in all three of
the ways we asked about (refer to Table
6-8). Thus, although it is disappointing, the
finding discussed here—that LEED certification has infrequently been a part of central
IT’s planning for its own facilities—comes as
no surprise.
As Figure 6-8 shows, very few respondent
institutions’ central IT data centers included
any LEED-certified components. Just over 2
in 10 respondents did not know the LEED
status of their data centers, but we suspect
that certification is as rare among that group
as it is among the 8 in 10 who were able to
answer our question.
Looking at future plans, despite some
ambiguous responses13 we determined
that about 3 in 10 respondent institutions
planned either to remodel the central IT
data center or build a new one in the next
three years. Environmental considerations
do seem important to the majority of those
planning a remodel of the data center,
59.6% of whom said that U.S. Green
Building Council LEED certification was a
goal. Still more encouragingly, 80.0% of
those planning a new data center said it
was a goal.
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Data Center ES Initiatives
Progress toward ES in the data center
doesn’t always require undertaking highprofile projects. In fact, big energy savings can
result from a combination of small initiatives.
As Tom O’Donnell, University of Maine at
Farmington’s manager of network and server
systems, reports, “We are not in a position
to invest much, so we’re motivated to be
inventive. For example, we’ve improved the
cooling system in the building that houses
the data center and student computer labs;
this didn’t start as an environmental project,
but we knew it would save energy. We’ve also
virtualized some of the data center servers.
Again, this project wasn’t necessarily begun
as an environmental concern; we were already
virtualizing servers and determined that with
a little more planning and forethought, it
would be easy to make them environmentally
beneficial. When we were buying replacement
computers for our classrooms, it was the same
deal: Faced with the choice of buying large,
desktop computers or something smaller,
we opted for the smaller model, which had
a higher level of ENERGY STAR compliance.
All these initiatives have added up to a 50%
reduction in power consumption over the past
year in the building that houses central IT, the
data center, and the computer labs.”
Don’t know, 20.9%
All or almost all
components, 0.0%
A large number of
components, 1.2%
Figure 6-8.
Components of
Central IT Data
Center Certified
under LEED Green
Building Rating
System (N = 249)
A moderate number of
components, 2.0%
A small number of
components, 5.6%
No components, 70.3%
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Green IT in Higher Education
As we saw above (refer to Figure 6-3 and
Table 6-8), the typical central IT organization
has its own ES initiatives under way, and it
is participating in initiatives that are occurring at the institutional level. Taken together,
these initiatives impact most of the IT organization’s service areas. In the central IT data
center, activity seems especially brisk. Several
ES initiatives that involve substantial capital
expenditure are either completed or in progress at strong majorities of institutions that
have central IT data centers. Initiatives that
are based more on behavioral change than
on investment show less activity.
Anticipating that central IT data centers
would have their own ES initiatives under
way, we asked respondents to tell us the
status of nine common ones, four that involve
substantial capital outlays and five that are
more focused on modifying practices.
Capital-intensive initiatives:
•• optimizing the number of servers through
virtualization,
•• replacing local storage with central
storage technologies such as a storage
area network,
•• optimizing the number of servers through
consolidation, and
•• installing more efficient air temperature
management equipment.
Practice-modification initiatives:
•• repositioning devices into alternating hot/
cool rows,
•• reengineering floor vents for more effective airflow,
•• reducing lighting levels,
•• raising machine room thermostat settings,
and
•• increasing use of outside air for machine
room cooling.
Figure 6-9 shows the wide range of responses
we received about these nine initiatives.
Surprisingly, given recent fiscal constraints
and given the publicity that practice-modification initiatives have received, capitalintensive data center initiatives were about
96
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
as likely to be reported as “completed” as
were practice-modification initiatives. When
“in progress” responses are considered, we
find that all capital-intensive initiatives are
on track to be completed at least a bit more
frequently—and often a lot more—than
any of the practice-modification initiatives.
Overall, the mean number of data center ES
initiatives that respondents had in progress
or completed was 5.04.15 For the four capitalintensive initiatives, the mean was 3.08,16 but
for the five practice-modification initiatives,
the mean number of initiatives reported to
be in progress or completed was a much
lower 1.71.17
Capital-Intensive Initiatives
Replacing local storage with central storage
technologies such as storage area networks
has been completed by almost half of respondents, with optimizing the number of servers
in data centers by virtualization or consolidation being completed by slightly fewer than 3
in 10. Where it hadn’t been completed, each
of these three initiatives was in progress at
most of the rest of respondent institutions.
Installing more-efficient air conditioning had
been completed at a third of respondent institutions but was in progress at only a quarter.
Another quarter were planning such initiatives
for the future, but 1 in 6—more than twice
as many as for any other capital-intensive
initiative—were planning no replacement.
The importance of virtualization in our respondents’ data center ES strategies would be difficult
to overstate. Not only was it among the initiatives
most often reported as “in progress” by our
quantitative respondents, but also our qualitative
interview participants returned to it again and
again as an example of an energy-saving initiative.
As Syracuse University’s Sedore put it, “We have
extensively optimized and virtualized our servers.
Yes, we are getting ‘greenness,’ but we are also
getting desirable outcomes and benefits in terms
of energy efficiency, operational efficiency, etc. It
is a win on every front.”
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Figure 6-9. Status of Central IT Data Center Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
8.1 0.8
Practice Modification
Capital Intensive
Optimize servers through virtualization (N = 247)
28.6
0.4
62.1
5.7 2.4
Replace local storage with central storage (N = 244)
45.7
Optimize servers through consolidation (N = 244)
44.9
25.9
60.3
Install more efficient air conditioning (N = 243)
32.8
Reposition equipment into hot/cool rows (N = 232)
31.5
Reengineer floor vents (N = 236)
31.0
Reduce data center lighting levels (N = 229)
25.5
Raise data center thermostat settings (N = 227)
13.0
0%
20%
25.1
16.5
13.3
13.8
7.3
10%
24.3
9.3
19.5
Increase use of outside air (N = 219)
1.2
18.1
16.2
1.6
6.5
4.8
36.7
15.4
7.3
42.5
13.4
7.7
45.5
52.4
40%
1.2
27.4
14.1
16.3
30%
6.5 6.1
50%
60%
11.0
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of Institutions
Work is complete
Work is in progress
Planned for the future
Not planning to do
Don’t know
The cost-benefit equation for virtualization has recently become more complicated
for University of Victoria’s Roman, however.
“Right now, we have 17 virtual servers to every
‘real’ server,” he said. “That’s a total of 170
virtual servers. But now we’re finding that the
virtualized servers don’t perform as well. It
raises the question, ‘Are we willing to take a
performance hit in order to be green?’”
Resources for implementing ES practices in
the data center can be hard to come by, but
governmental assistance programs sometimes
help bring good ideas to fruition. Columbia
University’s Crosswell reports a case in point:
“Because our IT data center was built in 1963
and developed piecemeal, we realized that the
limitations of that facility would be a barrier
for Columbia to meet emerging energy goals.
We applied for and were awarded a $450,000
contract from the New York State Energy
Research & Development Authority to enhance
the greenness of our data center; an additional
university commitment boosted the overall
project size to $1.2 million. We’re calling the
project the Advanced Concept Data Center
Pilot. We began work on it in April 2009 and
it’s scheduled to last for 18 months.”14
Practice-Modification Initiatives
The practice-modification initiatives are
“softer,” relying less on capital infusion
and more on changing the way things
are done in the data center. Respondents
report substantially less activity among these
than among the more expensive initiatives.
Practice-modification initiatives are relatively
inexpensive to implement, are pervasive in
the IT-related ES literature, and provide a
reasonable return on investment. Perhaps
these initiatives have been undertaken less
frequently because data centers are complex
environments in which, as Sierra Club founder
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Green IT in Higher Education
John Muir said about nature, “When we try to
pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched
to everything else in the Universe.”18 In the
data center, at least, this may lead to a certain
conservatism about changing processes that
are known to work, albeit with sub-optimal
energy efficiency.
The most commonly reported of our data
center ES practice-modification initiatives,
repositioning machine room equipment into
alternating hot and cold rows, had been
completed by nearly a third of respondents,
but only half that many had initiatives under
way. Most of the remainder were not planning
such an initiative. Similarly, just under a third of
respondents had already completed initiatives
to reengineer floor vents for more-efficient air
flow, and an additional 13.3% had projects
under way; most of the rest—more than a
third—had no plans to do so.
Reducing lighting levels and raising thermostat settings are simple initiatives to
undertake, though for the latter, at least, a
bit of research is required to find the highest
ambient air temperature at which the data
center’s particular mix of equipment can
safely operate and then to calculate a margin
of safety. Still, more than 4 in 10 respondents said they had no plans to engage in
these initiatives. If all projects under way run
to completion, total adoption of these two
practices will be around 35%.
Finally, the use of outside air to help cool
the machine room appears to be the least
interesting of our nine initiatives. Admittedly,
this initiative is not capital-neutral; in most
cases it would require additional ductwork
and electrical air-handling gear and in many
geographic areas would introduce humidity
that would have to be extracted with costly,
energy-consuming equipment. Only 2 respondents in 10 have outside-air projects under
way or completed, and only 1 in 6 have
such projects in the planning stages, while
a small majority report no plans to engage
in it. “Don’t know” responses for this initia-
98
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
tive are the highest for any of our nine data
center ES initiatives, suggesting that it is a little
more likely than the others to be considered a
campus facilities concern than an IT one, and
therefore outside our respondents’ purview.
While most of the practice-modification
initiatives appear simple enough to adopt, it
may be their simplicity that works against their
adoption; central IT may feel that the benefits
of adopting these initiatives are not worth
the bother relative to the benefits of virtualization, consolidation, networked storage,
and improved air temperature management.
Or the rarity of the practice-modification
initiatives may indicate a tendency toward
conservatism in machine-room operations
that works against their adoption. In any case,
each would appear to represent an opportunity for institutions that want to do more with
ES without spending a lot of money.
Associations with Data Center
Initiatives
Considering all nine of our survey’s data
center ES initiatives together, we find that
research institutions, on average, reported
more initiatives in progress or completed
than institutions whose mission is focused
on teaching. The mean for research-oriented
institutions was 5.84,19 while that for teachingfocused institutions was 4.50.20 We speculate
that the more complex data center environments at research institutions provide more
opportunity for ES initiatives, at least partially
explaining these findings. The number of data
center ES initiatives also varies with Carnegie
class: Not surprisingly, given the finding for
research vs. teaching mission, doctoral institutions tend to have more such initiatives in
progress or completed than other classes. We
find no meaningful variation by institution size
in mean number of data center ES initiatives
in progress or completed.
On average, fewer central IT ES initiatives are
in progress or completed where central IT’s ES
practice maturity score is low than where it is
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
high. Separating the list of nine initiatives as
done above into a group of four capital-intensive ones and five practice-modification ones,
we see that it is in the practice-modification
initiatives that IT organizations with higher
ES practice maturity scores most significantly
distinguish themselves. Respondents with a low
maturity index had a mean of 1.35 practicemodifying initiatives in progress or completed;
those with a high maturity had a mean of 2.58,
for a difference of 1.23 out of 5 (see Table
6-10). The equivalent difference for capitalintensive initiatives was substantially smaller.
Thus, it appears that central IT organizations
with more mature ES practices are often better
able to approach data center ES improvements
through behavioral and logistical avenues than
less mature organizations.
Summary and
Implications
While the near future of green IT will
involve continued pursuit of marginal gains in
energy efficiency, return on additional investment in them is likely to peak soon. While
they may be improving now, efficiency curves
measuring the per-watt costs of lighting,
computing cycles, even credit hours, are
likely soon to encounter physical limits and
level off. As Wendell Brase, vice chancellor
for administrative and business services at the
University of California, Irvine, said in a point/
counterpoint session at the 2009 EDUCAUSE
Annual Conference, “Campuses will have to
do as well as they can on the conservation
side, but recognize that there are limits. Then
the emphasis will have to go to the renewable
energy side—it will have to go to the supply
side.”21 Improving the institution’s carbon
footprint in the more distant future will require
finding sources of energy that emit less in the
way of greenhouse gases. Co-location of IT
facilities near sources of renewable energy is
a well-publicized component of the greening
of today’s corporate data centers. We found,
however, that it is still quite rare among higher
education IT organizations: Only about 4% of
our respondent institutions are doing so now,
and only about 6% plan to do so in the next
three years. Outsourcing central IT services to
providers located near sources of renewable
energy is done and planned with similar infrequency, suggesting that most higher education institutions do not yet feel these strategies
are compelling. Governmental imposition of
taxes or other regulations to limit carbon emissions may change that abruptly.
In Chapter 4 we saw that at most institutions, departments lack the basic information
they need to measure their consumption of
electrical power—a cornerstone activity for
those concerned about environmental sustainability (ES). The situation is not much different
for the central IT organization: In the past 12
months very few have undergone full energy
audits, and most—nearly 8 in 10—are neither
billed for nor informed of the amount of electrical power they use. Only rarely is the central
Table 6-10. Number of Data Center Environmental Sustainability Initiatives in Progress or Completed, by
Central IT Organization’s Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Number of Capital-Intensive
Initiatives
Central IT ES Practice Maturity Score
Number of Practice-Modification
Initiatives
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Mean**
N
Std. Deviation
2.87
78
1.210
1.35
78
1.413
Medium maturity (2.50–3.50)
3.13
141
1.081
1.73
141
1.516
High maturity (3.51–5.00)
3.55
38
0.645
2.58
38
1.810
Total
3.11
257
1.089
1.74
257
1.576
Low maturity (1.00–2.49)
*Scale: 0–4 initiatives
**Scale: 0–5 initiatives
99
Green IT in Higher Education
IT organization given better information of this
sort than other departments are.
Nevertheless, well over three-quarters of
respondents told us their central IT organization had an initiative completed or under way
to minimize growth in the organization’s total
electrical energy consumption. Even though
most must work without information about
baseline and ongoing power consumption,
central IT organizations can still pursue this
initiative in a number of ways. A majority
were purchasing ENERGY STAR–certified
products, and about a third each were
purchasing EPEAT-rated computers/monitors
and adopting telecommuting for some staff.
Central IT can also save energy by adopting
virtual classrooms, as about one-third were
doing. At about a quarter of institutions—
presumably those with building projects under
way—central IT was adopting the U.S. Green
Building Council’s LEED Green Building Rating
System, whose aim is to reduce energy use at
the building infrastructure level. Only about 1
respondent in 10 reported that any component of the existing central IT data center was
LEED certified.
Energy-saving initiatives can be undertaken
at the level of the central IT data center as
well. Strong majorities of institutions with such
data centers have completed or are pursuing
projects to replace local storage with storage
area networks and the like, and to optimize the
number of servers in use through consolidation
and virtualization. Even if power monitoring
practices don’t allow direct measurement of
their effects, initiatives like these can contribute
to reducing growth in central IT’s total electrical energy consumption. More behaviorally
oriented data center initiatives are also under
way but at fewer than a third of respondent
institutions. These include raising data center
thermostat settings, reducing lighting levels,
and repositioning equipment and vents.
Central IT organizations at many institutions are engaged in energy-saving initiatives that go beyond slowing growth in the
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
organization’s own electricity consumption, helping reduce energy consumption
in other areas of the institution and in
the region from which the institution
draws commuter students and employees.
Adoption of telecommuting, as reported
above for about a third of respondent
central IT organizations, can help the
institution reduce its energy usage, and
though it shifts some of that cost back
onto the telecommuter, it represents a net
carbon-reduction gain for the community.
The impact of videoconferencing to reduce
staff travel, under way or completed at
even more respondent institutions (about
two-thirds), is also complex to assess, but
in most cases has similar net benefits.
Initiatives to recycle decommissioned IT
equipment are under way at almost 90% of
respondents’ central IT organizations, and
initiatives to convert paper documents to
digital ones at nearly two-thirds. While these
initiatives are not directly related to energy
savings, we gain perspective from them about
the organization’s overall commitment to
environmental responsibility.
A number of factors appear to distinguish
central IT organizations that are more fully
engaged in ES initiatives from those whose
engagement is more limited. More ES initiatives are under way at institutions where
each of the following characteristics applies:
The senior-most IT leader has a more active
role in institutional ES efforts, central IT’s
own strategic plan for ES is more advanced,
central IT has an internal committee that
guides ES initiatives, and ES is a significant
factor in a greater proportion of central
IT purchasing decisions. The number of
ES initiatives central IT has under way is
also positively associated with central IT’s
ES practice maturity score, which reflects
six organizational process maturity traits.
Institutions wishing to expand their engagement in ES activities may benefit from an
assessment of these characteristics.
Green IT in Higher Education
While central IT’s ES activity is brisk in some
areas, overall it appears to be conducted ad
hoc. For the 10 central IT ES initiatives we
inquired about (Figure 6-4), an average of
75.7% of respondents reported having no
documented goals. The comparable average
for institutional ES initiatives is 53.2%. The
effect of institutional leadership emerges from
our data in Table 6-3 above, which shows
that measured goals for ES initiatives at the
institutional level tend to translate into more
measured ES goals for central IT.
The principal issues driving ES initiatives on
campus were diverse and without a perceptible theme. From our list of 10 drivers, respondents most frequently selected cost reduction
and increased efficiency, participation in
institutional initiatives, doing “what’s right”
for the planet, and power/cooling constraints
in existing facilities. The principal barriers to ES
initiatives followed more of a pattern, related
mostly to money and leadership. Again from a
list of 10 that we provided, respondents most
frequently selected lack of funding—both for
central IT overall and for that organization’s
ES initiatives—and lack of guidance from institutional strategic objectives. Other frequently
selected barriers were lack of return on investment and lack of participation from necessary
individuals or departments.
A key hypothesis that we hoped to test in
this study was that central IT’s support for
the institution’s ES initiatives improves institutional ES outcomes. We will have much
more to say about this in Chapter 9, but
groundwork for our analysis comes from this
chapter. In our survey, we focused on three
forms of support from central IT: simple
participation by central IT in the institution’s
ES initiatives, provision of technical solutions
or services for those initiatives, and provision of education about the initiatives for
departments or individuals outside central
IT. Strong majorities reported all three types
of central IT support for most of our 10
institutional ES initiatives. Simple participa-
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
tion was a bit more frequently reported than
provision of technical solutions/services;
educating others was least common, though
majorities still reported providing that kind
of support for most initiatives.
Endnotes
1. Standard deviation, 1.930.
2. Standard deviation, 1.992.
3. The five institutions whose respondents told us central
IT and departments other than central IT were billed
by “Other” means are excluded from this table.
4. Randy H. Katz, “Tech Titans Building Boom,” IEEE
Spectrum, (February 2009): 64–65, http://www
.spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/buildings/tech-titansbuilding-boom/0.
5. Philip J. Goldstein, Alternative IT Sourcing Strategies:
From the Campus to the Cloud (Research Study 5,
2009) (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied
Research, 2009), 134, available from http://www
.educause.edu/ecar.
6. When inquiring about institutional involvement in
these 10 ES initiatives, we asked if the institution
was “actively engaged in” them; allowable responses
were “no,” “yes,” and “don’t know.” When
inquiring about central IT involvement in the same
10 undertakings, we asked for the status of the
organization’s own initiatives; allowable responses
were “no such initiative,” three responses for
reporting initiatives under way with varying degrees
of formality (no goals, unmeasured goals, measured
goals), “initiative is completed,” and “don’t know.”
As a result of these different question/answer
formats, responses for the institution and central IT
organization can be displayed in similar ways but are
not strictly comparable.
7. Standard deviation, 2.109.
8. Standard deviation, 2.257.
9. Standard deviation, 1.946.
10.Standard deviation, 2.172.
11.Not surprisingly, central IT ES practice maturity did
not appear to significantly influence the central IT
organization’s participation in institutional initiatives;
while laudable, such participation could not be
expected either to confer or to signify a heightened
level of maturity in central IT’s own ES practices.
12.Standard deviation, 23.259.
13.Excluding the 36 respondents who were unable to
answer the following question or skipped it, nearly 3
in 10 respondents (29.8%) reported that their central
IT data centers would undergo major remodeling
in the next three years. And excluding the 41
respondents who were unable to answer or skipped
the following similar question, 13.2% said their
central IT data centers would occupy a new building
in the next three years. Twenty-two respondents
answered “yes” to both questions—indicating that
the central IT data center would both be remodeled
and occupy a new building in the next three years
and leading us to suspect that these respondents
interpreted one or the other of the questions in a
way we did not intend. Therefore, we pooled the
101
Green IT in Higher Education
responses such that each respondent planning a
remodeling and/or new-building project within the
next three years was counted only once. The result
is that 29.4% of those who were able to answer the
questions plan one activity or the other.
14.For details, see Crosswell’s Green Data Center
Program presentation at the October 2009 Internet2
conference, available at http://www.internet2.edu/
presentations/fall09/20091006-green-crosswell.pdf.
15.Standard deviation, 2.077.
16.Standard deviation, 1.131.
17.Standard deviation, 1.578.
102
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
18.John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911, http://
www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/
my_first_summer_in_the_sierra/.
19.Standard deviation, 2.068.
20.Standard deviation, 1.908.
21.Mark A skren, D onald Spicer, and Wend ell
Brase (moderator), “Green IT: Conscience or
Wallet?” (point /counterpoint session at the
2009 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, Denver,
CO), http: // w w w.educause.edu / E09+Hybrid /
EDUCAUSE20 09 FacetoFaceConferen /
GreenITConscienceorWallet/175840.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
7
Distributed IT and
Environmental Sustainability
Example is leadership.
—Albert Schweitzer
Key Findings
At institutions where at least some IT facilities are not managed by the central IT organization:
While the quality of communication between central IT and those who manage distributed IT facilities
was generally reported to be acceptable, respondents were often poorly informed about environmental
sustainability (ES) initiatives involving those facilities.
•• Distributed initiatives to minimize growth in electrical energy use were much less common than equivalent initiatives at the institutional and central IT levels, suggesting that a more centralized approach to
this critical initiative is needed.
•• Managers of distributed IT facilities tended to coordinate high-tech ES initiatives themselves; ES initiatives involving purchasing or recycling practices tended to be coordinated by the central IT organization
or the institutional ES office.
•• Documented, standard refresh cycles for faculty/staff workstations were in place at just under half of
respondent institutions. At a small majority of those institutions, the length of the refresh cycle had not
changed in the past 12 months; at most of the rest it had lengthened.
•• Institutions were making gradual progress toward replacing desktop computers with laptops and very
rapid progress toward replacing CRT monitors with LCDs; migration from full-function PCs to thin-client
workstations was occurring only at rare institutions.
••
Not all IT facilities and support are provided
by the central IT organization, of course.
Regardless of institutional and organizational
structures, most faculty, staff, and students
have their own IT equipment and to a degree
are self-sufficient in operating and supporting
it. At a different level, smaller units within an
institution often own and operate servers and
other shared IT resources independent of the
central IT organization. When self-sufficiency
falters, owner/operators of IT equipment
often turn to colleagues and friends for
additional resources and assistance. Between
the extremes of central IT’s institutionalized
support and casual self-help lie the organized
efforts of individual units—be they departments, schools, institutes, or others—to fill the
gaps in central IT’s resource and service offerings and to put some structure around their
personnel’s IT resource sharing and mutual
assistance. At many institutions this is done
through the establishment of separate, non–
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
103
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
central IT organizations with responsibility
for providing and supporting IT resources.
These activities are often termed “distributed”
in contrast to the central IT organization’s
“centralized” offerings, and throughout this
chapter we will refer to them as such.
The data discussed throughout this chapter
came only from the 140 institutions that
had at least some distributed IT facilities.1
Comparing Figure 7-1 to Figure 2-2 shows
that this portion of the survey population is
biased toward institutions that grant doctoral
degrees, have more FTE students, and are
publicly controlled. We realize that readers
without distributed IT facilities may not be
interested in the first section of this chapter.
But all institutions are likely to be interested
in equipment refresh cycles and sustainable
workstation options, and many will be most
interested in the practices of demographic
groups that are underrepresented in our data.
We have interesting findings to report for the
respondent population, but we caution all
readers to bear in mind the unusual demographic composition of the group of institutions discussed in this chapter.
Our survey questions about distributed IT
were often difficult for respondents to answer.
Most respondents said their own primary role
at their institution involved central IT; accordingly, their responsibility for distributed ES
practices was highly variable. As a result, the
numbers of “don’t know” responses to many
of the questions discussed in this chapter
are comparatively high, and we suspect that
even where answers were firmer, they often
involved some guesswork. Readers may wish
to bear these points in mind, as well, as they
follow the discussion below.
Distributed IT Resources
and Support
Our way of identifying institutions where
distributed IT is a factor was to ask if the institution had any IT facilities such as departmental
data centers and computing labs that were
not managed by the central IT organization.
Among our survey respondents, reports were
evenly mixed. Just over half of respondents
(53.6%) said they had such facilities, and the
rest said they did not. Not surprisingly, as Figure
7-1 shows, “yes” responses were significantly
80%
66.9
70%
60%
Percentage of Institutions
Figure 7-1.
Institutions
with IT Facilities
Not Managed
by Central IT
Organization, by
Carnegie Class,
FTE Enrollment,
and Institutional
Control
50%
42.1
33.3
33.1
28.0
30%
20.7
20%
10%
0%
15.7
15.0
6.4
AA
(N = 9)
BA
(N = 21)
MA
(N = 29)
Carnegie Class
104
38.6
40%
DR
(N = 59)
Other
(N = 22)
1–4,000
(N = 37)
4,001–15,000 More than
15,000
(N = 44)
(N = 51)
FTE Enrollment
Private
(N = 45)
Public
(N = 91)
Institutional Control
Green IT in Higher Education
more frequent among doctoral institutions,
larger institutions, and institutions under
public control. At the larger, more complex
organizations included in these categories,
where a sense of independence may outweigh
the sense of community, the desire for locally
managed facilities and services often spurs the
development of a distributed IT environment—
one tied only loosely, if at all, to the central IT
organization.
The existence of distributed IT facilities also
varied by institutional mission, with 57.6% of
institutions that reported having distributed IT
facilities having a research mission and 42.4%
having a teaching mission.
The implications of distributed IT ramify
broadly within the institution. For example,
Nilda Mesa, assistant vice president for
environmental stewardship at Columbia
University, told us that her institution’s IT
organization had “realized in the last few
years that it has become easier and easier
for IT users to become more self-sufficient
and decentralized. This has created another
set of issues that we had not anticipated in
regards to the demand load on institutional
cooling systems and so forth. By its nature, an
academic institution is often very decentralized. When researchers get grants or when
departments become autonomous, their
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
IT-related decisions can have ripple effects
on infrastructure that we have not been able
to track well.”
For those outside central IT, distributed IT
facilities can provide a degree of freedom and
flexibility that may be necessary to accomplish
unit-specific goals. For central IT, though,
decentralization can stand in the way of
creating critical mass to achieve broader goals,
both environmental and technical. For his
institution, explains Joel Hartman, vice provost
and CIO at the University of Central Florida,
“What we’re trying to do is develop internal
planning and governance structures for our
institutional IT ES initiatives, get administrative
approval, establish the financial mechanisms,
and then get the community to respond. The
decentralized IT structure has stood in the
way of some of this, but our approach is to
try to remove the barriers—both technical
and financial—to taking an institution-wide
approach to IT-related sustainability.”
In general, relations between the central
IT organization and those who manage
distributed IT facilities appear acceptable or
better, with just over half of respondents
at institutions with such facilities saying the
quality of communication between the two
parties was good or very good (see Figure
7-2). Most of the remainder were neutral (or
Very poor, 0.7%
Very good, 11.7%
Poor, 7.3%
Neither poor nor good,
36.5%
Figure 7-2. Quality
of Communication
between Central
IT and Those
Who Manage
Distributed IT
Facilities (N = 137)
Good, 43.8%
105
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
possibly conflicted) on the question, characterizing the quality of that communication
as “neither poor nor good.” The interface
between central and distributed IT is fertile
ground for collaboration and innovation, but
seeds of conflict and rivalry can also grow
there, so we are not surprised that neutral
and negative responses make up nearly half
of the respondent pool.
Relatively few institutions reported using
energy audits as a way of tracking energy
consumption among distributed IT computing
facilities. We saw in Chapter 6 that 42.4% of
respondents’ central IT organizations had undergone at least a partial energy audit within the
past 12 months. Asking about energy audits of
distributed IT facilities, we found only 15.3% of
respondents whose institutions had such facilities
reporting that some of them had undergone an
energy audit in the past 12 months; none said
that all such facilities at their institution had been
audited (see Figure 7-3). These numbers may
understate the real prevalence of audits, however,
because more than a quarter of respondents said
they did not know the status of distributed IT
audits. Again, this probably reflects the fact that
most respondents were professionally affiliated
with the central IT organization and thus likely
had little or no responsibility for IT ES practices
in distributed IT contexts.
IT ES Initiatives in Other
Departments
Just as the central IT organization has ES
initiatives of its own, separate from those
of the institution, so do units that operate
distributed IT facilities. Of the 140 survey
respondents who said their institution had
IT facilities that were not managed by the
central IT organization, we asked whether
each of eight initiatives was under way and,
if so, how it was being coordinated. The
initiatives, several of which we have seen in
other contexts in previous chapters, were
•• optimizing the number of servers through
consolidation,
•• optimizing the number of servers through
virtualization,
•• minimizing growth in total electrical
energy consumption,
•• recycling decommissioned IT equipment
(e-waste),
•• adopting more aggressive power
management practices for servers,
•• adopting more aggressive power
management practices for PCs,
•• purchasing ENERGY STAR– certified
products in all areas for which such
ratings exist, and
•• purchasing computers/monitors with
EPEAT rating of silver or better.
Don't know, 26.3%
Figure 7-3.
Distributed
IT Facilities
Undergoing
Energy Audit in
Past 12 Months
(N = 137)
All non–central IT computing
facilities, 0.0%
Some non–central IT
computing facilities, 15.3%
106
No audit, 58.4%
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Majorities of respondents also reported
the occurrence of distributed IT initiatives
to adopt more aggressive power management practices for PCs and to optimize the
number of servers through consolidation.
PC power management received a few more
“don’t know” responses than other initiatives in the top five, perhaps because it is an
initiative carried out primarily on end-user
desktops and so might come to the attention
of our respondents a little less often. Efforts
to optimize the number of servers through
consolidation appear a little less popular than
doing so by virtualization, perhaps because
consolidation is the less flexible of the two
options or because much of this work had
been completed prior to our survey.
The importance of PC power management
throughout the institution was a recurring
theme among our qualitative interviewees.
For example, as Joyce Dickerson, director for
sustainable IT at Stanford University, reported,
Figure 7-4 lists the initiatives in descending
order of activity. Engagement in three of the
initiatives was reported by as many as twothirds of respondents. These were recycling
of decommissioned IT equipment (e-waste),
optimizing servers through virtualization, and
the purchase of ENERGY STAR products. Of
all the items on our list, recycling of e-waste
and purchase of ENERGY STAR products are
among the easiest to accomplish, and it is
no surprise to learn that they are among the
most commonly adopted initiatives in the
distributed IT context. On the other hand,
optimizing the number of servers through
virtualization can be complex and expensive,
so its popularity suggests that the benefits
must be perceived by its adopters as relatively
compelling. While “don’t know” responses for
all distributed IT ES initiatives are high, they
are lower for these three initiatives, suggesting
that activity surrounding them comes more
frequently to our respondents’ attention.
Recycle e-waste
(N = 134)
9.7
20.9
13.3
20.0
69.4
Optimize servers through
virtualization (N = 135)
66.7
Purchase ENERGY STAR
products (N = 134)
Manage PC power consumption
more aggressively (N = 132)
59.1
Optimize servers through
consolidation (N = 135)
58.5
25.4
9.7
64.9
23.7
17.8
Purchase EPEAT
products (N = 134)
45.5
Manage server power consumption
more aggressively (N = 132)
44.7
18.9
36.4
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 133)
43.6
20.3
36.1
0%
10%
20%
40.3
14.2
30%
40%
50%
Figure 7-4. Status
of Distributed IT
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
28.8
12.1
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of Institutions
Happening
Not happening
Don't know
107
Green IT in Higher Education
“We’re making a concerted ‘consumer’ effort
toward desktop management. We have about
40,000 workstations and, a few years ago, if
you walked around at night you’d see monitors glowing everywhere. We’ve put in place
a centralized PC power management tool that
by default turns monitors off after 15 minutes
of inactivity, though departments can choose
other intervals. Next year we’ll use this to
put more and more PCs into sleep mode, as
appropriate, depending on actual usage. The
challenge of this project has been getting out
there and evangelizing; it requires a pretty
intensive marketing campaign.”
A final cluster of three initiatives was
reported as being adopted at just under half
of institutions. These included the purchase of
monitors and computers with an EPEAT rating
of silver or better, aggressive management of
server power consumption, and minimizing
growth in electrical energy use. For all of
these initiatives we received comparatively
large percentages of “don’t know” responses,
suggesting that these issues come to the
attention of our respondents less often than
the others.
Four of the distributed IT initiatives we
asked about overlapped with the group of
10 that we asked about in the contexts of
the institution (refer to Figure 4-4) and of the
central IT organization (refer to Figure 6-3).
These were initiatives to recycle e-waste,
purchase ENERGY STAR products, purchase
EPEAT products, and minimize growth in
energy use. Because “don’t know” responses
for distributed IT initiatives were so frequent,
and because the syntax of our questions
about them was not identical to that of our
questions about institutional and central IT
initiatives, detailed comparisons among the
three sets of percentages are impossible to
draw. At a gross level, however, it appears
that recycling e-waste is common in all three
contexts. Initiatives to purchase ENERGY
STAR products are also common in all three
contexts, while those to purchase EPEAT prod-
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
ucts are less so. Distributed initiatives to minimize growth in electrical energy use appear to
be much less common than in institutional and
central IT contexts, suggesting strongly that
centralized entities find that initiative more
practicable. Again, though, we must emphasize that a high percentage of “don’t know”
responses—36.1% in this case—renders any
interpretation speculative.
Coordination of Distributed
Initiatives
As mentioned above, we were not only
interested in whether our set of eight initiatives was under way in departments outside
central IT, but also wondered how those
initiatives were being coordinated, if at all. The
coordination options we asked about were
•• occurring ad hoc within departments,
•• coordinated by central IT organization,
•• coordinated by institutional environmental sustainability office, and
•• coordinated by other institutional office.
The following discussion is based solely on
responses from institutions where respondents knew that initiatives were under way;
“not happening” and “don’t know” responses
are ignored.
For four of the eight initiatives we asked
about, majorities reported that occurrence
was ad hoc within departments. These
were optimizing the number of servers
through consolidation and through virtualization, aggressively managing server power
consumption, and minimizing growth in total
electrical energy consumption (see Figure
7-5). The three initiatives at the top of Figure
7-5 all involve servers and are the most “deep
tech” of any in the full set of eight, yet it is
relatively rare for the central IT organization
to coordinate them. Where a server exists
outside the central IT sphere, there is usually
a reason, be it central IT’s unfamiliarity
with specialized hardware and/or software,
specialized data management issues, or
other factors. Where that is the case, we can
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Optimize servers through
consolidation (N = 79)
Manage server power consumption
more aggressively (N = 59)
1.3
26.6
70.9
1.7
30.5
66.1
1.3
1.7
1.1
Optimize servers through
virtualization (N = 90)
32.2
64.4
Minimize growth in electrical
energy use (N = 58)
Manage PC power consumption more
aggressively (N = 78)
47.1
29.9
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
9.8
14.8
8.0
14.9
7.5
47.3
23.7
Recycle e-waste
(N = 93)
7.7
41.0
34.4
Purchase ENERGY
STAR products (N = 87)
6.9
47.4
42.3
Purchase EPEAT
products (N = 61)
8.6
22.4
62.1
2.2
60%
70%
2.6
Figure 7-5.
Coordination of
Distributed IT
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives
21.5
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of Institutions
Occurring ad hoc within departments
Coordinated by central IT organization
Coordinated by institutional environmental sustainability office
Coordinated by other institutional office
understand that central IT might be a poor
choice to coordinate ES initiatives related
to those servers. The personnel managing
distributed IT servers are likely predisposed
toward independence, which helps explain
why central IT often does not coordinate
consolidation, virtualization, and power
management initiatives involving them.
Initiatives to minimize growth in energy
use are the fourth type that occurs ad hoc
at a majority of institutions. As was the case
with the server-related initiatives discussed
above, central IT coordinates this initiative at
most of the remaining institutions, but unlike
the others, at substantial numbers of institutions this initiative is coordinated instead by
the institutional ES office (8.6%) and other
offices (6.9%). We found that this initiative was
among the most widespread at the institutional
and central IT levels as well, and of the initiatives on our list, it is the least limited to the IT
context. No doubt that pervasiveness explains
its frequent coordination by entities outside the
department or the central IT organization.
Ad hoc occurrence within departments
was less frequently reported for more
aggressive management of PC power
consumption, and a near majorit y of
respondents said the central IT organization
coordinates it. For this initiative, central IT
coordination can involve promulgating or
even mandating PC power management
settings. Methods exist for “pushing” power
management settings to PCs on start-up,
and at many institutions central IT would
be a logical partner in doing so. Even here,
though, the decentralization of authority
that distributed IT represents can impose
barriers. As Sharon Blanton, CIO at Portland
State University, describes the situation,
“We have many computers that are left on
24 hours a day. We want to employ a technique that would shut down each computer
at a given time. But central IT only has access
to a limited number of computers. That’s
the barrier, that whole level of decentralized units. They can choose to do what we
suggest or not.”
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Green IT in Higher Education
Coordination of PC power consumption
management by the institutional ES office is
relatively infrequent, although still significant.
At only 2.6% of the respondent institutions
that have this initiative under way do other
offices coordinate the effort.
The last three initiatives—purchase of EPEAT
and ENERGY STAR products and recycling of
e-waste—are the least technical, but because
they involve IT gear, it is no surprise to find
central IT coordinating them at a plurality of
institutions. Substantial numbers also report
ad hoc occurrence, suggesting that coordination at a higher institutional level is unavailable or that distributed IT managers prefer to
pursue the initiatives independently.
At very significant numbers of respondent
institutions, however, “other” institutional
offices coordinate purchase of EPEAT and
ENERGY STAR products (14.8% and 14.9%,
respectively) and recycling of e-waste (21.5%).
For EPEAT and ENERGY STAR purchases,
presumably, the “other” office is the institution’s purchasing department, and for recycling
of e-waste it may be facilities services or—where
such an office exists—risk management.
Refresh Cycles and
Sustainable Workstation
Options
As we saw, among respondents with
distributed IT facilities, server-related initiatives
are among the most commonly reported from
the set we asked about. However, initiatives
involving devices on the desktops (and laps)
of faculty, staff, and students also contribute
to overarching goals to minimize growth in
energy use and recycle e-waste. While our
survey data are limited to institutions with
distributed IT facilities, our findings are likely
to be of interest to the entire community.
Workstation Refresh Cycles
Periodically replacing desktop and laptop
computers and peripherals (workstations, collectively) is a common practice, and processes for
110
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
doing so are institutionalized at many colleges
and universities. The constant pace of software
development is the principal driver for refreshment of an institution’s workstations. New
versions of operating systems and application
software usually come with minimum system
requirements, and it is often the case that a
workstation three or four years old does not
meet them. Thus, upgrading the institution’s
standard software usually requires upgrading
at least some of the institution’s workstations.
Many institutions have found that migrating to a
new ERP system, for example, carries with it the
additional cost of bringing users’ workstations
up to a higher level.
The heightened awareness of ES issues
emerging in recent years has added another
driver for workstation refreshment. Newer
workstations may be designed to use less
energy and are likely to offer a richer set of
power management features. Often they
are constructed with materials less harmful
to the environment than previous models,
and by methods more friendly to the environment. These benefits must, of course,
be weighed against the accompanying
financial and organizational costs (e.g., the
learning curve for adopting new hardware
and the software it requires). But there are
also environmental costs.
Nancye Jenkins, director of telecommunications and client services at the University of
New Hampshire, outlined the complexity of
the issue for us. “The appropriate metric for
equipment replacement is not always going
to be cost savings,” she said, “because sometimes it’s more expensive to buy an ENERGY
STAR appliance. It’s really important to look
at costs over the device’s entire life cycle.
There is a whole dichotomy about whether
you should replace equipment more or less
frequently. More frequently creates immediate
energy savings, but then it costs more because
you could instead stretch the life of currently
owned equipment. Frequent replacement
creates new issues about disposal, too.”
Green IT in Higher Education
Indeed, the mantra of the environmental
movement has, for decades, been “reduce,
reuse, recycle.” (“Reduce” is now sometimes
replaced with “rethink.”) Regular equipment
refreshment, of course, stands in opposition to
reducing consumption. It involves the manufacture and acquisition of more workstations,
not fewer. Reuse of workstations is difficult
if the institution wishes to keep its software
environment consistent, although use of older
devices in limited-purpose facilities (such as
language or composition labs) or as thin-client
devices has its place. Recycling eventually
becomes necessary, and as the data reported
elsewhere in this and previous chapters show,
most respondent institutions have initiatives
under way to do that. But recycling is listed
third in the environmentalists’ mantra for a
reason: It is the ES alternative of last resort.
Of the institutions in our subpopulation,
about half (47.8%) reported having a documented, standard refresh cycle for faculty/
staff workstations. Among those with documented refresh cycles, the consistency with
which the cycle is applied was reported to be
fairly good. As Figure 7-6 shows, more than
three-quarters of respondents said the refresh
cycle was applied somewhat consistently or
very consistently. These are good numbers,
but we are surprised they are not better. An
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
institution documents its standard practices
to ensure their consistent application, and for
that effort to have failed at 14.3%—one in
seven of those institutions with a documented
standard—is clearly excessive.
A s Table 7-1 shows, about 3 in 10
respondents in our subsample reported
that the length of their institution’s refresh
cycle was 3 years. A small majority reported
4 years, and one-sixth reported a cycle of 5
years or more. These figures are consistent
with those from the 2008 EDUCAUSE Core
Data Service report, 2 in which replacement
cycles of “3–4 years” and “4 years” constitute the majority.
We also asked if the past 12 months had
seen a change in the length of the institution’s
standard refresh cycle for faculty/staff PCs. The
economic crisis of 2008/2009, we felt, might
have caused the standard cycle to lengthen,
resulting in an older mix of computers in use.
But we also suspected that ES considerations
would have an effect, lengthening the cycle in
some cases (more “reduce,” less “recycle”) but
shortening it in others (to bring more-energyefficient equipment to campus). As Figure 7-7
shows, we found that only a few respondents
in our subsample reported shortening their
cycles in the past year, and a small majority
reported no change. The remainder said
Very inconsistently, 14.3%
Very consistently, 34.9%
Somewhat inconsistently,
7.9%
Neither inconsistently nor
consistently, 0.0%
Figure 7-6.
Consistency of
Application of
Faculty/Staff
Workstation
Refresh Cycle
(Institutions with
Some Distributed
IT Facilities,
N = 63)
Somewhat consistently,
42.9%
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Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 7-1. Length of Refresh Cycle for Faculty/Staff Workstations (Institutions with Some
Distributed IT Facilities, N = 65)
Length of Refresh Cycle
Percentage of Institutions
Three years
29.2%
Four years
53.8%
Five years
15.4%
More than five years
1.5%
Shortened (more-frequent
refresh), 4.6%
Figure 7-7. Change
in Faculty/Staff
Workstation
Refresh Cycle in
Past 12 Months
(Institutions with
Some Distributed
IT Facilities,
N = 65)
Lengthened (less-frequent
refresh), 41.5%
No change, 53.8%
the cycle had been lengthened. We cannot
say whether the primary influence on the
faculty/staff workstation refresh cycle was
economic, environmental, or both, but the
message from this finding reflects a conservative approach: Nearly all respondents in our
subsample (95.3%) had not accelerated their
acquisition of new faculty/staff workstations
in the past year.
Sustainable Workstation
Options
In terms of their environmental impacts,
not all desktop IT devices are created equal.
Initiatives that institutions are taking to help
reduce the impact of these devices include
replacement of desktop computers with
laptops, which, to extend battery life, have
always been engineered for low power
consumption; replacement of power-hungry
cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors with liquid
112
crystal display (LCD) models; and replacement
of high-powered desktop and laptop PCs with
more economical thin-client workstations.
Desktops to Laptops
Among the subsample of institutions that
reported they had at least some IT facilities
not managed by the central IT organization,
most are still primarily using desktop, rather
than laptop computers for faculty and staff.
As Figure 7-8 shows, fewer than 1 in 10 said
that all or nearly all of those workstations
were desktops, but a majority reported that
the mix was “mostly” desktops. Use of laptops
instead of desktops is advanced at many institutions, with a quarter reporting an even mix
of the two types; but institutions reporting
mostly laptops were few, and none of the
institutions in this subsample of respondents
said all or nearly all faculty/staff workstations
were laptops.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
There are reasons not to transition all desktops to laptops, of course, including performance differences, increased maintenance
costs, and sometimes additional purchase
costs (docking stations, port replicators, and
external keyboards and monitors). Balancing
some of these concerns, of course, are the
mobility advantages of laptop workstations,
which include the ES-related advantage of
enabling telecommuting and its consequent
reduction of the worker’s carbon footprint.
Perhaps reflecting this preponderance of
drawbacks, respondents at a small majority
of institutions in our subsample (58.8%)
reported no initiative in place to transition
from desktop to laptop computers when
refreshing faculty/staff computers. About
a third (36.0%) had initiatives in place to
make such a transition in some units of the
institution, and only a few (5.1%) reported an
initiative to replace all faculty/staff desktop
computers with laptops.
Among the 56 institutions with a desktop/
laptop replacement initiative in place, we
received responses from 53 to our question about the factors driving it. ES considerations seem incidental to the practice at
most of these institutions, with only 3.8% of
respondents saying they were the initiative’s
primary driver. Another 11.3% cited economic
conditions, with the remaining 84.9% citing
“other” considerations, which we assume
revolved mostly around the mobility factor.
CRTs to LCDs
LCD monitors have been increasing in
popularity for at least a decade, as size
and brightness have increased and cost has
declined. They are much lighter in weight
than CRT monitors with equivalent viewing
area and take up considerably less room
on the desktop. They use a third as much
electricity as CRT monitors in active mode
and half as much in standby mode, last
more than twice as long, and have similar
purchase prices.3 A 2001 study conducted
for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
established that the slightly higher electricity
costs incurred during the manufacture of LCD
monitors, as compared to equivalent CRT
monitors, are more than offset by reduced
electricity costs during use.4 Recently, the
University of California, Irvine, estimated
the annual energy savings of replacing
1,000 17-inch CRT monitors with equivalent
ENERGY STAR–certified LCD monitors as
$34,372 with a resulting reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions of more than 200 tons.5
All or nearly all laptops,
0.0%
Mostly laptops, 6.8%
All or nearly all desktops,
8.3%
Figure 7-8. Current
Mix of Desktop
and Laptop
Computers for
Faculty and Staff
(Institutions with
Some Distributed
IT Facilities,
N = 133)
An even mix, 25.6%
Mostly desktops, 59.4%
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Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
The toxicity of LCD monitors in the waste
stream appears to be low,6 whereas CRT monitors are very toxic, largely because of the high
lead content of the glass in the CRT itself.7 For
this reason, as well as the toxicity of some
circuit board components, CRT monitors are
banned from landfills in many areas. That said,
CRT monitors are currently easier and more
worthwhile to recycle than LCD monitors.
Considering the balance of these factors,
it is no surprise that a majority of the respondents in our subsample reported their institutions had initiatives in place to transition
from CRT to LCD monitors. At 59.4%, all or
almost all units of the institution had such
initiatives in place, and at 11.6% some units
did, leaving only 29.0% with no such initiative in place. As Figure 7-9 shows, 94.0% said
their institution’s mix of monitors was already
mostly, nearly all, or all LCDs, so most of the
institutions with no CRT-replacement initiative
in place simply have no need for one.
Of the 98 institutions pursuing this initiative, we have responses from 93 to our question about the factors driving it. For 21.5%,
the primary driver was economic considerations. Given that the purchase price of the
two types of monitor is roughly equivalent,
it is the longer lifespan of LCD monitors and
All or nearly all CRT, 0.0%
their lower energy consumption that make
them economically more favorable. For more
than a third (37.6%), the primary driver for
their monitor replacement initiative was ES
considerations, by far the largest percentage
among the three sustainable workstation
options we asked about.
For 40.9%, the primary driver of conversion from CRT monitors to LCDs was “other”
considerations—in many cases, presumably, a
general modernization of desktop hardware.
PCs to Thin Clients
To some, it is axiomatic that in order to
get the work of the institution done, a fully
configured desktop computer is necessary for
nearly all faculty, staff, and students. This is
the model in place at most institutions, and at
most its costs are taken for granted. However,
for many applications, similar functionality
can be gained by replacing at least some
of those computers with thin-client workstations—monitors and keyboards attached
to networked boxes that include central
processor units and memory but have no
significant local storage capacity and therefore
load much of their operating system and application software from a central, networked
server.8 Relative to PCs, thin clients offer the
Mostly CRT, 2.2%
An even mix, 3.7%
Figure 7-9. Current
Mix of CRT and
LCD Monitors
for Faculty/
Staff Computing
Devices
(Institutions with
Some Distributed
IT Facilities,
N = 134)
114
All or nearly all LCD, 53.0%
Mostly LCD, 41.0%
Green IT in Higher Education
advantages of centrally licensed, configured,
and managed software; greatly simplified
security options; low purchase price and
total cost of ownership; and reduced energy
consumption. Their disadvantages can include
relatively inflexible configurations, relatively
slow software and data load times, and the
need for expensive central server hardware
and software, as well as the expertise to
manage both effectively.
Because thin clients are seldom appropriate
for faculty, we framed our survey questions
about thin-client alternatives in terms of staff
use only. Thin clients for staff have not caught
on widely among our subsample of institutions: More than three-quarters reported
that all or nearly all staff workstations are
full-function PCs (see Figure 7-10). Almost 2
in 10 said staff workstations are mostly fullfunction PCs. Only 3.0% reported an even mix
of thin clients and full-function PCs, and none
said the mix of staff workstations was mostly,
nearly all, or all thin clients. However, the idea
of using thin clients still has legs—short ones,
at least: While only one respondent reported
that an initiative was in place to replace PCs
with thin-client workstations in all departments, nearly a third (32.6%) said such an
initiative was under way in some institutional
Mostly thin client, 0.0%
An even mix, 3.0%
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
units. The remaining two-thirds reported that
no such initiative was under way.
Of the 46 institutions with thin-client PC
replacement initiatives in place, we have
responses from 45 to our question about the
factors driving it. Economic considerations
were the primary driver among a majority
(62.2%), with ES considerations cited as the
primary driver by only six respondents (13.3%).
“Other” considerations were cited as primary
by 11 respondents (24.4%); we assume that
in most of these cases considerations were
related to management/control issues.
Staff are not the only potential constituency for thin clients, we learned. Among
our qualitative interviewees, we found that
projects are aborning to use thin clients for
student computing. For example, Greg Day,
director of desktop support/user services
at Shippensburg University, told us, “We’re
beginning to experiment with a thin-client
model where software is served from a central
server to workstations. We’ll roll it out in
some computer labs, where the goal will be
to consume less energy. But we’ll also use the
servers to enable students to access software
for class projects from their own computers,
which adds convenience for the students and
reduces pressure on our lab facilities.” Day is
All or nearly all thin client,
0.0%
Mostly full-function, 18.5%
Figure 7-10.
Current Mix of
Full-Function
and Thin-Client
Computing
Devices for Staff
(Institutions with
Some Distributed
IT Facilities,
N = 135)
All or nearly all full-function,
78.5%
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Green IT in Higher Education
finding that software license agreements are
sometimes vague on the point of thin-client
access, and he says the university will have to
adapt its strategy accordingly.
And Mark Roman, CIO at the University of
Victoria, reports that his institution is considering use of thin clients, where appropriate,
for faculty as well as staff, “replacing both
desktop and laptop computers. We did a
back-of-the-envelope calculation and think
we could save $250,000 a year in energy
alone. These devices sip electricity; they have
no moving parts, no hard drives. There are
technical limitations we have to address, but
the basic idea is compelling.”
Summary and
Implications
Just over half of the survey respondents
said their institution had distributed IT
facilities; examples of such facilities include
departmental data centers and computing
labs that are not managed by the central IT
organization. Such facilities spring up where
IT needs are very specialized within departments and/or where the central IT organization is unable for some reason to support the
entire institution’s IT needs. Thus, we were
not surprised to find that distributed IT facilities were substantially more common among
respondent institutions that offered advanced
degrees (especially doctoral institutions), had
more than 15,000 students, and/or were
under public control. All these institutional
attributes are associated with greater numbers
of specialized programs, smaller per-capita IT
staff resources, or both.
The existence of distributed IT facilities
does not necessarily imply a rift between
central IT and departmental IT practitioners.
A small majority of respondents characterized
the quality of communication between the
central IT organization and those who manage
distributed computing facilities as good or
very good. Fewer than 1 in 10 characterized
it as poor or very poor.
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Nevertheless, “don’t know” responses
to many of our detailed questions about
environmental sustainability (ES) practices
in the distributed IT context were frequent,
ranging from 20 – 40%, suggesting that
respondents—most of whom were associated with the central IT organization—may
not receive a great quantity of information
about ES practices from their distributed
colleagues, however good the quality of
communication with them may be. Whatever
causes this apparent constriction in the flow
of communications between central IT and
distributed IT practitioners, it poses a threat
to the success of the institution’s IT-related ES
initiatives wherever concerted action and/or
economies of scale are involved.
Recycling e-waste, virtualization and (to
a lesser extent) consolidation of servers,
purchasing ENERGY STAR products, and
aggressively managing PC power consumption
were under way within distributed IT units at
majorities of respondent institutions. Initiatives
to purchase EPEAT-certified products, aggressively manage server power consumption, and
minimize growth in total energy consumption
were slightly less common.
Three of the distributed ES initiatives we
asked about were related to servers: optimizing the number of servers in use through
consolidation and virtualization, and more
aggressive management of server power
consumption. At institutions with these three
initiatives under way, respondents said the
central IT organization coordinated each in
under one-third of reported cases—among
the lowest percentages reported for the
eight distributed initiatives we asked about.
However, where servers are managed outside
the central IT organization, the personnel
managing them can be presumed to be at
least somewhat predisposed toward independence; thus involvement by central IT in
20–30% of the ES initiatives related to those
servers may be a more impressive showing
than it first seems.
Green IT in Higher Education
Like the server-related initiatives, distributed
initiatives to minimize growth in electrical
energy use also occurred ad hoc frequently
and were infrequently coordinated by central
IT. As is the case for optimization of servers
and managing of server power consumption,
an initiative to minimize growth in energy use
touches principally upon management issues.
Because we defined distributed IT facilities as
those not managed by central IT, it doesn’t
surprise us to find that this initiative is so
seldom coordinated by that organization.
It is, however, sometimes coordinated by
the institutional ES office, which seems very
appropriate for an initiative whose success
directly impacts the institution’s overall effort
to minimize growth in electrical energy use.
We expect that more such distributed initiatives will be coordinated by the ES office if
carbon taxes and the like increase the stakes
for energy conservation.
Distributed initiatives related to PC power
consumption, to purchasing of ENERGY STAR
or EPEAT-rated products, and to recycling
e-waste were most often coordinated by
the central IT organization, though reports
of ad hoc occurrence within departments,
coordination by the institutional ES office,
and—especially for purchasing and recycling
initiatives—coordination by other institutional
offices were common. The frequency of
external coordination here may have to do
with the fact that, except for management
of PC power consumption, these initiatives
tend to have institutional-level counterparts,
which in many cases come with predefined
goals and suggested methods for achieving
them. And because institutional initiatives
are necessarily fairly general, there may be
fewer department-specific issues demanding
local coordination than for the higher-tech
distributed initiatives.
The population from which we have data
about documented, standard replacement
cycles for faculty/staff workstations and
about initiatives to transition toward more
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
energy-efficient desktop equipment is limited
to respondent institutions with at least some
distributed IT facilities. Readers should keep
in mind that this biases the remainder of this
discussion toward doctoral institutions, those
with more than 15,000 students, and those
under public control.
About half of these institutions had documented, standard workstation refresh cycles,
and among that number about three-quarters
indicated that those cycles were consistently
or very consistently applied. Where such
replacement cycles were in place, durations
of 3 or 4 years were most common. About
half said the cycle had not changed in the
past 12 months, but 4 in 10 said it had been
lengthened, presumably as a response to the
financial distress so many higher education
institutions experienced in late 2008 and the
first half of 2009.
Perhaps because economic pressures have
lengthened workstation replacement cycles
at so many institutions, few respondents at
present seem to see the laptop computer as
a significant force in their efforts to become
more environmentally responsible. While many
respondent institutions have already gone far
toward replacing desktop computers with
more energy-efficient laptops, more than half
of respondents told us they had no initiative
in place to do so. Where such an initiative was
in place, it seldom had the goal of replacing
all faculty/staff desktops with laptops and
was seldom driven primarily by ES concerns.
Instead, respondents cited “other” concerns,
which we assume were most often related to
the greater mobility of laptop computers.
Initiatives to replace energy-hungry CRT
monitors with LCD equivalents were much
more common than initiatives to replace
desktop computers with laptops. About
6 in 10 respondents said an initiative to
replace CRTs with LCDs was in place in all
or almost all units of the institution, and a
small majority said all or nearly all of their
institution’s monitors were already LCDs.
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Green IT in Higher Education
Here, ES considerations were the primary
driver of the initiative in almost 4 cases in
10, with most of the remaining respondents
citing “other” considerations—presumably
related to general modernization of desktop
equipment. Implications for the environment
here are positive; LCD monitors use a third or
less of the electricity that CRTs use, and the
number of monitors on any campus is large.
While activity in this area has been ongoing
for years and much ground has been gained,
there is still plenty of room for progress at
many institutions.
While thin-client computers have for years
held promise for simplifying the management
of desktop devices and for lowering purchase,
maintenance, and energy costs, only a third of
the institutions that responded to our questions about them had initiatives under way to
adopt them for staff, even on a modest scale.
Most of those that had such initiatives under
way cited economic rather than environmental
or other factors as the primary driver. Technical
complexities and disappointing performance
seem to be keeping a lid on the proliferation
of these energy-saving devices.
Endnotes
1. The lead question in this part of the survey (Section
6) asked, “Does your institution have any IT facilities
(e.g., departmental data centers and computing labs)
that are not managed by the central IT organization?”
Respondents who answered “yes” to that question
were directed to a group of questions that were
relevant only to institutions with distributed IT
facilities. Those who answered “no” or “don’t
know” to the lead question skipped the group of
118
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
distributed IT questions. Our intent was to bring the
entire survey population together again to answer the
last 13 questions in Section 6, related to workstation
replacement cycles and sustainable workstation
options. Instead, we inadvertently caused those
who answered “no” or “don’t know” to the lead
question to skip all the questions in Section 6. As
a result, the last 13 questions in that section were
answered only by respondents who answered
“yes” to the lead question. To view the original
survey instrument, visit http://www.educause.edu/
Resources/GreenITSurvey/172199.
Pam Arroway and Bhawna Sharma, EDUCAUSE
Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2008 Summary
Report (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE, October 2009),
23–24, http://net.educause.edu/apps/coredata/
reports/2008/.
BC Hydro, “Computer Monitors,” Vancouver, B.C. (May
9, 2009), http://www.bchydro.com/powersmart/
technology_tips/buying_guides/office_equipment/
computer_monitors.html.
Maria Leet Socolof, Jonathan G. Overly, Lori E.
Kincaid, and Jack R. Geibig, Desktop Computer
Displays: A Life-Cycle Assessment, Volume 1
(University of Tennessee Center for Clean Products
and Clean Technologies, December 2001), Executive
Summar y, p. ES-33, http:// w w w.p2pays.org /
ref/18/17721/lca/ExecSummary.pdf.
UCI CRT Replacement Program Introduction
and Application (University of California, Irvine,
June 2008), http://www.fm.uci.edu/images/CRT_
ReplacementProgramIntro+Appplication&RulesR1.pdf.
Maria Leet Socolof, Jonathan G. Overly, Lori E.
Kincaid, and Jack R. Geibig, Toxicological and
Ecotoxicological Investigations of Liquid Crystals;
Disposal of LCDs (Merck KGaA, September 2002),
http://web.archive.org/web/20071221080211/
http://www.merck.de/servlet/PB/show/1111930/
Vortrag_Tox+092002.pdf.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Life Cycle
Assessment of Desktop Computer Displays: Summary
of Results, EPA/744-R-01-005 (March 2002): 30,
http://www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/comp-dic/lca-sum/
ques8.pdf.
Mark Sheehan, “Considering Thin Client Computing
for Higher Education,” CAUSE/EFFECT 21, no. 3
(1998), http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cem/
cem98/cem9832.html.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
8
Knowledgeability and
Participation
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
—Bertrand Russell
Key Findings
••
••
••
••
S
Respondents much more often agreed that individuals at their institutions were well informed
about general environmental sustainability (ES) issues than about IT-specific ES issues,
suggesting that many IT organizations’ communications only poorly reflect the priority the
CIO was reported to place upon ES.
Respondents were more likely to say individuals were better informed about ES issues
where institutional and central IT:
»»
leadership placed high priority on ES
»»
ES-related strategic plans were better developed
»»
ES initiatives under way were more numerous
»»
ES practice maturity score was higher
Where individuals were better informed about IT-related ES issues, more respondents
perceived participation of faculty and staff in the institution’s IT-related ES initiatives to
have increased in the past 12 months.
Where the institution and the central IT organization had invested in more mature sets of
ES practices, respondents were significantly more likely to have perceived an increase in
various constituencies’ participation in IT-related ES initiatives in the past 12 months.
ome aspects of environmental sustainability (ES) operate top down. Pursuit of
alternative sources of electrical power for the
institution, for example, may be stimulated by
grassroots sentiment but must ultimately be
implemented at a high executive level. Many
other aspects of ES, though, remain partly or
wholly in the hands of the individual. Examples
include changing work habits to accommodate desktop PC power management func-
tions and making sure e-waste is collected for
recycling and not just pitched into a dumpster.
Therefore, institutions and individual units
within institutions that are determined to do
more with ES in general and with green IT in
particular need to mobilize the entire community in order to meet their goals.
As Christopher Sedore, vice president for
information technology and CIO at Syracuse
University, puts it, “In order to go beyond the
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
119
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
economics of ES, you need intellectual buy-in
from the campus that says ES is a worthwhile
thing to do. Higher education cannot do much
by pure mandate, so you need community
buy-in. The good news is that most people
want to buy in to ES.”
We asked about two aspects of community
engagement: whether the respondent agreed
that most individuals at the institution were
well informed about general and IT-specific ES
issues and how, in the respondent’s judgment,
the participation of faculty, staff, and students
in IT-related ES activities had changed in the
past 12 months. We see responses to both
questions as indications of the extent to
which engagement in ES issues is becoming
imbedded in institutional culture.
Individuals’
Knowledgeability about
ES Issues
As Figure 8-1 shows, a majority of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that individuals were well informed about general ES
issues, but fewer than a quarter responded
that way about IT-related ES issues. The
mean response for general IT issues was
3.35,1 between “neutral” and “agree,” and
for IT-related issues was 2.65, 2 between
“disagree” and “neutral.”
Some of this difference is predictable;
IT-related ES issues are the more specialized
kind and respondents probably understand
that they don’t catch the attention of the
average individual in the way more general
ones such as lighting, heating, and general
recycling might. Our findings here reinforce
our sense that the central IT organization is
not widely seen—even by our mostly central
IT–affiliated respondents—as a major player in
the ES arena or as a major provider of solutions
relevant to ES. Another explanation, though,
is that this is an acknowledgment from some
respondents that the central IT organization
has been less energetic in sharing information
about IT-related ES issues than other campus
entities have been in sharing information
about general ones.
While this may often be the case generally, exceptions are many. One emerges at
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. As
Joanne Kossuth, vice president of operations and CIO, reports, “About two years
ago, our outsourced facilities company, our
60%
48.6
50%
Figure 8-1.
Individuals
Are Well
Informed about
Environmental
Sustainability
Issues
Percentage of Institutions
40.9
40%
28.7
30%
29.0
21.4
20%
10%
14.3
8.3
4.4
4.0
0.4
0%
Strongly disagree
Disagree
General ES issues (N = 251)
IT-related ES issues (N = 252)
120
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
own energy management specialist, and I
reviewed the campus utility bills and decided
the college could do better. One step we
took was the installation of meters in various
campus locations such as residence halls, the
academic center, and the data center. We
took the data from these meters and piped
them to plasma displays on site and to the
college website to show which campus areas
had reduced their energy consumption.” The
Olin sustainability site (http://www.olin.edu/
sustainability) presents energy data from
2008 and 2009, showing main campus electrical energy consumption, total natural gas
consumption, and a consumption progression since 2006. Has so much transparency
helped? “The figures make it pretty clear,”
Kossuth said. “Our energy consumption has
decreased 40% since 2006.”
We found a significant correlation between
the responses to our two questions about
how knowledgeable individuals were. Among
those who strongly disagreed or disagreed that
individuals were well informed about general
ES issues, nearly all responded similarly about
IT-related ES issues (see Table 8-1). While it
would be stretching a point to interpret it as
apathy breeding apathy, this finding at least
suggests strongly that where the broader task
of communication about ES is done poorly, the
more specific one is done poorly as well. Where
respondents were neutral about individuals’
knowledgeability about general ES issues, a
plurality was also neutral about individuals’
knowledgeability about IT-related ES issues;
well over a third who were neutral, though,
disagreed or strongly disagreed that individuals
were well informed about IT-related ES issues.
These results suggest that indifferent success
at communicating in the general case is seldom
accompanied by greater success in the more
specific one.
Among the largest group, those who
agreed or strongly agreed that individuals
were knowledgeable about general ES issues,
responses about IT-specific knowledgeability
were almost evenly mixed. We would like to
be able to report that the cluster of traits that
causes knowledge about general ES issues to
find its way throughout the institution—good
basic communication practices, perhaps, or
highly engaged leadership—also acts upon
information about IT-related ES issues. From
these data, however, it appears that while
poor communication about IT-related ES
issues operates in sync with poor or indifferent communication about more general
ones, good communication about IT-related
ES issues varies more independently—perhaps
because it is easier for a single individual, such
as the CIO, or a small group of IT professionals
to make or break communication about the
more specialized set of issues.
On a more positive note, where the institution provides extracurricular education about ES
practices, and where that education is provided
to more constituencies (faculty, staff, and
students), respondents are more positive in their
agreement that individuals are well informed
about both categories of ES issues. As Table
8-2 shows, mean agreement that individuals
are well informed about general ES issues is
below “neutral” where education is extended
to no constituencies, but it is three-quarters of
Table 8-1. Individuals’ Knowledgeability about IT-Related Environmental Sustainability
Issues, by Individuals’ Knowledgeability about General Environmental Sustainability Issues
Individuals Are Well Informed about IT-Related ES Issues
Individuals Are Well Informed
about General ES Issues
Strongly Disagree +
Disagree
Neutral
Agree + Strongly
Agree
Strongly disagree + disagree (N = 46)
95.7%
0.0%
4.3%
Neutral (N = 71)
38.0%
47.9%
14.1%
Agree + strongly agree (N = 132)
37.9%
29.5%
32.6%
121
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 8-2. Individuals’ Knowledgeability about Environmental Sustainability Issues, by Number
of Constituencies the Institution Educates about Environmental Sustainability Practices
Number of Constituencies Educated
(Faculty, Staff, Students)
Individuals Are Well Informed about General ES Issues
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
None
2.89
81
1.025
One or two
3.53
30
0.730
Three
3.64
118
0.746
3.36
229
0.920
Total
Individuals Are Well Informed about Central IT ES Issues
None
2.35
81
0.938
One or two
2.69
32
0.821
Three
2.87
117
0.896
Total
2.66
230
0.929
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
a point higher where it is extended to three.
Similarly, the difference in mean agreement is
one-half point higher in the context of central
IT ES initiatives.
Other factors positively associated with how
well informed individuals are about ES issues
were level of agreement that the institution’s
executive leadership and the senior-most
IT leader place high priority on ES, and the
status of both the institutional and the central
IT ES strategic plans. We can only speculate
that greater executive priority and a more
advanced ES planning process actually drive
the spread of information about ES issues to
individuals in the institution, but we can say
with confidence that executive priority and
ES planning go hand in hand with how well
informed individuals are about ES issues.
Similarly, knowledgeability about both
general and IT-related ES issues was greater
where institutional and central IT ES practice maturity scores were higher and where
respondents reported higher counts of ES
initiatives in which the institution and central
IT were engaged.
Participation in ITRelated ES Initiatives
Knowledgeability about ES issues was
our first measure of an institution’s engagement in ES issues. The second is the direction
122
and extent of change in the participation of
faculty, staff, and students in the institution’s
IT-related ES initiatives in the past 12 months
(which we will abbreviate as “participation”
in the following discussion). As Figure 8-2
shows, respondents almost unanimously said
participation was either staying the same or
increasing. We had no reports of decreased
staff participation, and reports of decreased
faculty and student participation were limited
to a single institution. As we saw in Chapter
3 (refer to Figure 3-4), recent economic pressures had affected ES initiatives at about a
third of institutions. The findings reported
here suggest that while the recent economic
downturn has negatively affected ES initiatives
at many institutions, at least it has not caused
participation in them to decrease.
About 6 in 10 respondents said participation of faculty had stayed the same in the past
12 months, and most of the rest said it had
increased. For staff and student participation,
reports were more evenly split. Our sense is
that the slightly greater degree of perceived
stasis in the faculty ranks reflects their somewhat greater independence compared with
staff. Students are at least as independent as
faculty, of course, but in their case idealism
and enthusiasm may contribute to the slightly
greater perceived increase in their participation compared with that of faculty.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
70%
59.1
60%
51.9
50.2
Percentage of Institutions
50%
45.6
43.7
Figure 8-2. Change
in Participation
in IT-Related
Environmental
Sustainability
Initiatives in Past
12 Months
38.3
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
0.0
0.0
0.0
Greatly decreased
0.4 0.0
2.1
0.4
Decreased
Stayed the same
Increased
2.5
5.6
Greatly increased
Faculty (N = 235)
Staff (N = 237)
Students (N = 231)
Perceptions about the participation of
constituencies in ES initiatives varied with
many other factors. To facilitate discussion,
we separate factors at the institutional level
from those at the central IT level in the two
subsections below.
Institutional Characteristics
A number of indicators of the institution’s
engagement in ES went hand in hand with
perceived change in participation of faculty,
staff, and students. All else being equal, the
work an institution does to create a strategic
plan for ES should encourage the campus to
participate, and we do see evidence of that
in the participation changes associated with
the institution’s ES strategic plan status. As
Table 8-3 shows, at institutions where an ES
strategic plan was completed, reports that
faculty and staff participation had increased or
strongly increased in the past 12 months were
much more frequent than where there was
no plan. Findings for the student constituency
were similar but statistically much weaker than
those for faculty and staff, perhaps because
students are the constituency least likely to be
aware of the institution’s ES strategic plan.
Not surprisingly, for all three constituencies—
faculty, staff, and students—the more ES initiatives the institution had under way (from our list
of 10), the higher the percentage of respondents
was who told us the constituencies’ participation
had increased in the past 12 months. Simply put,
where more initiatives are under way, there are
more opportunities to participate, and it appears
all three constituencies rise to them. Table 8-4
provides details about this statistically significant association. Contrasting the percentages
of respondents reporting increased or greatly
increased participation at institutions with 7 to
10 initiatives under way to those with 1 to 3
initiatives under way, for faculty the percentage
is 34.2 points higher for institutions with 7 to
10 initiatives under way, 42.8 points higher for
staff, and 31.2 points for students. These are
substantial differences, especially the one for
staff participation.
It seems reasonable to expect that the more
mature the institution’s ES practices were, the
stronger the participation of faculty, staff, and
123
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 8-3. Participation in IT-Related Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Has Increased
or Greatly Increased in Past 12 Months, by Status of Institutional Strategic Plan for
Environmental Sustainability
Participation of Constituency Has Increased or Greatly Increased
Institutional ES Plan Status
Faculty
Staff
No plan (N = 38)
15.0%
25.0%
Plan is in progress (N = 113)
45.1%
53.5%
Plan is completed (N = 58)
51.7%
62.7%
Table 8-4. Participation in IT-Related Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Has Increased
or Greatly Increased in Past 12 Months, by Number of Institutional Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives Under Way
Participation of Constituency Has Increased or Greatly Increased
Institutional ES Initiatives Under Way
Faculty
Staff
Students
1–3 (N = 33)
22.9%
28.6%
33.3%
4–6 (N = 122)
35.2%
39.2%
44.6%
7–10 (N = 76)
57.1%
71.4%
64.5%
students would have been in the past year.
We found, however, that only increase in staff
participation was significantly greater where
institutional ES practice maturity score was
high than where the score was low. Thus, it
appears that increased participation of faculty
and students, when it occurs, relies little on
the maturity of the institution’s ES practices,
perhaps because those constituencies make
decisions about participation more independently than staff.
Finally, one would expect participation
to have increased more where information
about ES issues was better disseminated.
As Sung Lee, director of student computer
support at Howard Community College,
points out, “Encouraging participation in
IT-related sustainability initiatives can be a
challenge. I would love to say ‘just do it’ and
have everything fall into line, but I think the
best approach is to educate people to see the
benefits. One thing that we’ve done is once
we’ve implemented something, we show the
dollar savings. Showing the benefits is a good
way to spread the word.”
Our survey results provide only weak
evidence that respondents perceive increase
in faculty and staff participation to be greater
124
where they perceive individuals to be better
informed about general ES issues, and no
suggestion at all that they perceive student
participation to increase more where that
is the case. However, where respondents
saw constituents as being well informed
about IT-related ES issues, they told us more
frequently that faculty (39.7% more frequently)
and staff (35.4% more frequently) participation had increased or greatly increased. A
smaller, much weaker association emerged
between change in student participation and
knowledgeability about IT-related ES issues,
suggesting again that student behavior is
more independent of institutional influences than that of faculty and staff or that
our respondents’ information about student
behavior was of poorer quality.
Franklin W. Olin College’s Kossuth is also
a believer in the value of communications in
spurring participation in ES initiatives. “Out of
everything that we are doing,” she said, “it is
creating the awareness and the PR around ES
initiatives that keeps the momentum going.
We have experienced great cost avoidance,
and great participation so far, but we don’t
want it to be dependent upon a single person
or a single group of people. Being able to
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
publicize the successes across the board and
as a strategic college initiative allows us to
keep the enthusiasm up. Last year we won
the Green Business Award from the Chamber
of Commerce from our neighboring towns
of Needham and Newton [Massachusetts].
That revved up and generated the next level
of interest.”
Central IT Characteristics
With only a few exceptions, characteristics
of the central IT organization were associated only weakly, if at all, with perceived
change in constituents’ participation. Perhaps
because central IT’s voice is only one of many
in the institutional context, it is understandable that that organization’s characteristics
would seldom drive changes in faculty, staff,
and student participation. Nevertheless, the
findings reported immediately above for the
influence of institutional-level characteristics
suggests that some campus constituencies—
staff in particular—can be rallied by organized
ES efforts. If IT’s influence is perceived by our
respondents to be weaker than that of the
institution as a whole, it may be that IT is
simply not trying very hard.
We saw above (Table 8-4) that where the
institution was actively engaged in more ES
initiatives (from our list of 10), respondents
were more likely to say that participation of
faculty, staff, and students had increased or
greatly increased. Looking at the number
of ES initiatives the central IT organization
had under way, though, our findings were
different. Where central IT had more initiatives under way, only staff participation had
increased or greatly increased in the past
12 months. Here again, the lack of meaningful associations for faculty and students
may reflect the greater degree of independence those groups have when it comes to
participation in institutional initiatives, or it
may be that the information respondents
had about staff participation was of better
quality and validity.
Above, we reported that only for staff did
the maturity of institutional ES practices seem
to encourage increased participation. The
maturity of central IT ES practices, however,
seems to encourage both faculty and staff
participation. Where the central IT organization’s ES practice maturity was high, participation of both faculty and staff was more than
twice as likely to have increased or greatly
increased than where maturity was low (see
Table 8-5). We found no significant association between change in student participation
and central IT ES practice maturity score.
The maturity of central IT’s ES practices may
have so little to do with the participation of
students because they are the most independent of the three constituencies.
Summary and
Implications
Various findings in this study suggest that
the environmental impacts of IT resources and
services in higher education are not widely
understood and that the central IT organization is often still a minor player in the institution’s environmental sustainability (ES) efforts.
Two gauges of that can be found in our data
about how knowledgeable our respondents
Table 8-5. Participation in IT-Related Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Has Increased
or Greatly Increased in Past 12 Months, by Central IT Environmental Sustainability Practice
Maturity Score
Participation of Constituency Has Increased or Greatly
Increased
Central IT ES Practice Maturity Score
Low (1.00–2.49) (N = 65)
Faculty
Staff
27.7%
28.8%
Medium (2.50–3.50) (N = 133)
39.8%
53.0%
High (3.51–5.00) (N = 37)
64.9%
64.9%
125
Green IT in Higher Education
said individuals at their institutions were
about general and IT-specific ES issues, and
in the extent of change respondents said had
occurred in the past 12 months in faculty,
staff, and student participation in institutional
IT-related ES initiatives.
It appears that IT is still not seen as a dominant
player in ES issues, given that more than half of
respondents agree or strongly agree that individuals at their institutions are well informed about
general ES issues, but fewer than a quarter of
them say the same about IT-specific ES issues.
The institution’s ES education efforts can make
a difference here, as evidenced by the fact that
the more constituencies the institution educates
about ES practices, the better informed respondents say individuals are, on average, about both
general and IT-specific ES issues.
The intensity of the institution’s commitment to ES may also help spread awareness of
ES issues. This is suggested by our finding that
where agreement is stronger that institutional
and central IT executives place high priority on
ES, respondents agree more strongly that individuals are well informed about both general
and IT-specific ES issues. Similarly, we find that
where the institutional and central IT ES strategic
plans are more complete, individuals’ knowledgeability about general and IT-specific issues
appears broader. This is also the case where the
numbers of ES initiatives that both the institution
and the central IT organization had under way
were higher and where the ES practice maturity
scores of both entities were greater.
126
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Despite reports of lackluster knowledgeability about ES issues, IT-related ES initiatives
are still attracting interest, as evidenced by
reports from between four-tenths and onehalf of respondents that faculty, staff, and
student participation in them had increased
or greatly increased in the past 12 months.
Tempering this news of forward movement
are reports suggesting some restraint. For
each of the three constituencies, nearly half of
respondents told us that participation in these
initiatives had not changed in the past 12
months. Only one respondent reported that
participation in these initiatives had decreased
at all (among faculty and students only).
Finally, we found that higher institutional
ES practice maturity scores went hand in hand
with increased staff participation in the institution’s IT-related ES initiatives and that higher
central IT ES practice maturity scores went hand
in hand with increased participation of both
faculty and staff. Adding this to the finding
reported above that more mature ES practices
are associated with individuals’ knowledgeability about IT-specific ES issues, we gain a
strong sense that working to develop mature
sets of ES practices—inside the central IT organization and out—can help lower the barriers
to institutional employees’ understanding and
adoption of IT-related ES initiatives.
Endnotes
1. Standard deviation, 0.919.
2. Standard deviation, 0.922.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
9
Assessing Progress
Change does not necessarily assure progress,
but progress implacably requires change.
—Henry S. Commager
Key Findings
••
••
••
••
••
••
••
Asked whether institutional activities had become greener in the past year, respondents agreed most strongly
that business activities had done so and less strongly that instructional and research activities had.
Agreement that business, instruction, and research activities had become greener in the past 12 months was weaker
than we would expect, given high levels of agreement that both the institution and the central IT organization were
“actively engaged” in environmental initiatives and that top executives at both levels “placed high priority on ES.”
About a sixth of respondents said institutional and central IT organizational energy efficiency had decreased
in the past 12 months; in today’s circumstances, even this small proportion of institutions with declining
efficiency is disturbing.
Respondents were more likely to agree that business, instruction, and research activities had greened significantly in the past 12 months where
»»
the institutional strategic plan for environmental sustainability (ES) was more complete,
»»
the institution had an office to oversee ES initiatives,
»»
institutional and central IT ES practice maturity scores were higher, and
»»
individuals at the institution were better informed about ES issues.
Where the CIO placed higher priority on ES and played a more active role in institutional ES initiatives, agreement was stronger that the institution’s activities had greened significantly, suggesting that IT executive
influence can be a powerful force in ES; because few CIOs were reported to be “leaders,” it appears much
of their potential influence is going untapped.
Respondents’ mean agreement that faculty, staff, and students took pride in the institution’s stance on ES
was likely to be higher where
»»
the institutional and central IT strategic plans for ES were more complete,
»»
the institution had an office to oversee ES initiatives,
»»
the institution had a committee to guide ES initiatives,
»»
institutional and central IT ES practice maturity scores were higher, and
»»
business, instructional, and research activities had greened significantly in the past year.
The status of institutional and central IT ES initiatives was often related to outcomes, while the status of data center
and distributed IT initiatives was not; in general, the larger the context of the influences we asked about, the stronger
their effect upon ES outcomes appeared to be.
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
127
Green IT in Higher Education
Our discussion so far has been heavily
oriented toward environmental sustainability
(ES) initiatives, which by definition are beginnings. We have looked as well at strategic
planning, which sets direction and lays the
groundwork for goals, which point toward
specific, measurable accomplishments. But
we have spoken little, so far, about the ultimate ends to which all of these means are
directed—the outcomes of the institution’s
and the central IT organization’s ES efforts.
Any attempt to discuss outcomes is complicated by the fact that environmental initiatives frequently turn into moving targets. For
example, as the gravity of the greenhouse
gas situation has become clearer, targets for
reducing emissions have become more ambitious. But as fuel prices have fluctuated in the
past few years, we have seen the priority of
energy conservation initiatives rise and fall.
For this reason, we asked our survey
respondents to report subjectively on their
progress toward eight broad ES outcomes
that we expected most institutions would
recognize. The first three involved respondents’ agreement that in the past 12 months
the institution had significantly changed its
activities to become more environmentally
responsible in the areas of business, instruction, and research. To have asked respondents
to quantify precisely the changes in each of
these areas would have imposed too great a
burden on them. Instead, we asked, “in your
judgment” what the extent of those changes
had been. For business and instructional
activities, more than 90% of respondents
provided an answer. For research activities,
only about two-thirds answered.
The second group of assessments involved
the extent of change, in the past 12 months,
in the institution’s overall energy efficiency,
the energy efficiency of the central IT data
center, the amount of material the institution recycles, and the amount of material
the central IT organization recycles. Again,
because precise quantification would be a
128
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
burden, we prefaced these questions with “in
your judgment.” Well over three-quarters of
respondents were able to answer each of the
four questions.
Our final outcome assessment involved
respondents’ agreement with the statement that, in general, their faculty, staff,
and students were proud of their institution’s stance on environmental sustainability.
Fewer than 15% of respondents chose the
“don’t know” response, suggesting that most
respondents felt reasonably confident of their
impressions of this very subjective measure of
institution-wide progress toward environmentally sustainable practices.
Moving Toward
Greater Environmental
Responsibility
Rather than ask for a single overall assessment of each institution’s progress toward
greater environmental responsibility, we
asked for respondents’ agreement with statements that, in each of three activity areas,
the institution had significantly changed its
activities in the past 12 months to become
more environmentally responsible—in essence
asking whether those activities have become
“greener.” The three areas we asked about
were business activities, instructional activities, and research activities. What we found,
overall, was only modest agreement that
change had occurred.
Business, Instructional, and
Research Activities
Business activities seem to have greened at
a more rapid pace than the others in the year
preceding our survey, perhaps because they
are more likely to be centrally managed than
instructional or research activities. As Figure
9-1 shows, 43.2% of respondents agreed or
strongly agreed that business activities had
significantly changed. Only 26.5% said the
same for instructional activities. At first glance,
this might suggest that those responsible for
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
the institutions’ instructional activities are
less aware of ES issues or less inclined to take
action to make those activities greener. We
suspect, however, that it is more often a case
of the relative ease with which business activities can be coordinated. Instruction at most
institutions is a much more independently
conducted activity.
With regard to research activities, Figure
9-1 shows two important facts. First, 55 of
our respondents said that our question about
research activities “does not apply” to their institutions. Second, nearly a third of the remaining
respondents said they did not know whether
research activities had significantly changed
toward environmental responsibility in the past
12 months. The distribution of responses we
did receive about change in research activi45%
ties is weighted only slightly, and probably not
meaningfully, toward the negative.
Mean agreement that an activity has
become greener is a single number that simplifies the presentation of our findings. Table
9-1 lists those means and shows clearly that
agreement about change in the past year is a
little stronger about business practices than
the others.1
We are surprised that agreement about
change in all three activity areas is not
stronger. In Chapter 3 we saw that 88.8%
of respondents agreed or strongly agreed
that their institutions were actively engaged
in ES initiatives; we think it reasonable to
assume that in most cases the object of these
initiatives was change in the direction of environmental responsibility. The relatively small
41.4
40%
38.1
36.6
Percentage of Institutions
35%
31.7
29.7
30%
25%
23.8
21.5
18.3
20%
16.3
12.8
15%
8.6
10%
5%
0%
Figure 9-1. In
Past 12 Months,
Institution Has
Significantly
Changed Activities
to Become More
Environmentally
Responsible
5.1
2.5
1.6 2.0
Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
5.8
2.7
1.5
Strongly agree
Don’t know
Business (N = 257)
Instruction (N = 256)
Research (N = 202)
Table 9-1. In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly Changed Activities to Become
More Environmentally Responsible
Mean*
N**
Std. Deviation
Business activities
3.34
242
0.841
Instructional activities
3.04
234
0.838
Research activities
2.94
138
0.861
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
**Excludes “don’t know” and “does not apply” responses
129
Green IT in Higher Education
percentages who agreed or strongly agreed
that the institution has greened its activities
in the past year suggest that at many institutions, “active engagement” in initiatives to
make the institution more environmentally
responsible has not resulted in significant
change in those three areas.
While progress in each area during the
past 12 months seems weak relative to
claims of active engagement, it is likely that
some institutions’ environmental responsibility peaked early and their respondents
disagreed or were neutral about change in
the past 12 months because little further
movement toward that responsibility had
been necessary. At other institutions there
may have been no goals to change those
activities, so neutral or disagree responses
to our three statements may not represent
underperformance.
Institutions tended to report progress
toward environmental responsibility in
multiple activity areas. Where respondents
agreed or strongly agreed about the greening
of one of the areas, mean agreement about
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
the greening of the other areas was between
1.00 and 2.00 points higher than where
respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed
about the greening of the first area.
Variation with ES Initiatives
As one might expect, the more ES initiatives the institution had under way, the
more positive mean agreement was that
the institution had significantly greened
all three types of activities in the past 12
months. Among institutions with 0 to 3 ES
initiatives under way, Table 9-2 shows us
substantially lower mean agreement that
the institution had changed its activities in
each area to become more environmentally
responsible than among institutions with 7
to 10 initiatives under way. 2
The total number of ES initiatives that
the central IT organization had under way
is similarly related to the recent greening of
the institution’s business, instructional, and
research activities.
Mean agreement about the greening of
the three institutional activity areas was
Table 9-2. In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly Changed Its Activities to
Become More Environmentally Responsible, by Number of Institutional Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives Under Way
Institutional ES Initiatives Under Way
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Business Activities
0–3
2.86
37
0.887
4–6
3.26
128
0.776
7–10
3.71
77
0.776
Total
3.34
242
0.841
Instructional Activities
0–3
2.63
35
0.808
4–6
2.98
124
0.796
7–10
3.33
75
0.827
Total
3.04
234
0.838
Research Activities
0–3
2.29
17
0.772
4–6
2.88
73
0.781
7–10
3.27
48
0.869
Total
2.94
138
0.861
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
130
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
generally greater where the institution
was actively engaged in three specific ES
initiatives. These were
•• minimizing growth in electrical energy
consumption,
•• purchasing EPEAT-certified computers
and monitors, and
•• adopting alternative (clean/renewable)
sources of electrical power.
Active engagement in an initiative to
minimize growth in electrical energy use
was significantly associated with the past
year’s greening of business and instructional activities but not with the greening of
research activities (see Table 9-33). Purchase
of EPEAT products and adoption of alternative sources of electrical power were significantly associated in this way with greening
of all three activities.
The lack of a significant association
between institutional initiatives to minimize
growth in electrical energy use and greening
of research activities came as no surprise.
In our qualitative interviews, we heard
frequently that institutions and central IT
organizations had initiatives under way to
bring together into energy-efficient facilities
many of the independently managed servers
formerly housed in less efficient distributed
server closets. In many cases such servers are
controlled by researchers. But we also heard
that the politics of centralizing servers, even
in the name of the environment, are a pervasive and substantial challenge. At Syracuse
University, for example, Christopher Sedore,
vice president for IT and CIO, told us, “We are
building a new, large-scale green data center.
At present, there are at least 20 departmental
server rooms or mini data centers on campus,
and energy efficiency has seldom been a high
priority for those facilities. The challenge we
have is to change the institutional culture so
researchers will want to move existing equipment into the new central data center or at
least plan to use it for servers they acquire
in the future.” Presumably the same factors
that caused distributed facilities to spring up
in the first place—as discussed in Chapter
7—are still in play at many institutions, and
their researchers are not yet convinced that
centralization is a good idea.
The other initiatives appearing in Table
9-3, purchase of EPEAT-certified equipment
and adoption of alternative energy sources,
both require the involvement of institutional financial officers. This makes it easy
to understand the apparent link between
those activities and respondents’ assessment of the greening of business activities.
Efforts to minimize growth in consumption
Table 9-3. In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly Changed Its Activities to
Become More Environmentally Responsible, by Institution Is Actively Engaged in Specific
Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
Business
Activities
Instructional
Activities
Research Activities
Mean*
Mean*
Mean*
No
2.78
2.62
Yes
3.49
3.15
No significant
association
No
3.09
2.76
2.68
Yes
3.57
3.29
3.16
No
3.09
2.88
2.75
Yes
3.66
3.23
3.23
Initiative
Minimize Growth in Electrical Energy Use
Purchase EPEAT Products
Adopt Alternative Sources of Electrical Power
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
131
Green IT in Higher Education
of electrical energy would necessarily occur
more at a grassroots level, but the bottom
line they would affect is financial as well as
environmental, so the results of such initiatives are also likely to be perceived as tied to
the institution’s business activities.
The relation of these three initiatives—
and only these three—to the greening of
instructional activities is a little more difficult
to understand. Perhaps it derives from the
fact that in higher education, instructional
activities cannot really be separated from
business activities.
Research activities are often much more
independent from the institution’s business
activities than instructional ones are, but still we
see that adoption of alternate energy sources
and purchase of EPEAT-certified equipment are
significantly associated with the greening of
research activities. The link here, we suspect,
is through institutional culture. Where that
culture smiles upon the commitments involved
in adopting alternative energy sources and
purchasing EPEAT-certified equipment, perhaps
the research community feels less reluctance to
engage in ES activities.
Organizational Influences
The greening of an institution’s activities in
the past 12 months appears to be influenced
by a number of other characteristics of the
institution and the central IT organization.
For example, mean agreement about change
toward becoming more environmentally
responsible in business activities is about 0.80
points more positive where the institution
has an ES strategic plan in place than where
it has none. The parallel differences in mean
responses about instructional and research
activities are smaller, but still significant. For
these activity areas, mean agreement about
change toward environmental responsibility
is substantially greater among institutions
that have a plan under development than
among those that have none. But there is
little meaningful difference between means
132
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
for institutions that have a plan under development and those that have completed their
plan, suggesting that the journey (the process
of planning) makes more of a difference than
reaching the destination (a completed document). A similar pattern of results emerges for
the existence of a central IT strategic plan.
Not surprisingly, executive support also
seems influential. Where institutional executive leadership placed high priority on ES,
the greening of business, instructional, and
research activities was more likely to have
advanced in the past 12 months. The same
was true for the priority the CIO placed on
ES, and we also found that the more active
the role the CIO played in institutional ES
initiatives, the more likely all three activity
areas were to have changed to become more
environmentally responsible.
Most of our respondents told us their
institution’s executive leadership placed a
high priority on ES. At Furman University,
that has resulted in sustainability being made
a core institutional value that the campus
has embraced. Fredrick Miller, CIO, attributes
Furman’s success in its ES initiatives directly
to its president, David Shi. Miller serves on
the president’s council and reports, “It is rare
when sustainability is not one of the toppriority topics discussed.”
As another example of organizational
influence on change in environmental
responsibility, where there is an institutional
committee that is responsible for guiding
ES initiatives, mean agreement about the
greening of business activities is 0.42 points
higher than for those institutions without a
committee. The presence of an institutional ES
committee is not meaningfully associated with
agreement about change in instructional or
research activities, which we suspect reflects
the gravitation of institutional ES committees
toward issues with financial implications.
To that point, Sung Lee, director of student
computer support at Howard Community
College, told us, “Most of the time, we take
Green IT in Higher Education
advantage of our IT committee structure to
engage the campus in green initiatives. But we
almost never call them that. We bring forward
issues that may save costs, increase productivity, increase quality, etc. Solutions to them
may have green components, but we don’t
emphasize that. The fact is that when you
reduce emissions, you usually reduce costs, so
we bring forward cost-savings initiatives that
almost incidentally reduce emissions.”
The presence of an institutional office
whose primary responsibility is oversight of
overall ES initiatives is more consistently associated with the greening of all three activity
areas (see Table 9-4). This broader apparent
effect of having an institutional ES office, as
compared with an ES committee, may have
to do with the relative empowerment of the
two entities: An office with a clear mandate,
dedicated staff, and a budget might reasonably be expected to make more progress than
a committee that must achieve consensus
before acting, “borrows” staff time from its
members, and is more likely to bring forward
proposals for spending than to have funds of
its own to draw on.
Balancing some of its advantages, though,
an institutional sustainability office is likely
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
to have multiple priorities, and IT-related
ES issues and opportunities may struggle
sometimes to make their way to the table.
Joel Hartman, vice provost and CIO at the
University of Central Florida says, “We’re
happy with how we’re organized to tackle
green IT issues, but we’re still meshing priorities. I’m having a little trouble getting our
sustainability office to go public and take a
strong stand on our green computing initiative
because there are other projects in the pipeline with greater potential for carbon savings.
Still, the conversations are positive and we’re
intending to move forward.”
The existence of an internal central IT
committee to guide ES initiatives also, in a
significant number of cases, accompanies
agreement about the past year’s greening
of instructional, research, and (more weakly)
business activities. Perhaps this is because the
existence of such a committee signals an IT
organization that is more inclined to engage in
activities beyond the normal business activities
that all IT organizations must attend to.
ES practice maturity scores at both the institutional and central IT levels are significantly
and strongly associated with mean agreement
about the greening of all three areas of the
Table 9-4. In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly Changed Its Activities to
Become More Environmentally Responsible, by Existence of Institutional Environmental
Sustainability Office
Institution Has an ES Office
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Business Activities
No
3.17
123
0.807
Yes
3.54
110
0.853
Total
3.34
233
0.847
Instructional Activities
No
2.87
121
0.836
Yes
3.22
104
0.812
Total
3.03
225
0.842
No
2.68
Research Activities
60
0.813
Yes
3.16
73
0.850
Total
2.95
133
0.864
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
133
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
institution’s activities. Figure 9-2 shows the
pattern of variation for institutional ES practice
maturity. The pattern for central IT ES practice
maturity is very similar.4 The strong implication here is that ES practice maturity—or the
circumstances that give rise to it—at both
organizational levels may help significantly in
greening the institution’s activities.
Greater institutional ES practice maturity
provides the greatest apparent benefit5 for
the greening of research activities, arguably
the most challenging of the three areas. A
greater difference in greening of the research
area occurs between institutions with “low”
and “medium” ES practice maturity scores
than between those with “medium” and
“high” scores. This suggests that in the
research context, an institution that attends
even a little to the factors that make up
our institutional ES practice maturity score
stands to make a substantial difference in
the greening of research.
To our surprise, IT support for institutional
ES activities appears to have little bearing
on the greening of institutional activities.
As a reminder, the three types of support
we reported on in Chapter 6 (refer to Table
6-9) were the central IT organization’s own
participation in institutional ES initiatives, its
provision of technology solutions and infrastructure to support those initiatives, and its
work to educate individuals and departments
outside central IT about the initiatives. Of the
90 possible intersections between forms of
central IT support, institutional ES initiatives,
and areas of greening, only 7 showed meaningful associations (see Table 9-5).
We found a stronger relationship between
the greening of activities and the knowledgeability respondents perceived individuals at
their institutions to have about ES issues.
Mean agreement that the institution had
significantly greened its business, instructional, and research activities in the past 12
months was between 0.60 and 0.80 points
higher where respondents agreed or strongly
agreed that individuals were well informed
about general and IT-related ES issues than
where respondents disagreed or strongly
disagreed (see Table 9-6). It is no surprise to
4.0
3.43
3.26
3.0
3.25
2.99
2.96
3.00
2.58
Mean*
Figure 9-2. In
Past 12 Months,
Institution Has
Significantly
Changed Activities
to Become More
Environmentally
Responsible,
by Institutional
Environmental
Sustainability
Practice Maturity
Score
3.75
2.23
2.0
1.0
Low (1.00–2.49)
Medium (2.50–3.50)
High (3.51–5.00)
Institutional Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Business (N = 236)
Instruction (N = 229)
Research (N = 137)
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
134
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 9-5. In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly Changed Activities to Become
More Environmentally Responsible, by Central IT Support for Institutional Environmental
Sustainability Initiatives
Business Activities
Mean*
N
Instructional Activities
Std. Deviation
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
By providing education about minimizing growth in total electrical power consumption
No
3.26
68
0.803
2.93
68
0.852
Yes
3.62
110
0.742
3.28
105
0.778
Total
3.48
178
0.783
3.14
173
0.824
By providing technology solutions/services for minimizing growth in electrical power consumption
No
3.10
30
0.845
2.76
29
0.786
Yes
3.55
148
0.749
3.21
143
0.804
Total
3.48
178
0.783
3.13
172
0.816
By providing education about recycling e-waste
No
3.12
60
0.922
2.82
60
0.748
Yes
3.48
145
0.774
3.20
140
0.815
Total
3.37
205
0.834
3.09
200
0.813
By providing technology solutions/services for adoption of LEED standards
No
3.19
69
0.879
Yes
3.57
76
0.772
Total
3.39
145
0.843
No significant association
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
find that individuals’ knowledgeability about
ES issues is significantly associated with progress at greening the institution’s activities,
although in this case it is particularly difficult
to speculate about the direction of causality.
Our sense is that both factors are influenced
by the entire cluster of interrelated characteristics discussed in this section; other influences
not addressed in our survey might come to
bear as well.
As might be expected, increased participation of faculty, staff, and students in ES
initiatives often goes hand in hand with
the greening of the institution’s practices.
Respondents who told us faculty and
staff (but not student) participation in the
institution’s ES initiatives had increased or
greatly increased in the past 12 months
were significantly more likely to report the
greening of its business and instructional
activities. Greening of research activities
was significantly associated only with
change in staff participation, probably
reflecting the comparatively independent
behavior patterns we have seen for students
and faculty throughout this study.
Change in Specific
Practices
To gain insight into the overall impact that
ES initiatives are having, we asked respondents to tell us, in their own judgment,
about the direction and extent of change in
two common ES pursuits, energy efficiency
and recycling. We asked how much and in
which direction the energy efficiency of the
overall institution and of the central IT data
center had changed in the past 12 months.
In the discussion below, we report responses
only from institutions that told us they had
on-site central IT data centers. As a sample
metric for change in institutional energy
efficiency, we suggested watts per credit
hour. For central IT data center efficiency,
our suggested metric was watts per MIPS
(million instructions per second).
135
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 9-6. In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly Changed Its Activities to Become
More Environmentally Responsible, by Individuals’ Knowledgeability about Environmental
Sustainability Issues
Mean*
Individuals Are Well Informed about General ES Issues
N
Std. Deviation
Business Activities
Disagree or strongly disagree
2.70
40
0.992
Neutral
3.46
67
0.703
Agree or strongly agree
3.50
129
0.762
Total
3.36
236
0.841
Instructional Activities
Disagree or strongly disagree
2.55
38
0.950
Neutral
3.08
64
0.719
Agree or strongly agree
3.17
128
0.814
Total
3.04
230
0.840
Research Activities
Disagree or strongly disagree
2.33
21
0.966
Neutral
3.05
39
0.686
Agree or strongly agree
3.05
77
0.857
Total
2.94
137
0.864
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Individuals Knowledgeability about IT-Related ES Issues
Disagree or strongly disagree
Business Activities
3.06
113
0.889
Neutral
3.43
69
0.653
Agree or strongly agree
3.80
55
0.704
Total
3.34
237
0.837
Disagree or strongly disagree
2.79
110
0.836
Neutral
3.09
69
0.680
Agree or strongly agree
3.51
51
0.857
Total
3.04
230
0.843
Disagree or strongly disagree
2.69
Instructional Activities
Research Activities
65
0.900
Neutral
3.05
42
0.697
Agree or strongly agree
3.33
30
0.844
Total
2.94
137
0.864
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
We also asked how much and in which
direction the amount of material the institution and the central IT organization recycled
had changed in that time frame. Our question
was not specifically about e-waste, as it was
in survey questions about the institutional
and central IT recycling initiatives introduced
in Chapters 4 and 6. As a result, respondents
may have included in their answers to this
136
question additional recycling initiatives such as
those for printer paper and toner cartridges.
Although our study did not address this kind
of recycling directly—we assumed it was
under way at most institutions—we heard
a lot about it in our qualitative interviews.
Shippensburg University is just one institution
where these aspects of recycling are taken
very seriously. Greg Day, director of desktop
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
support/user services, explained, “Central IT’s
efforts to reduce demand for paper, toner,
and ink, and to recycle everything we can
from those commodities is our biggest ES
initiative. The university uses a tremendous
amount of consumables, and we not only
want to recycle a greater percentage of the
paper and toner and ink cartridges that we
use, but we’re also trying to reduce demand
for these things and consequently reduce the
amount we have to recycle.”
M ean re s p o ns e s to all fo ur qu e s tions were between “no change” and
“increased” (see Table 9-7) and, as we
will see in the detailed discussions below,
distributions of responses were weighted
toward the positive end of the scale.6
Energy Efficiency
At many respondent institutions, ES initiatives designed to increase the energy efficiency of both the institution and the central
IT data center are bearing fruit. As Figure
9-3 shows, among the 247 institutions that
reported having an on-site central IT data
center, more than 4 in 10 respondents said
that, in their judgment, energy efficiency had
increased or greatly increased in both contexts
in the past 12 months. Fewer than 2 in 10 said
that efficiency had decreased.
Change in energy efficiency appears to
have proceeded at roughly the same pace at
both institutional levels. As Table 9-8 shows,
among institutions that had on-site central
IT data centers, our two measures of change
Table 9-7. Change in Energy Efficiency and Amount of Material Recycled in Past 12 Months
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Institutional energy efficiency (institutions with on-site central IT data
centers)
3.32
210
0.811
Central IT data center energy efficiency (institutions with on-site central
IT data centers)
3.43
226
0.862
Amount institution recycles
3.70
222
0.662
Amount central IT recycles
3.50
245
0.657
*Scale: 1 = greatly decreased, 2 = decreased, 3 = no change, 4 = increased, 5 = greatly increased
50%
43.3
45%
39.7
Percentage of Institutions
40%
35%
30%
Figure 9-3.
Change in Energy
Efficiency in
Past 12 Months
(Institutions with
On-Site Central IT
Data Centers)
26.7 26.3
25%
20%
16.6
15.4
15.0
15%
10%
5%
0%
6.1
0.0
2.0
0.4
Greatly decreased
8.5
Decreased
Stayed the same
Increased
Greatly increased
Don’t know
Institution (N = 247)
Central IT data center (N = 247)
137
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 9-8. Change in Central IT Data Center Energy Efficiency in Past 12 Months, by Change
in Institutional Energy Efficiency in Past 12 Months (Institutions with On-Site Central IT
Data Centers)
Change in Central IT Data Center Energy Efficiency
Decreased or Greatly
Decreased
No Change
Increased or
Greatly Increased
Decreased or greatly decreased (N = 40)
45.0%
30.0%
25.0%
No change (N = 63)
17.5%
41.3%
41.3%
Increased or greatly increased (N = 97)
7.2%
19.6%
73.2%
Change in Institutional Energy Efficiency
in energy efficiency varied together to a
significant extent, especially at the upper
end, with nearly three-quarters of those
saying the institution’s energy efficiency had
increased or greatly increased saying the
same about the central IT data center. At
the lower end, very few told us the central IT
data center’s efficiency had declined despite
an increase in the institution’s efficiency.
Central IT’s pursuit of efficiency appears, in
general, to have kept pace with or exceeded
that of the institution.
Interestingly, respondents’ judgment about
the past year’s institutional and data center
energy efficiency gains does not vary meaningfully with responses to any of our other survey
questions, including questions about whether
the institution or the central IT organization
had initiatives under way to minimize growth
in total consumption of electrical energy.
Conspicuous by their absence are significant
associations with the recent occurrence of
energy audits, engagement in institutional
or central IT energy-conservation initiatives,
and maturity of institutional and central IT ES
practices. We expected each of these factors
to influence respondents’ perceptions of
change in energy efficiency, but the data show
otherwise. We suspect that these disconnects
appear because, as we discussed in Chapter
6, so many of our respondents are in the dark
about their actual energy use, being neither
billed for nor informed of it.
Recycling
Very few respondents said the amount
of material being recycled by their institu-
138
tion or by their central IT organization had
decreased in the past 12 months. As Figure
9-4 shows, just over half of respondents
said that, in their judgment, the amount
of material the institution recycled had
increased or greatly increased in that time
frame, while a bit under half said the
same about the central IT organization.
Unlike the responses for energy efficiency,
where most respondents told us that the
institution and central IT had made equal
progress, here substantially more respondents told us that the institution was
taking the lead in recycling. As was the
case for energy efficiency, change in the
central IT organization’s recycling efforts
tended to match the direction and extent of
the institution’s.
Logically, we would have expected a
tight association between the existence
of institutional and central IT organization
initiatives to recycle e-waste and change
in the amount of material recycled in the
past 12 months. Somewhat surprisingly,
the existence of initiatives at both levels
was unrelated to change in the amount of
material the institution recycled, perhaps
just because those initiatives are too pervasive to be a good differentiator among
institutions. However, where initiatives to
recycle e-waste were in place at both levels,
respondents were two to three times more
likely to say the amount central IT recycles
had increased or greatly increased (see
Table 9-9). Here the direction of causality
seems particularly clear: Adoption of IT
recycling initiatives should be an effective
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
60%
50.2
Percentage of Institutions
50%
46.7
37.4
40%
Figure 9-4.
Change in Amount
of Material
Recycled in Past 12
Months
30.0
30%
20%
13.6
7.8
10%
0%
0.0
0.4
Greatly decreased
1.9
6.2
4.7
1.2
Decreased
Stayed the same
Increased
Greatly increased
Don't know
Institution (N = 257)
Central IT (N = 257)
Table 9-9. Change in Past 12 Months in Amount of Material Central IT Recycles, by Status of
Institutional and Central IT Initiatives to Recycle E-Waste
Change in Amount Central IT Recycles
Status of Institutional Initiative
Not actively engaged (N = 31)
Actively engaged (N = 211)
Decreased or Greatly
Decreased
No Change
Increased or Greatly
Increased
0.0%
80.6%
19.4%
1.9%
48.3%
49.8%
Decreased or Greatly
Decreased
No Change
Increased or Greatly
Increased
No initiative (N = 27)
0.0%
85.2%
14.8%
Initiative under way (N = 217)
1.8%
48.8%
49.3%
Status of Central IT Organization
Initiative
way of ensuring that central IT will recycle
more material, and these findings are
consistent with that expectation.
Pride in the Institutional
Stance on ES
We asked for respondents’ level of agreement with the statement “In general, our
faculty, staff, and students are proud of our
institution’s stance on environmental sustainability.” For many respondents it was difficult
to come up with a response. As we will see,
about a seventh of them said they didn’t
know. Most of our respondents were CIOs
or other central IT administrators, and the
question may simply have been too broad
for some of them, relative to the view from
their offices. Nevertheless, it is an important
ES outcome, not just for the institution, but
also for the larger community the institution
serves and, in important ways, leads. Joanne
Kossuth, vice president for operations and CIO
at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering,
put it this way: “Sustainability has real value
for both the central IT organization and the
institution. It gives us a good opportunity to
generate publicity, to create involvement with
students, to gain corporate partnerships, and
to demonstrate how the institution gives back
to the community.”
139
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Overall, respondents tended to agree that
faculty, staff, and students at their institutions
were proud of the institution’s stance on ES.
As Figure 9-5 shows, a near majority agreed
or strongly agreed that that was the case,
and very few disagreed or strongly disagreed.
Mean agreement was 3.59,7 halfway between
“neutral” and “agree,” and the median was
4.00, or “agree.” Readers should keep in mind
that these means, and others reported for
this question below, exclude the one in seven
respondents who answered “don’t know.”
We think of responses to this question as
reflecting respondents’ subjective summation
of their institutions’ ES efforts, and we’re interested to see the other characteristics of the
institution and the central IT organization that
are—and are not—significantly associated
with it. In general, many characteristics of the
institution are meaningfully associated with
this summation, while fewer characteristics
of the central IT organization are.
Institutional Characteristics
As we will see, some of the ways in
which the institution organizes its ES practices appear to have a positive influence
on perceptions of constituent pride in the
institution’s ES stance. Significant positive associations exist between perceived
pride and institutional ES plan status, the
existence of an institutional ES office and
ES committee, and the maturity of institutional ES practices. There is likely a feedback loop involved here as well, in which
constituents’ pride reinforces institutional
efforts and encourages more of them,
resulting in even greater pride.
Where the institution has completed an
ES strategic plan, mean agreement that
constituents are proud of the institution’s
ES stance is nearly a full point more positive than where no plan exists (see Table
9-10). Less influential—showing mean
differences of only half a point—are the
existence of an institutional office whose
primar y responsibilit y is oversight of
overall ES initiatives, and of a committee
that guides them.
Similarly, as Table 9-11 shows, where the
institution’s ES practice maturity score is
higher, mean agreement is nearly a point
more positive that constituents are proud of
the institution’s ES stance.
45%
38.8
40%
Figure 9-5.
Faculty, Staff,
and Students
Are Proud of
Institution’s
Stance on
Environmental
Sustainability
(N = 258)
Percentage of Institutions
35%
31.8
30%
25%
20%
14.3
15%
9.3
10%
5.0
5%
0.8
0%
Strongly disagree
140
Disagree
Neutral
Agree
Strongly agree
Don't know
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 9-10. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Status of
Institutional Environmental Sustainability Plan, Office, and Committee
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
No plan
3.03
34
0.834
Plan is in progress
3.61
107
0.737
Institutional ES Plan Status
Plan is completed (integrated with inst. plan or not)
3.95
60
0.746
Total
3.61
201
0.812
No
3.32
107
0.784
Yes
3.88
107
0.723
Total
3.60
214
0.803
Institution Has an ES Office
Institution Has an ES Committee
No
3.25
65
0.848
Yes
3.77
132
0.740
Total
3.59
197
0.813
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
Table 9-11. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Institutional
Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Institutional ES Practice Maturity Score
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
3.04
48
0.874
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.57
91
0.669
High (3.51–5.00)
3.97
78
0.683
Total
3.60
217
0.800
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
The way the institution organizes its ES
efforts is apparently not the only factor associated with constituents’ pride in the institution’s
stance; understandably, where the institution is
actively engaged in more ES initiatives, respondents are substantially more likely to agree that
constituents are proud (see Table 9-12).
Yet another factor positively associated
with constituents’ pride is the progress the
institution has made toward environmental
responsibility. As Table 9-13 shows, mean
agreement that constituents are proud of
the institution’s ES stance is stronger where
respondents agreed that the institution had
made progress toward the greening of all
three of the areas we asked about.
Finally, we have evidence that the community’s
level of awareness about ES goes hand in hand
with good feelings about the institution’s ES
stance. Where respondents agreed or strongly
agreed that individuals at their institutions were
knowledgeable about general ES issues, mean
agreement that constituents were proud of the
institution’s ES stance was three-quarters of a
point stronger than where respondents disagreed
or strongly disagreed about individuals’ knowledgeability (see Table 9-14).
Of course, while becoming informed about
general ES issues is likely to stimulate pride
where the institution is doing well with ES, it
has potential to inhibit or erode pride where
the institution is doing poorly. With that in
141
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table 9-12. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Number of
Institutional Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Under Way
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Number of Institutional ES Initiatives Under Way
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
3.00
28
0.816
4–6
3.56
117
0.781
7–10
3.86
76
0.687
Total
3.59
221
0.796
1–3
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
Table 9-13. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Institution
Has Significantly Changed Activities to Become More Environmentally Responsible in
Past 12 Months
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
3.03
31
0.912
Business Activities
Disagree or strongly disagree
Neutral
3.49
82
0.707
Agree or strongly agree
3.83
103
0.742
Total
3.59
216
0.802
Disagree or strongly disagree
3.25
52
0.905
Neutral
3.63
91
0.644
Agree or strongly agree
3.85
65
0.795
Total
3.60
208
0.792
3.30
40
0.966
Neutral
3.61
56
0.652
Agree or strongly agree
3.94
36
0.826
Total
3.61
132
0.836
Instructional Activities
Research Activities
Disagree or strongly disagree
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
Table 9-14. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Individuals’
Knowledgeability about General Environmental Sustainability Issues
Individuals Are Well Informed about General ES
Issues
Disagree or strongly disagree
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
3.06
34
0.886
Neutral
3.45
58
0.597
Agree or strongly agree
3.82
125
0.777
Total
3.60
217
0.800
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
mind, we acknowledge the possibility that an
institutional ES environment that is worthy of
pride may encourage the spread of information about its ES initiatives, while a less worthy
142
one might—as an embarrassment—inhibit it.
This factor may account for at least some of
the variation we see in respondents’ perception of constituent pride.
Green IT in Higher Education
Central IT Characteristics
A number of characteristics of the central
IT organization follow patterns of association
with constituents’ pride in the institution’s ES
stance that are similar to the associations with
overall institutional characteristics discussed
above. For example, as we did for the status
of the institution’s ES strategic plan, we saw
a positive association between agreement
about constituents’ pride and the status of
the central IT ES strategic plan. This hints
strongly that small-scale planning activities as
well as large-scale ones contribute to perceptions of good feelings about the institution’s
ES stance.
Central IT’s ES practice maturity score
appears to affect perceived pride in a way
similar to that described above (Table 9-11) for
institutional maturity. Here as well, agreement
that constituents are proud of the institution’s
ES stance is about a point higher where central
IT’s maturity score is high than where it is low.
Table 9-15 reflects the association between
pride in the institution’s ES stance and central
IT’s ES practice maturity composite score, but
we should point out that agreement about
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
each of the six individual components of that
maturity (see Chapter 5) is also strongly associated with perceived pride.
As we saw above, the community’s level
of awareness about general ES issues went
hand in hand with perceived pride in the
institution’s ES stance. As Table 9-16 shows,
the same is true to a significant, but somewhat lesser, extent for constituents’ level of
awareness about the more specific category
of IT-related ES issues.
In many ways, though, the characteristics of
the central IT organization are either less meaningfully associated with perceived pride in the
institution’s ES stance than similar institutional
characteristics, or are not associated with it
at all. Mean agreement about that pride was
only a little higher where an internal committee
existed to guide ES initiatives. And we found no
significant association at all between perceived
pride in the institution’s ES stance and
•• the number of staff central IT had
assigned to oversee the organization’s
ES initiatives,
•• the role of the CIO in institutional ES
initiatives,
Table 9-15. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Central IT
Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Central IT ES Practice Maturity Score
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
3.12
60
0.783
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.70
125
0.721
High (3.51–5.00)
4.03
36
0.696
Total
3.59
221
0.796
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
Table 9-16. Pride in Institution’s Stance on Environmental Sustainability, by Individuals’
Knowledgeability about IT-Related Environmental Sustainability Issues
Individuals Are Well Informed about IT-Related
ES Issues
Constituents Are Proud of Institution’s Stance on ES
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Disagree or strongly disagree
3.38
99
0.854
Neutral
3.67
64
0.565
Agree or strongly agree
3.87
55
0.818
Total
3.59
218
0.794
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
143
Green IT in Higher Education
the number of central IT ES initiatives
under way, or
•• the average number of support activities central IT carries out for institutional
initiatives.
All of these differences may have a single,
simple explanation: Institutional-level ES is
a much larger enterprise than its central IT
component, and unless the central IT organization is a real superstar in institutional ES
activities, the way that organization conducts
its internal ES activities would understandably
have relatively little bearing on perceived pride
in the overall institution’s ES stance.
••
Summary and
Implications
This chapter’s findings provide insights
into the level of success respondents
think their institutions have achieved in
eight different aspects of environmental
sustainability (ES), and the institutional and
organizational characteristics that appear
to influence that success. We asked about
recent change in the institution’s business,
instructional, and research activities in the
direction of becoming more environmentally
responsible—the recent “greening” of those
activities. We asked about progress toward
two specific ES goals, improving energy efficiency and increasing the amount of material
recycled, in the institutional and central IT
contexts. And we asked whether faculty,
staff, and students, as a group, were proud
of the institution’s stance on ES. Relative to
each of these aspects of ES success, we found
intriguing associations with—and perplexing
disconnects from—the findings discussed in
previous chapters.
One of the surprises related to outcomes
involved our questions about change in energy
efficiency and in the amount of material
recycled, at both the institutional level and the
central IT level, in the 12 months preceding
our survey. Answers to those questions were
not surprising in themselves: About half of
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
respondents told us that energy efficiency at
both levels had increased. Responses about
change in the amount of material central IT
recycled were also positive, but respondents
were substantially more likely to say it had
increased for the institution than for the
central IT organization.
The surprise comes from the fact that none
of the institutional or central IT factors we
asked about in other questions were associated with recent change in energy efficiency
to any significant extent. Even the existence
of initiatives to minimize growth in energy use
was statistically unrelated. This raises serious
questions about the efficacy of the many
energy-saving initiatives we asked about.
On average, respondents told us they were
increasing energy efficiency at the institutional
and central IT levels, but through our survey
questions about their initiatives we were not
able to put our finger on how.
Results about the amount of material the
institution recycled were also unrelated to
other factors, but change in the amount of
material the central IT organization recycled
was significantly and substantially greater
where both the institution and the central
IT organization had initiatives in place to
recycle e-waste. Here it does appear that we
have identified at least one way to increase
the recycling effort in central IT: Put a formal
initiative in place to do so.
From other outcomes questions, we find
even broader evidence that institutions are
getting little traction out of their ES initiatives.
One striking finding is the contrast between
the modest gains reported for making the
institution more environmentally responsible in business, instructional, and research
activities and the high level of institutional and
central IT ES activity reported in Chapters 4
and 6. While nearly 9 in 10 respondents said
their institution was actively engaged in ES
activities and more than 7 in 10 said the same
about their central IT organization, fewer than
half of respondents agreed or strongly agreed
Green IT in Higher Education
that, in their judgment, business activities had
become significantly greener in the 12 months
preceding our survey. Agreement was weaker
in the context of instructional activities, with
just a quarter of respondents indicating that
their greening had been significant. And
agreement was weaker still in the research
context, with fewer than a fifth signaling
significant greening there.
While engagement in each of the 10 specific
ES initiatives we asked about was seldom
significantly associated with outcomes, the
total number of initiatives under way was.
The message seems to be that “getting
more involved” is a powerful way in which
institutions and central IT organizations can
improve their ES outcomes. With regard to
agreement that the institution has greened
its activities recently, the number of ES initiatives that the institution and the central IT
organization are involved in is among the
factors that appear to influence greening
most. A greater number of initiatives under
way tends strongly to accompany agreement
that significant greening has occurred in all
three activity areas in the past 12 months.
An apparent disconnect in our data,
though, is that the number of initiatives the
central IT data center, specifically, had under
way (from a different list of nine) and the
number of ES initiatives under way in distributed IT facilities (from our list of eight) did not
appear to influence the outcomes studied in
this chapter. This follows a trend in our findings that the larger the context of the potential
influences we asked about, the stronger their
effect was upon outcomes. The fact that the
outcomes we asked about were, themselves,
institutional in scope helps explain this: It
seems inevitable that global initiatives will be
more likely to have global impacts and local
initiatives will be less likely to do so.
Agreement that campus constituents take
pride in the institution’s stance on ES ran fairly
high, given the subjectivity of the question.
Nearly half of respondents agreed or strongly
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
agreed that faculty, staff, and students were
proud of the institution’s stance on environmental sustainability. But here we see again
the global/local dichotomy just discussed. At
the institutional level, the more of our 10 ES
initiatives that were under way, the stronger
respondents’ agreement was that constituents take pride in the institution’s ES stance.
Presumably at least some of these institutional
ES initiatives were visible enough that our
respondents had seen their positive effect
on the community’s “green pride.” Although
the initiatives central IT had under way were
from the same list of 10, central IT’s less global
efforts seemed much less consistently viewed
by respondents (most of whom are in the
central IT organization themselves) as being
connected to the more global community’s
sense of pride. Presumably it was the more
limited departmental scale of central IT’s initiatives that gave them less perceived visibility
and impact.
Other factors strongly associated with
outcomes were the ES practice maturity scores
of both the institution and central IT organization. Research activities are reported to have
greened less, on average, than business and
instructional activities, and most other potential influences on greening appear to affect
research the least. But the mean difference
in greening between institutions with low ES
practice maturity scores and those with high
ones is actually greater for research activities
than for the others. Where institutional and
central IT ES practices are more mature—
where those practices are well organized,
applied consistently, well documented,
assessed regularly, and closely aligned with
strategic objectives—even the highly independent research community can become more
environmentally responsible.
Again reflecting the global/local dichotomy,
the status of the institution’s strategic plan
for ES seems to have a more powerful effect
on the greening of institutional activities in
three areas and with perceived pride in its ES
145
Green IT in Higher Education
stance than does the status of the central IT
organization’s equivalent plan. Perhaps the
surprise here is that central IT’s ES strategic
plan status made any difference at all in these
four institutional-level outcomes. And indeed,
perhaps central IT’s plan is not influential in
itself, but is another result of the many factors
that influence the greening of activities and
perceived pride in the institution’s ES stance.
As always, causality is difficult to infer from
our survey data.
A few other institutional factors appeared
to influence the greening of the institution’s activities and constituents’ pride in its
ES stance. These were the existence of an
institutional office whose primary responsibility is oversight of overall ES initiatives,
the existence of an institutional committee
to guide those initiatives, and the perceived
knowledgeability of most individuals at the
institution about general ES issues as well
as IT-related ones. In all cases, where such
organizational structures existed and where
perceived knowledgeability was greater, ES
outcomes were significantly more positive.
Institutions that want to improve their ES
outcomes but do not have these organizational structures in place may wish to
consider them, and they may wish to consider
augmenting their methods of disseminating
information about ES issues.
As we have seen, many of our findings
suggest that the most powerful influences
on the institution’s ES outcomes are factors
operating at the institutional level. A few
factors at the central IT level also appear
influential, but the weight of the evidence
suggests that the central IT organization’s
influence is limited. We found, for example,
that central IT’s support for the 10 institutional
ES activities we concentrated on appeared to
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
have a significant effect on the greening of
the institution’s core activities in only 7 of 90
possible ways. These were limited to three
initiatives—minimizing growth in electrical
energy use, recycling e-waste, and adopting
LEED green building standards—and they
appeared to affect only business and instructional activities, not research activities.
We did find that where the CIO placed
higher priority on ES and played a more
active role in institutional ES initiatives, more
greening of the institution’s activities had
taken place, inclining us to conclude that,
for the present at least, IT’s influence may be
stronger at the level of executive influence
than at the operational level. The fact that
so few CIOs were characterized as “leaders”
by our respondents suggests that much of
their potential influence in ES matters is
going untapped.
Endnotes
1. Note that these means exclude all “don’t know”
and “does not apply” responses and so reflect
conditions at institutions where the respondent was
better informed.
2. Note that for research activities, the number of
respondents who reported having 0 to 3 initiatives
under way is only 17. We do not consider a mean
based on so few respondents to be valid and report
it here only for the sake of completeness.
3. Statistical details for Table 9-3 are listed in Appendix C.
4. Statistical details for both analyses are listed in
Appendix C.
5. By “apparent benefit,” we mean the difference
obtained when the mean agreement that an activity
area has become more environmentally responsible
in the past 12 months where institutional ES
practice maturity is low is subtracted from the mean
agreement where maturity is high. For research
activities in Figure 9-2, for example, that number is
1.02. For business activities, it is 0.79; for instructional
activities, it is 0.85.
6. N ote t hat ins t i tu t i o ns w h o s e re s p o n d e nt s
provided “don’t know” responses—10–15% for
the institution and 5–10% for central IT—are not
included in these means.
7. Standard deviation, 0.796.
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
10
Higher Education IT and the
Coming Green Revolution
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
—Galileo
W
hat will campus IT look like in 5, 10, or
15 years? Most will agree that the fortunes
of the planet will influence our trajectory,
but the degree to which environmental
concerns will affect higher education IT is
not so clear. Despite the growing consensus
within the international scientific community
that carbon-based greenhouse gases from
human activity are damaging the atmosphere
and causing potentially dangerous climate
disruption, nations have yet to find common
ground upon which to build an actionable
agreement on goals for cutting back carbon
emissions. Skeptics argue against the threat
of global warming, and economic concerns
eclipse environmental protection issues
on politicians’ agendas. While individuals,
corporations, governments, and higher
education institutions around the globe are
implementing tactics to lower carbon-based
energy consumption and reduce their “carbon
footprint,” there is little agreement on the
amount of money and effort that should be
expended or what the best course of action
may be. As a result, a wait-and-see approach
has taken hold in many places.
Will the path of least resistance suffice as a
guiding principle in our environmental conservation strategy, or will something take us in
another, more urgent, path toward sustainability? Although social conscience will surely
play a part in motivating many of the energy
conservation tactics that will be implemented
over the next 10 or so years, economic pragmatism will play a part in most significant
personal or institutional sacrifices made in the
name of environmental sustainability. Closely
linked environmental and economic factors
can be identified today that will shape the
speed and intensity of change in energy use
patterns over the next 10 or so years, regardless of whether the forces behind this change
are altruistic or economically advantageous.
National and international policies enacted
to moderate global warming will raise awareness of the need to curtail use of energy
derived from fossil fuels. Campus IT will be
affected by regulatory policies put in place
to motivate significant improvements in
carbon efficiency, and its leaders will need
to understand and manage energy much like
it manages information today. By 2020, it is
safe to say, higher education IT will be widely
recognized as having a measurable, material
impact on global carbon emissions.
The Cost of CarbonBased Power
Although humanity’s impact on the
biosphere may be debated in some circles,
the overwhelming scientific consensus is that
human activities are affecting the planet’s
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
147
Green IT in Higher Education
climate by increasing the concentration of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.1 While
scientists are certain that these anthropogenic
(caused by man) greenhouse gases, mostly
in the form of carbon dioxide emissions
from burning fossil fuels, are causing global
climate disruption, there is far less agreement on how to address the problem. John
Holdren, director of the U.S. Office of Science
and Technology Policy (OSTP), said there are
three options when facing the dangers from
climate disruption: mitigation, adaptation, or
suffering. According to Holdren, we’re already
doing some of each, so what is up for grabs
is the future mix. “We need enough mitigation to avoid the unmanageable and enough
adaptation to manage the unavoidable.”2
The next decade will likely see some of
both, driven by increased energy costs and
mandated or voluntary reduction of carbonbased energy sources. China and India,
whose population is expected to exceed
China’s in 15 years, account for 37% of the
world’s population, and their demographic
trends will greatly increase global energy use
and the corresponding carbon emissions.3
The energy necessary to feed the world’s
ever-increasing population alone will escalate global energy use, as the systems that
produce the food supply depend heavily on
fossil fuels. According to the World Coal
Institute, coal provides 26.5% of global
primary energy needs and generates 41.5%
of the world’s electricity. 4 It is also the
biggest single source of greenhouse gases.
The United States burns a lot of coal too;
according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration, in 2008 coal-fueled electrical
generation was responsible for 41% of U.S.
energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Of
course, coal-generated energy is not the only
carbon concern; 84% of all the energy used
in the United States in 2008 was derived from
fossil fuels.5 Even if no taxes or penalties for
carbon-emitting fossil fuels are implemented,
the price of oil, and to a lesser degree coal,
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
is vulnerable to the pressure these energy
demands will put on global energy supplies
and could greatly influence the price we pay
for carbon-based energy.
As awareness of the potential for increased
costs for carbon-based energy and the
corresponding environmental costs of
climate change has risen, the parallel story
of information technology has largely been
one of optimism and even utopianism. Yet
IT is deeply implicated in the rising demand
for energy. In 2007, the global information
and communications technology industry
reportedly accounted for the same amount
of carbon dioxide emissions as the aviation
sector (2%), and since then the demand for
IT has grown.6 IT administrators know only
too well that they expend a great deal of
energy, first to power and then to cool the
machines that keep their operations working.
This consumption alone makes a prima
facie case for the relevance of IT to climate
change issues. But in addition, IT’s ability to
virtualize energy-intensive processes and to
make energy-consuming devices “smarter”
means that IT can be a big part of the climate
change solution. Either way, IT professionals
need to be aware of the role that IT plays in
the climate change debate.
Despite the fact that national and/or
international laws and regulations to control
energy-related carbon emissions have yet
to be put into place, this problem is not
going away, and higher education will play
a leading role in its solution. In a recent
EDUCAUSE Review article, “Climate Change
and Higher Education,” the authors write that
colleges and universities are being swept up
in these developments, requiring strategic
planning to be undertaken now.7 Whether
the momentum is driven by untenable
energy prices or mandated carbon-reduction
economic controls, or a little of both, our
future will surely be shaped by new ways of
conserving energy and the implementation of
new sources of power.
Green IT in Higher Education
Higher Education’s Role
in the Sustainability
Movement
The “Practical Guide to Reducing the
Campus Carbon Footprint,” published by the
professional association APPA—Leadership
in Educational Facilities, uses weather forecasting as a metaphor for climate change
and its impact on the higher education
community. As a storm takes shape, it’s
difficult to know how fast it will pick up
speed, how forceful it may be, where it will
hit with greatest impact, and the extent of
the damage it may leave behind. Frequently
called the cone of uncertainty, this term
is used in modeling techniques by project
engineers to attempt to predict outcomes
before they have full knowledge of what
will happen or when. The guide’s foreword,
“What We Don’t Know Shouldn’t Stop
Us,” is a call to action for higher education
institutions to develop a path to carbon
neutrality: “As in the case of the storm, we
may feel like spectators, with circumstances
seemingly outside our control. In reality, this
isn’t a localized storm. The entire planet is in
peril, and we need to do much more than
wait and watch. We can and must act to
influence the outcomes, despite the things
we don’t yet know.”8
At the highest levels, higher education is
committing to address climate change. The
American College & University Presidents’
Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) is a highvisibility effort undertaken by a growing
network of over 650 colleges and universities—including four-tenths of this study’s
responding institutions—that have made
institutional commitments to eliminate net
greenhouse gas emissions from specified
campus operations. The ACUPCC charter
promotes “the research and educational
efforts of higher education to equip society to
re-stabilize the earth’s climate. Its mission is to
accelerate progress towards climate neutrality
and sustainability by empowering the higher
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
education sector to educate students, create
solutions, and provide leadership-by-example
for the rest of society.”9
This ECAR study documents the start of
this important movement within the realm
of higher education IT. But it also reveals
that we have a long way to go. Among the
respondents to this study, a completed environmental sustainability plan was in place at
only a quarter of institutions and in a tenth
of central IT organizations. The good news is
that experts are bringing to light the role IT
should play in campus sustainability programs.
In November 2008, campus leaders in IT and
facilities gathered for a two-day EDUCAUSE
Summit on IT Greening and Sustainability to
begin building connections between campus
IT and wider sustainability efforts. A resulting
white paper put campus IT at the center of the
sustainability discourse, suggested ways that
IT might bolster institution-wide efforts, and
set the standard for an ambitious and futurereaching strategy for carbon reduction.10
As visible public citizens, educational institutions are expected to embody the highest
values of society. They must be good citizens
in their communities and act as role models
for their students. Part of that mission will
translate into actions geared toward sustainability. Practical steps taken across the entire
campus will be watched by students, alumni,
and their surrounding communities. These
sustainable-living efforts will be compounded
by the numbers of students they touch, which
is why institutions should be picking the “lowhanging fruit” of conservation tactics today by
taking the most obvious, and least disruptive
or costly, first steps of energy management—
and there are many that involve IT.
Picking the Low-Hanging
Fruit
Today, IT should be part of a visible,
campus-wide campaign to reduce waste,
travel, and commuter traffic. These and
other basic conservation strategies not only
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Green IT in Higher Education
reduce energy, they also lower expenses;
and IT enables the kind of information
dissemination that is vital to the success of
these programs by generating buy-in among
constituents.11 If campus leadership has yet to
make sustainability a high priority, or if other
circumstances prevent a coordinated institution-wide approach, there are measures
that IT departments can implement today
to monitor and conserve energy use and
prepare for the time when they will be called
upon to help the entire institution reduce its
carbon footprint.
Promoting eco-friendly purchasing such as
ENERGY STAR–rated products and practices
throughout the campus is an example of
how IT is already participating in sustainability programs. Among respondents to our
survey, 71% told us their institution has an
ENERGY STAR initiative, and as many central
IT organizations have their own ENERGY
STAR initiatives under way. IT is further along
in e-waste disposal and recycling programs:
88% of central IT organizations have their
own initiatives. Over 90% of respondents to
this study are employing server virtualization
to reduce the number of physical servers, but
only 3 in 10 have raised the temperature in the
central IT data center to conserve energy, and
over 45% tell us they have no plans to pursue
this relatively basic strategy. Just over a third of
respondents had reduced data center lighting
levels, but 42% were not planning to. Other
straightforward tactics that IT departments
should be implementing include decommissioning unneeded or underutilized hardware;
replacing CRT monitors with more efficient
LCD units; and ensuring that desktop, printer,
and server power management settings are
enabled. An energy audit—rare among our
respondents—will also bring to light other
tactics to lower energy consumption.12
IT should evaluate the conservation potential of substituting information and communication technologies for work-related in-person
activities, for example, by implementing
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
telecommuting full- or part-time, or replacing
some business travel with videoconferencing.
We found that among the nearly one-third
of institutions that had a telecommuting
initiative under way, central IT participated
over 90% of the time. Videoconferencing
is also making inroads, as two-thirds of
respondents said their IT organizations had
videoconferencing initiatives, and where it
was an institution-wide initiative, over 97%
participated. On the academic side, video
and online education hold great potential to
reduce physical travel. However, the overall
impact of these measures on an institution’s
carbon footprint may be difficult to determine
because the home-related energy increases
on the part of the employee or student may
offset institutional savings, and as the rest of
this chapter will reveal, there is little agreement on how to quantify the energy used by
the Internet and the other communications
technologies needed to support these travelrelated cutbacks.13
In addition to implementing desktop virtualization and replacing data center equipment with more efficient units, installing
“air-side economizer” cooling systems that
use cool outside air to cool indoor space can
cut back on energy required for temperature
management.14 Employing any number of
these data center environmental sustainability measures could have a dramatic
impact on a data center’s carbon footprint,
and this study reveals that higher education
IT is in the early stages of implementing many
of them in both central IT and distributed
IT facilities. A 2007 EPA report to Congress
estimated that if state-of-the-art technology
were adopted, data center efficiency could
be improved by as much as 70%. If the
nation’s data centers were able to collectively
save even a modest 10% of total energy use,
it would amount to energy savings of 10.7
billion kilowatt-hours per year, which is the
equivalent to the electricity consumed by one
million U.S. households.15
Green IT in Higher Education
IT has carbon mitigation potential in “dematerialization,” or the process whereby products and services with greater environmental
impact are replaced by those with less impact.
A type of IT dematerialization is the shrinking
in physical size of computers, along with their
corresponding increase in computing power
per watt of energy. A paper published by
Hewlett-Packard offers an impressive early
example of dematerialization: “[T]he fastest
computer in 1946 performed about 5,000
operations a second, weighed more than 30
tons, and consumed almost 200 kilowatts of
electricity. In contrast, an off-the-shelf laptop
purchased today has thousands of times the
processing power, weighs just a few pounds,
and consumes less than one-thousandth the
electricity.”16 Other forms of dematerialization would be converting physical items to
digital versions of documents, photos, and
music. A recent study found that purchasing
digital music over buying a CD at a retail store
reduced carbon emissions by 40% to 80%
when taking into account all aspects, from
manufacturing to packaging to shipping.17
Digitization of all types of content should be
explored as a means to reduce an institution’s
carbon footprint.
These strategies represent a good start,
but campus IT should be looking for ways to
make more substantial reductions in carbon
emissions. At the EDUCAUSE summit in 2008,
Wendell Brase, vice chancellor for administrative and business services at the University
of California, Irvine, shared his institution’s
aggressive approach to green IT and advised
summit participants to think big as they implement green IT strategies. “The scale of these
problems is enormous,” Brase pointed out
and suggested that institution-wide projects
should be the first approach, not a distant
goal, because implementing minor change
that will only change a few percentage points
might impede progress on larger initiatives
that could have a greater impact.18 Focusing
on implementing smaller, incremental change
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
can detract from the necessary larger initiatives that will be required as the global movement for lowering carbon emissions gains
momentum. While new clean-energy sources
will be coming online, as Brase sees it, the next
10 years will see much more progress toward
reducing carbon footprints on the consumption side than on the supply side of the power
equation. To that end, large-scale energyconserving and energy-retrofit projects are
the most immediate, most cost-effective, and
most successful initial strategy. “Unlike the
energy-retrofit projects of the past decade,
when a 10% to 15% energy dividend was
considered success,” Brase said, “institutions
are looking for projects that can reduce the
associated carbon footprint 30% to 50% and
still prove self-financing.”19
Whether picking the low-hanging fruit or
taking more dramatic steps toward carbon
reduction, we must find more accurate ways
to project or prove both cost and emissions
savings. Current methods of measuring IT
energy use and corresponding carbon outputs
are fuzzy at best, and standards and tools
must evolve in order to help IT control its
impact on the environment.
Quantifying a Shrinking
Footprint
IT will play an even more significant role
in reducing the institutional carbon footprint
as we become more aware of how much
energy information and communication
technologies consume. In the EDUCAUSE
Review article “Low-Carbon Computing,”
Karla Hignite writes of the growing awareness that computing, data processing, and
electronic file storage collectively account for
a significant and growing share of energy
consumption in the business world and on
higher education campuses. “With greater
scrutiny of all activities that contribute to an
institution’s carbon footprint, information
technology operations represent a largely
untapped reservoir for energy reduction. A
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Green IT in Higher Education
strategic vision for green IT must incorporate
forward-reaching efforts that seek to curtail
technology’s environmental impact.”20 And
many innovations will be needed to monitor
and measure energy use in order to accomplish this goal.
Efforts to limit IT’s environmental impact
are evident in the numerous organizations
that have sprung up over the last few years
to support the greening of IT. The Climate
Savers Computing Initiative is a nonprofit
group of consumers, businesses, and conservation organizations dedicated to reducing
the energy consumption of computers by
promoting adoption of smart technologies in
everyday business and personal computing.
More than 475 companies and organizations
have joined the initiative since its launch in
June 2007, and thousands of individuals
have pledged their support. Computer and
component manufacturers commit to developing products that meet or exceed the latest
ENERGY STAR specification, while system
buyers and consumers commit to choose
systems that meet or exceed the latest
ENERGY STAR specification. By improving
energy efficiency of PCs and servers and
encouraging the use of power management tools, Climate Savers Computing aims
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54
million tons by 2010—the equivalent of
taking 11 million cars off the road (http://
www.climatesaverscomputing.org/).
Third-party electronics evaluation and
labeling systems, such as the Green Electronics
Council’s EPEAT system, are emerging to
help purchasers evaluate, compare, and
select electronic products based on their
environmental attributes. EPEAT currently
covers desktop and laptop computers, thin
clients, workstations, and computer monitors
and recently announced that Amazon.com has
begun to use EPEAT ratings to identify greener
electronic products on its website (http://www
.epeat.net/). UL Environment, a subsidiary
of Underwriters Laboratories, the product
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
safety standards organization, supports
the development of sustainable products,
services, and organizations in the global
marketplace through standards development,
educational services, and independent thirdparty assessment and certification (http://
www.ulenvironment.com/).
Another organization, the Green Grid,
is a global consortium of IT companies and
professionals seeking to improve energy
efficiency in data centers and business
computing ecosystems around the globe
(http://www.thegreengrid.org/). The organization seeks to unite global industry efforts
to standardize on a common set of metrics,
processes, methods, and new technologies to further its common goals and has
published a set of data center metrics that
are becoming widely adopted.21
These organizations help bring new focus
on green IT as a strategy for carbon neutrality
and will assist campus IT departments in
creating strategic plans that emphasize
consolidation and reduced consumption and
measure the results. According to UC Irvine’s
Brase, there is no cookie-cutter approach for
institutions to follow to monitor and conserve
energy. “The focus may be different for each
campus, based on which actions can deliver
the most significant savings. For some, that
may be server virtualization, but for others it
could be power management and workstation
efficiency upgrades.” What many institutions
may lack today, said Brase, is accurate metering
for IT operations that provide the kind of data
business officers and IT leaders need to solve
basic energy-use problems. Indeed, well over
three-quarters of respondents to this study
told us that departments, including central IT,
were neither billed for nor informed of their
electrical power usage. “As we become more
sophisticated in our understanding about
where carbon is generated on our campuses
and the investments we can make to reduce
emissions,” Brase said, “the best opportunities
for action will become evident.”22
Green IT in Higher Education
The Smart Grid, Power
Metering, and IT
It is safe to say that if you don’t know the
exact cost of the power your institution’s
IT consumes today, you most certainly will
tomorrow. Products are currently available
that measure IT energy use through systems
that can provide “billing quality” energy monitoring and information. Some of these systems
can capture energy consumption information at low levels of equipment granularity
without the need to interrupt current power
distribution infrastructures. Smart-cable technology or switched power distribution units
(PDUs) meter the total amount of current
that flows through the cable or PDU and can
be connected to a network, enabling equipment to be monitored and powered on and
off remotely. They can also provide energyuse information that can be used to allocate
energy costs from utility company invoices.
What is typically missing in this scenario is the
actual cost and detailed energy-use information at the equipment level from the power
supplier that would enable comprehensive
power management for IT departments. But
the technology to address this deficiency is
imminent. So-called smart-grid power distribution systems that will monitor and record
the delivery of electricity from suppliers to
consumers using two-way digital technology
are being implemented around the country,
and around the world.
The U.S. Department of Energy describes
the smart grid as “the Internet brought to our
electric system.” The smart grid aims to transform the power grid—from central electricity
generation down to customer appliances and
equipment—into a collaborative network
driven by information. “Smart” machines
will communicate with the power grid to
capture usage information for monitoring
and reporting and will enable consumers to
optimize when to turn on and off noncritical
equipment based on the real-time cost of
power. Governments are promoting this
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
modernized electricity network as a way of
addressing energy independence, climate
change, and emergency resilience issues.23
To promote interoperability, the U.S.
Department of Energy formed a team
representing the many constituencies of the
electricity supply chain, including end users.
This GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC)
will provide industry guidance and tools to
enable smart-grid technology. According to
the GWAC, the smart grid is built on the
premise that IT will revolutionize planning
and operation of the power grid just as it has
changed business, education, and entertainment. IT will form the “nervous system” that
integrates new distributed technologies—
demand response, distributed generation,
and storage—with traditional grid generation,
transmission, and distribution assets; responsibility for managing the grid will be shared
by a “society” of devices and entities (http://
www.gridwiseac.org/).
The implications for campus IT departments
are huge. As utilities around the country
replace old electromechanical meters with
microcontroller-based smart meters, systems
that enable power metering at the server
and individual appliance level throughout the
institution will generate enormous amounts
of data and information content. On campus,
an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)
consisting of the systems and devices that
measure, collect, and analyze energy usage
will interact with utility smart meters.24 The
data from the smart meters and smart devices
throughout a building can then be integrated
with other institutional information systems to
provide accurate tracking and cost allocation.
When this level of information is made available, energy costs for information and communications technology will likely be recognized as
a primary opportunity for conserving energy.
How far along are we in the implementation of what the DOE calls “the smarter
grid”? Tools are being marketed today that
show electricity consumers the power used
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by individual appliances and outlets, enabling
residential and other users to calculate
and control electrical expenses. Google’s
PowerMeter software is a free electricity
usage monitoring tool that provides users
with information on how much energy their
home or business is consuming by taking
information from utility smart meters and
in-home energy management devices and
visualizing this information on users’ personalized iGoogle homepage (http://www.google
.org/powermeter/). Even more sophisticated
metering and management tools are on the
near horizon; Apple recently filed a patent for
“Intelligent Power Monitoring” that describes
a system that identifies networked hardware
and software to determine power consumption and estimated cost.25 General Electric
is also getting into the business, recently
announcing their “Net Zero Energy Home
Strategy,” whereby GE plans to combine
energy-efficient appliances and lights, smartenergy devices, and power generation and
storage technologies all controlled through a
master home-energy network system for the
home-building market.26
Of course home consumers will not be
the only beneficiaries of the energy-saving
features of the smart grid. Delivering products and services that provide enterprisewide integration with the smart grid is the
goal of many of the largest IT companies in
the world. Networking giant Cisco Systems
sees the development of the smart grid as
analogous to the birth of the Internet and
proposes standardizing the communications
between utilities and consumers on Internet
Protocol (IP) technology. Other smart-meter
companies take a position that the modernized electricity grid should be kept entirely
separate from the Internet in order to lessen
security vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, Cisco
hopes to be a major player in the integration
of the “islands of operations” that are spread
throughout the electric grid and extend into
commercial enterprises, and the company
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
plans to enhance communication between
utilities and consumers to provide users the
ability to “control energy usage as well as
enhance their communications and control
through an integrated network...securing
the entire enterprise with Cisco security
products.”27
In September 2009, IBM announced
the results of a smart-grid pilot project in
North Carolina that aimed to show how
much energy savings are possible through
the use of electricity monitoring devices. In
partnership with Consert, a company that
implements intelligent energy distribution
and management networks, IBM installed
controller devices in 100 businesses and
residences on appliances and other energyintensive items, and conveyed energy usage
to the Fayetteville Public Works Commission
over the course of six months. IBM claims
that the project demonstrated significant
savings available from relatively easy changes
to behavior. After six months of the pilot
project, the average savings was 15%, with
some saving as much as 40%. The use
of personalized, web-based displays for
each business or residence allowed facility
managers or homeowners to log in and
see how much energy their appliances and
gadgets were using in real time.28
The implementation of the smart grid is a
huge undertaking that has been—and will
be—met with resistance in some corners.
The smart grid will change everything about
how consumers use and pay for energy: They
will be responsible for their energy use and
will likely have to pay more for it. This kind of
change has the potential to provoke public
and political controversies that could in turn
prevent the legislative and regulatory change
needed to encourage investment. Smart-grid
proponents will need to launch public relations
campaigns to educate consumers on the longterm benefits for the environment and society
at large, but it looks like the smart grid and
smart meters are coming whether consumers
Green IT in Higher Education
want them or not. The American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act allocated $11 billion for
smart-grid projects, including 40 million smart
meters to be deployed in American homes by
2015—up from 8 million homes today—and
several states already require rapid smartmeter deployment.29 The smart-grid and the
interim “smarter grid” transition already under
way will enable IT departments to monitor and
manage their power consumption, and with
this information in hand we may see growing
interest in other delivery models for IT services,
including cloud-based software and Internetbased storage services.
The Green Cloud on the
Horizon
In the ECAR research study Alternative
IT Sourcing Strategies author Phil Goldstein
noted that there are reasons to believe cloud
computing could become a transformational
strategy that alters the focus and identity of
IT organizations.30 One potential advantage
of adopting cloud computing services is the
ability to shrink campus IT’s carbon footprint
by outsourcing applications running on older,
potentially less energy-efficient local application servers to large-scale, cloud-based data
centers whose facilities are located near
renewable sources of electrical energy. The
business model for cloud service providers
leverages large-scale capital investments
in infrastructure to realize energy and cost
efficiencies at a level far greater than most
institutions could hope to achieve. And the
availability of high-speed optical networks
makes it feasible to locate these vast server
farms in places rich in renewable energy, such
as the Columbia River valley.31 Cloud-based
data center operators enhance overall energy
efficiency in another way, by spreading peak
loads out to other server farms located in
conventionally powered parts of the cloud,
substantially increasing hardware utilization
rates there. While it is difficult now for most
institutions, documenting cloud outsourc-
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
ing’s benefits to their carbon footprint will be
become easier as more detailed monitoring of
campus energy use becomes the norm.
Another exciting opportunity in cloud
computing is the potential energy-efficiency
measures that can result from using energyaware scheduling mechanisms pervasively
throughout a system. Research is well under
way to develop a comprehensive approach
for energy efficiency that involves all data
center system layers and aspects, including
physical nodes, networking hardware, and
communication protocols, as well as the
servers and services themselves. For instance,
energy-aware scheduling in multiprocessor
and grid systems is being developed to
control the energy consumption of hardware by adjusting voltage levels. Another
approach is to design energy-efficient scheduling for data grids supporting real-time and
data-intensive applications that use both
the location of data and application properties to design a distributed scheduler. By
seamlessly integrating scheduling tasks with
data placement strategies, data centers can
realize significant energy savings. Dynamic
provisioning algorithms use economic and
energy criteria to dispatch jobs to a small set
of active servers while other servers are in a
low-power state. Much more progress will
be made in this area as research examines
the entire chain of services and infrastructure
of cloud services.32
The elephant in the room, of course,
is that the amount of data that will be
transferred over the Internet will increase
dramatically if cloud computing becomes
a significant platform for producing and
accessing information.
The expanding smart grid and use of cloud
computing services will contribute substantially
to the already extraordinary growth of the
Internet. According to Jonathan Koomey, an
expert in assessing IT and the economics of
greenhouse gas emission reductions at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
In Search of a Footprint
In January 2009, the U.K.’s Sunday Times published “Google and You’ll Damage the Planet,” in
which a study by Harvard University physicist Alex Wissner-Gross was supposed to have claimed
that “performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same
amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle, or about 7g of CO2 per search.” Soon after the story
broke, Wissner-Gross took issue with the article and said that he never mentioned Google in the
study and that his work had nothing to do with Google. Wissner-Gross did say that the study’s
focus was exclusively on the web overall and found that it takes on average about 20mg of CO2
per second to visit a website.1
The blogosphere latched on to the controversy, debating the science behind the calculations,
and Google attempted to refute the statistics on its Official Google blog, saying that an average
simple Google search uses “the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.” In a
clarification posted a few days later, The Sunday Times said it was not referring to a one-hit Google
search that took less than a second but to a search that may involve several attempts to find the
object being sought and that may last for several minutes. According to The Sunday Times, various
experts estimate the carbon emissions of the more complex search to be 1g to 10g, depending on
the time involved and the equipment used.2 Google ultimately claimed that “in the time it takes
to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to
answer your query.”3
A number of the bloggers who commented on the exchange between Google and The Sunday
Times pointed out that transparency and measurability of the Internet’s carbon footprint are huge
concerns, because without common standards for claiming carbon efficiency, and without usage
data from cloud providers—who are notoriously protective of information about their operations—it
is difficult to know how green cloud computing really is.4
Endnotes
1. Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods, “Revealed: The Environmental Impact of Google Searches” (original article
“Google and You’ll Damage the Planet” renamed with clarification added), The Sunday Times, January 16, 2009,
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece.
2. Ibid.
3. The Official Google Blog, “Powering a Google Search,” January 11, 2009, http://googleblog.blogspot
.com/2009/01/powering-google-search.html.
4. Bob Warfield, “Preposterous Stories Make for Good BS Indicators,” SmoothSpan Blog, January 13, 2009,
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/preposterous-stories-make-for-good-bs-indicators/; James
Governor, “How Green Is the Cloud?” James Governor’s Monkchips, January 12, 2009, http://www.redmonk
.com/jgovernor/2009/01/12/how-green-is-the-cloud/; Graeme Sutherland, “Is that 7g or 0.2g CO2 per Google
Search?”nodestone.com, February 9, 2009, http://nodestone.com/2009/02/09/is-that-7g-or-02g-co2-per-search/;
and Larry Dignan, “Signs of Armageddon: We’re Worrying about CO2 Emissions of a Google Search,” ZDNET:
Between the Lines Blog, January 12, 2009, http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL /?p=11435.
biggest environmental story about IT is not
direct electricity use but how IT affects efficiency in broader society. In the case of the
Internet, trying to quantify its overall impact
on carbon emissions is a complex endeavor.
Experts agree that as it grows, it consumes
an ever-increasing amount of energy, but it is
also instrumental in increasing productivity and
156
economic prosperity that can reduce energy
consumption through e-work, e-commerce,
and e-learning. The difficulty in calculating
the carbon impact of this “communicate more
and travel less” paradigm is that the potential
reduction in physical travel is partially offset
by the increased power used by data centers
and communications networks, and there is no
Green IT in Higher Education
standard upon which to measure the complement of equipment and networking that
constitute the entire chain of energy use for the
Internet. Nevertheless, the sheer magnitude of
the world’s use of the Internet leads experts to
believe that a fraction of energy savings in the
technologies that drive it could lead to significant financial and carbon savings—especially
when combined with the reduction in physical
travel that it facilitates.33
Low-Energy
Technologies to the
Rescue?
If recent history offers an indication, there
is reason to believe that even as Internet use
grows exponentially, related energy use may
not increase to the same degree. According to
Koomey, while Internet energy use was estimated to have doubled from 2000 to 2006,
Internet traffic far more than doubled during
the same period, when the number of users
grew from 5% to 17% of the world’s population, the number of websites grew from 10
million to over 100 million, and data traffic
grew at least 50% a year. The reason for the
discrepancy is that hardware and network
technologies have gotten consistently more
energy efficient per unit of data transferred
over the Internet.34
Further technological advances in Internet
energy conservation are on the horizon.
According to scientists at Bell Labs, the Internet
and other communications networks could use
one ten-thousandth of the energy that they
do today if smarter data-coding techniques
were used to move information around. Bell
Labs research center in Murray Hill, New
Jersey, where both the laser and the transistor
were invented, is the host of a consortium of
networking and computing firms called Green
Touch that is committed to developing new
power-saving technologies. The initial goal is
to cut power use in the global telecommunication network by 99.9% by 2015. According to
Gee Rittenhouse, head of research at Bell Labs,
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
300 million tons of carbon dioxide are emitted
into the atmosphere to power today’s global
telephone, Internet, and cell phone networks.
“That’s equivalent to the emissions from
50 million automobiles, or 20% of the cars
registered in the U.S.,” he said.35 IT operations
that are decentralized, or using cloud-based
services, would reap some of the benefit of
these savings through direct and indirect costs
of data communications.
Energy-efficient hardware that is under
development will also play a major part in
reducing the carbon footprint of the Internet
by decreasing the emissions of the data
centers that run it. Newer technologies such as
solid-state disks use less energy than current
hard disk drives. Conserving computing power
through various well-known techniques to
slow down processors by slowing CPU clock
speeds or powering off parts of the chips
if they are idle is another step in improving
hardware energy efficiency. The advanced
configuration and power interface (ACPI) is
an open industry specification that establishes
standard interfaces enabling OS-directed
configuration, power management, and
thermal management of mobile, desktop, and
server platforms. The specification enables
new power management technologies to
evolve independently in operating systems and
hardware while ensuring that they continue to
work together (http://www.acpi.info/).
Other developments in the hardware world
signal industry movement toward lowering
energy consumption as a priority for IT.
Reducing power consumption on microchips
is essential for allowing the continuation of
Moore’s law, which states that the number
of transistors on a chip doubles about every
two years. Continuing this exponential growth
is becoming more and more difficult, and
power consumption is the largest barrier to
meaningful increases in chip density. A team
of researchers from the University of Michigan
recently released a study investigating a solution to this power problem; their idea uses
157
Green IT in Higher Education
a method called near-threshold computing
(NTC), whereby electronic devices operate at
lower voltages than normal, thus reducing
energy consumption. The researchers predict
that NTC could enable future computer
systems to reduce energy requirements by 10
to 100 times or more, by optimizing them for
low-voltage operation. Because large investments have been made in the current CMOS
(complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor)
circuitry design techniques and beyond-CMOS
technologies are still far from being commercially viable, the Michigan researchers are
focusing on solutions to the power problem
within the CMOS framework.36
Post-CMOS technology is in the works that
could lead to a new generation of ultra-lowpower computers. Some experts think Moore’s
law is approaching a barrier, and physicists have
been studying another way to process data.37
In addition to their charge, electrons have a
property called spin, analogous to the spin of
a basketball, that can also carry information.
Electron spin can be made to represent a 0 or
a 1 by aligning it with or against a magnetic
field. Instead of physically moving electrons,
information can be sent in the form of a “spin
wave” that travels through the sea of electrons
in a conductor like a ripple moving across a
pond.38 The obstacle so far has been to find a
suitable way of processing the data carried by
the spin waves. If the technology to support
this process is developed and commercialized—
and Intel has presented this as feasible some
time around 2020—we may see a whole new
wave (no pun intended!) of low-energy technology hit the market and significantly reduce
hardware power needs.39
Life in a CarbonControlled Economy
It is hard to tell when governmental regulations that limit carbon outputs might be implemented. The U.N. summit on climate change
at Copenhagen in December 2009 did not
produce any firm agreed-upon carbon targets
158
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
for nations, and the best that could be said
was that the leaders were “united in purpose,
but were not yet united in action.” And as of
January 2010, the U.S. Congress is still locked
in partisan debate over whether or how to
regulate emissions.40 Some type of accord is
probably on the horizon, because, according to
the International Energy Agency, “if the world
continues on the basis of today’s energy policies, the climate change impacts will be severe”
and energy, which accounts for two-thirds
of today’s greenhouse gas emissions, “is at
the heart of the problem—and so must form
the core of the solution.”41 Of course, solving
this problem will cost money, and this tension
between cost and environmental protection is
at the heart of the debate.
In December 2009, Cisco and Greenbang, a
website that tracks developments on moving
toward a low-carbon future, released a report
on qualitative and quantitative research of
energy experts and business professionals
across a range of sectors in the United
Kingdom. The “Smart Carbon Research
Report” asked questions about usage of and
openness toward energy-saving technologies,
awareness of legislation and its impact, and
perceived trends in energy reduction. The UK
passed climate-change legislation in 2008,
making it the first government in the world
to have a legally binding long-term framework to cut carbon emissions. The legislation
goes beyond the nation’s Kyoto requirement,
setting a goal of reducing carbon dioxide
emissions by 20% before 2010 and by 60%
before 2050. The results of this report provide
a glimpse at what the early stage of coping
with carbon reduction laws might bring.
The overwhelming majority of respondents
believe technology has a major part to play
in reducing business’ carbon footprint, but a
gap between beliefs and actions was evident,
as only a third said their companies should
definitely invest a portion of their budgets
into green technologies in the future. When
asked about methods to reduce emissions, it
Green IT in Higher Education
is not surprising that respondents chose monitoring and measurement more than any other
method. The report indicated this interest in
measurement has roots in a number of needs:
“from basic business concerns (investment in
energy-reducing technologies cannot be justified without accurately gauging current usage
levels) to, perhaps, more subtle diversionary
tactics (postponing more costly actions).”42
According to a 2009 Gartner report,
Sustainability and Green IT: A National Policy
Perspective, the regulation, fiscal policy,
formal standards, and corporate guidance
related to the issues of sustainable development, climate change, and energy efficiency
that are put in place during the early years of
the 2010s will clearly impact the IT industry
and its end users. In the very near term, institutions will probably not see direct regulatory
interventions that impact IT, but campuses
should expect to be directed by guidelines,
codes of conduct, more demanding ecolabels that describe a product’s environmental
impact over its entire life cycle, and tax breaks
that will all affect and require the support of
IT. Campus IT will need to implement new
ways of capturing and reporting energyrelated performance data to support institutional requirements to reduce greenhouse
gases, and IT will be expected to contribute
to carbon cutbacks primarily focused on
the energy efficiency of data centers and
computers across the institution.43
Conclusion
By 2020, most of the low-hanging fruit of
environmental sustainability tactics will have
been picked and IT will be heavily involved in
projects to integrate institutional systems and
operations with a smartening power grid and
the ever-growing technological ecosystem
of the Internet. Institutions that continue to
operate their own data centers will realize
cost and energy savings by implementing the
tactics discussed in this chapter, but many will
find greater reductions in both IT costs and
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
carbon emissions by moving commodity IT
services to ultra-efficient cloud data centers.
Cloud computing will be an integral part of
IT’s overall strategy as significant measurable reductions in IT’s contribution to the
institution’s carbon footprint combine with
other benefits such as shifting fixed capital
expenditures in IT into operations costs that
are lowered through the cloud’s economies
of scale. As services are offloaded to the
cloud, IT can turn its attention to new technologies and innovations that will contribute
to institutional environmental sustainability
initiatives. New computing technology will
pack more computing power per watt, and
standards and processes to facilitate calculating accurate energy savings will encourage
further conservation measures. All of these
technology solutions will result in behavior
changes at the individual, departmental, and
institutional levels. The next generation of
students and IT employees that come to the
institution will likely be more comfortable
with the “communicate more, travel less”
model of interaction, and “tele-,” “video-,”
and “small-letter e-” services such as telecommuting, videoconferencing, and e-commerce
will substantially reduce non-essential face-toface meetings. These virtual gatherings hold
a great potential for institutions to reduce
carbon emissions, particularly if the energy
use of the Internet is understood, accurately
measured, and continuously improved.
The breakthrough required for IT-based
carbon reduction will be the implementation of processes and standards to accurately
measure the energy and emissions resulting
from IT. This may be one of the most important
activities of the coming decade; how else will
we be able to prove compliance if the looming
carbon-control regulations are enacted? The
effort put into determining IT’s true impact on
an institution’s carbon footprint may be the
ultimate story of higher education IT’s impact
on environmental sustainability when we look
back from the year 2020.
159
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Endnotes
1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate
Change Site, http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
index.html; U.S. National Aeronautic and Space
Administration, “2009: Second Warmest Year on
Record; End of Warmest Decade,” January 21, 2010,
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/tempanalysis-2009.html; and Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/
organization.htm.
2. John P. Holdren, “Global Climate Disruption: What Do
We Know? What Should We Do?” John F. Kennedy
Jr. Forum, Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, November 6, 2007, http://
belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/17661/
global_climate_disruption.html.
3. Sam Rober ts, “In 2025, India to Pass China
in Population, U.S. Estimates,” The New York
Times, December 15, 2009, http://www.nytimes.
com/2009/12/16/world/asia/16census.html; and
United States Census Bureau, “China’s Population
to Peak at 1.4 Billion Around 2026; Census Bureau
Projects India to Become Most Populous Country in
2025,” press release, December 15, 2009, http://
www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/
archives/international_population/014499.html.
4. World Coal Institute, “Coal Statistics,” September 2009,
http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/.
5. U.S. Depar tment of Energy, Annual Energy
Outlook Early Release Overview, Report #DOE/
EIA-0383(2009), December 14, 2009, http://www
.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/overview.html#elecgen.
6. Gartner Inc., “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry
Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions,”
press release, April 26, 2007, http://www.gartner
.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867.
7. Bill St. Arnaud, Larr y Smarr, Jerr y Sheehan,
a n d To m D e Fa n t i , “Cl i m a t e Ch a n g e a n d
Higher Education,” EDUC AUSE Review 4 4,
no. 6 (N ovemb er/ D e cemb er 20 0 9), ht t p: //
w w w.e d u c a u s e.e d u / E D U C AU S E+ R e v i e w /
EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume 4 4 /
ClimateChangeandHigherEducatio/185218.
8. Karla Hignite, “Prac tical Guide to Reducing
the Campus Carbon Footprint,” APPA Center
for Facilities Research, 20 0 8, ht tp: // w w w2
.president sclimatecommitment.org / html /
documents/FINAL09APPASustainabilityGuide.pdf.
9. Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in
Higher Education, Mission and History (of the American
College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment),
http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/about/
mission-history.
10.EDUCAUSE, “The Role of IT in Campus Sustainability
Efforts,” white paper, January 2009, http://net
.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/PUB9003.pdf.
11.Diana G. Oblinger and John Walda, “Making the
Case for ROI in Sustainable IT Projects,” EDUCAUSE
Review 44, no. 6 (November/December 2009): 6–7,
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE%2BReview/
EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume 4 4 /
MakingtheCaseforROIinSustainab/185232.
160
12.We n d e ll B ra s e an d M ar k A sk re n, “ W h e re
D o e s Yo ur I ns t itu t i o n St and?” ED U C AUSE
Q u a r t e r l y 32, n o . 1 ( 2 0 0 9 ) : h t t p: / / w w w
.educause.edu / EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/
EDUCAUSEQuar terlyMagazineVolum /
WhereDoesYourInstitutionStand/163861; www
.energystar.gov.
13.Erasmia Kitou and Arpad Horvath, “Energy-Related
Emissions from Telework,” Environmental Science &
Technology 37, no. 16 (2003): 3467–3475, http://pubs.
acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es025849p; and Consumer
Electronics Association, The Energy and Greenhouse Gas
Emissions Impact of Telecommuting and e-Commerce,
Final Report to the CEA by TIAX LLC, July 2007,
http://www.ce.org/Energy_and_Greenhouse_Gas_
Emissions_Impact_CEA_July_2007.pdf.
14.Karla Hignite, “Low-Carbon Computing,” EDUCAUSE
Review 44, no. 6 (November/December 2009): 34–51,
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/
EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume 4 4 /
LowCarbonComputing/185219; and Brase and
Askren, “Where Does Your Institution Stand?”
15.U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Report to
Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency,
Public Law 109- 431, ENERGY STAR Program,
August 2, 2007, http://www.energystar.gov/index
.cfm?c=prod_development.server_efficiency#epa.
16.Mathew Ingram, “Dematerialization: Noble Goal,
Ignoble Pitfalls,” Internet Evolution Blog, April 30,
2009, http://www.Internetevolution.com/author
.asp?section_id=539&doc_id=176121.
17.Christopher L. Weber, Jonathan G. Koomey, and H.
Scott Matthews, The Energy and Climate Change
Impacts of Different Music Delivery Methods,
final report to Microsoft Corporation and Intel
Corporation, August 17, 2009, http://download.intel
.com/pressroom/pdf/CDsvsdownloadsrelease.pdf.
18.EDUCAUSE, The Role of IT in Campus Sustainability
Efforts.
19.Brase and Askren, “Where Does Your Institution Stand?”
20.Karla Hignite, “Low-Carbon Computing.”
21.The Green Grid, The Green Grid Data Center Power
Efficiency Metrics: PUE and DCiE, Metrics and
Measurements White Paper, October 23, 2007,
http://www.thegreengrid.org/en/Global/Content/
white-papers/The-Green-Grid-Data-Center-PowerEfficiency-Metrics-PUE-and-DCiE.
22.Hignite, “Low-Carbon Computing.”
23.U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity
Delivery and Energy Reliability, “The Smart Grid:
An Introduction,” 2008, http://www.oe.energy
.gov/DocumentsandMedia/DOE_SG_Book_Single_
Pages(1).pdf.
24.Ibid.
25.Andrew Nusca, “In New Patents, Apple Explores
‘Intelligent Power Monitoring,’ Mood-Sensing
Media,” Smart Planet, January 19, 2010, http://
w w w.smar tplanet.com / business / blog /smar ttakes/new-apple-patents-show-intelligent-powermonitoring-mood-sensing-ability/3369/.
26.Jeff St. John, “GE Unveils Net Zero Energy Home
Strategy,” July 14, 2009, Greentechgrid: Home Area
Green IT in Higher Education
Networks, http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/
read/ge-unveils-net-zero-energy-home-strategy/;
and General Electric, “GE Targets Net Zero Energy
Homes by 2015,” press release, July 14, 2009, http://
files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/
net_zero_energy_home_rress_release.pdf.
27.SmartGridNews.com, “Smart Grid Standards Done
Right,” Sept. 11, 2008, http://www.smartgridnews
.com/artman/publish/grid_research/Smart_Grid_
Standards_Done_Right.html; Cisco Systems Inc., “Why
IP Is the Right Foundation for the Smart Grid,” white
paper, 2010, http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/
energy/c11-581079_wp.pdf; and Cisco Systems Inc.,
“Why Cisco and Smart Grid?” white paper, 2010, http://
www.cisco.com/web/about/citizenship/environment/
docs/sGrid_qa_c67_532319.pdf.
28.GreenBiz.com, “IBM’s Smart Grid Test Run Cuts
Power Use by 15 Percent,” September 22, 2009,
http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/09/22/ibmssmart-grid-test-run-cuts-power-use-15-percent;
and IBM, “Smarter Power for a Smarter Planet,”
IBM Smart Grid—Visions, http://www.ibm.com/
smarterplanet/us/en/smart_grid/visions/index.html.
29.Joe Biden, “Progress Report: The Transformation
to a Clean Energy Economy,” Memorandum for
the President from the Vice President, December
15, 20 09, http: // w w w.whitehouse.gov/sites /
default/files/administration-official/vice_president_
memo_on_clean_energy_economy.pdf; Ed Crooks,
“Smart Grids, Dumb Customers?” Financial Times,
September 30, 2009, http://blogs.ft.com/energysource/2009/09/30/smart-grids-dumb-customers/;
and WhiteHouse.gov, Issues: Energy and the
Environment, http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/
energy-and-environment.
30.Philip J. Goldstein, Alternative IT Sourcing Strategies:
From the Campus to the Cloud (Research Study 5,
2009) (Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied
Research, 2009), available from http:// w w w
.educause.edu/ecar.
31.Randy H. Katz, “Tech Titans Building Boom,” IEEE
Spectrum (February 2009): 64–65, http://www
.spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/buildings/tech-titansbuilding-boom/0.
32.Andreas Berl, Erol Gelenbe, Marco di Girolamo,
Giovanni Giuliani, Hermann de Meer, Minh Quan
Dang, and Kostas Penticousis, “Energy-Efficient
Cloud Computing,” The Computer Journal (July 28,
2009), http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/
bxp080v1.pdf.
33.Xiaobo Fan, Wolf-Dietrich Weber, and Luiz André
Barroso, “Power Provisioning for a WarehouseSized Computer” (Proceedings of the 34th Annual
International Symposium on Computer Architecture,
San Diego, California, June 9–13, 2007) (Association
for Computing Machinery: New York), 13–23, http://
doi.acm.org/10.1145/1250662.1250665.
34.Katie Fehrenbacher, “Net Sucks Up More Power,
but Also More Energy Efficient,” Earth2Tech,
The GigaOm Network, January 23, 2009, http://
ear th2tech.com / 20 09/01/ 23/ internet-powergrowing-but-becoming-more-energy-efficient /;
Cody Taylor and Jonathan Koomey, “Estimating
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of
Internet Advertising” (working paper prepared for
IMC2, February 14, 2008), http://www.imc2.com/
Documents/CarbonEmissions.pdf; Internet World
Statistics, http://www.internetworldstats.com/;
Netcraft, “November 2006 Web Server Survey,”
November 1, 2006, http://news.netcraft.com/
archives/2006/11/01/november_2006_web_server_
survey.html; and University of Minnesota, Minnesota
Internet Traffic Study (MINTS), http://www.dtc.umn.
edu/mints/home.php.
35.Paul Marks, “World’s Communications Network Due
an Energy Diet,” New Scientist (January 20, 2010),
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18377-worldscommunications-network-due-an-energy-diet.html.
36.Lisa Zyga, “Near-Threshold Computing Could Enable
up to 100x Reduction in Power Consumption,”
PhysOrg.com, February 17, 2010, http://www
.physorg.com/news185621560.html.
37.Brian Gardiner, “IDF: Gordon Moore Predicts End
of Moore’s Law (Again),” Wired (September 18,
2007), http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2007/09/
idf-gordon-mo-1/; Wolfgang Gruener, “Moore’s
Law to Die at 18 nm, Analysts Predict,” TG Daily
(June 16, 2009), http://www.tgdaily.com/content/
view/42874/135/; and Michael Kanellow, “Intel
Scientists Find Wall for Moore’s Law,” CNET News
(December 1, 2003), http://news.cnet.com/21001008-5112061.html.
38.J essica Griggs, “Computer Chips Give New Spin
on Saving Energy,” New Scientist (November
21, 2008), http://www.newscientist.com/article/
mg20026836.200-computer-chips-give-new-spinon-saving-energy.html.
39.George Bourianoff, “New Nano Logic Devices for
the 2020 Time Frame,” Intel Nanotechnology Virtual
Open House, October 22, 2004, http://download
.intel.com/technology/silicon/nano-open-housegeorge-bourianoff.pdf.
40.Nikita Japra and Richard Roth, “Nations Not ‘United
in Action’ at Copenhagen, U.N. Chief Says,” CNN,
December 21, 2009, http://www.cnn.com/2009/
WORLD/europe/12/21/denmark.un.climate.change/
index.html; and John M. Broder, “Senators Want
to Bar E.P.A. Greenhouse Gas Limits,” January 21,
2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/science/
earth/22climate.html.
41.International Energy Agency, How the Energy Sector
Can Deliver on a Climate Agreement in Copenhagen:
Special Early Excerpt of the World Energy Outlook
2009 for the Bangkok UNFCCC Meeting, World
Energy Outlook 2009 Edition—Climate Change
Excerpt, 2009, http://w w w.iea.org/weo/docs/
weo2009/climate_change_excerpt.pdf.
42.Cisco Systems, “British Business Counting Pennies,
Not Carbon,” press release, February 3, 2010,
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_020310
.html?CMP=AF17154&vs_f=News@Cisco:+Press+
Releases+and+Features&vs_p=News@Cisco:+Press
+Releases+and+Features&vs_k=1.
43.Simon Mingay, Sustainability and Green IT: A
National Policy Perspective, Gartner Inc., ID Number
G00167704, June 1, 2009.
161
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Appendix A
Institutional Respondents to
the Online Green IT Survey
Adelphi University
Allegheny College
Athabasca University
Auburn University
Ball State University
Bard College
Barnard College
Baylor University
Bemidji State University
Berklee College of Music
Boise State University
Brazosport College
Bridgewater State College
Bryn Mawr College
Bucknell University
Caldwell College
California Lutheran University
California State Polytechnic University,
Pomona
California State University, Chico
California State University, Fullerton
California State University, Office of the
Chancellor
California State University, Sacramento
California State University, San Bernardino
Camosun College
Canisius College
Cardinal Stritch University
Carlos Albizu University
Central Piedmont Community College
Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Citrus College
Clark University
Clarkson College
Colby College
The College of New Jersey
The College of Saint Scholastica
College of the Holy Cross
Colorado College
Colorado State University
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia University
Community College of Rhode Island
Concordia University Texas
Corban College & Graduate School
Cornell University
Dalhousie University
Dartmouth College
Davenport University
Dean College
DeVry University–Corporate Office
Dickinson College
Drury University
Eastern Mennonite University
Eastern Oregon University
Elmhurst College
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University–
Prescott Campus
Emporia State University
The Evergreen State College
Fayetteville State University
Fordham University
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
163
Green IT in Higher Education
Framingham State College
Franklin and Marshall College
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Frederick Community College
Furman University
Gannon University
Genesee Community College
The George Washington University
Georgetown University
Georgia Perimeter College
Georgia Southern University
Georgia State University
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Grinnell College
Guilford College
Gwynedd-Mercy College
Hamilton College
Harvard University
Henderson Community College
Highline Community College
Horry-Georgetown Technical College
Houston Community College
Howard Community College
Hudson Valley Community College
Idaho State University
Illinois State University
Illinois Valley Community College
Indiana State University
Indiana University East
Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis
Indiana University Southeast
The Johns Hopkins University
Kern Community College District
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Lafayette College
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest Graduate School of
Management
Lander University
Lane Community College
Lawrence University
Lee College
Lewis & Clark College
Lipscomb University
Loras College
164
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Lourdes College
Luther College
Manchester Community College
Marietta College
Marquette University
Marywood University
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
McMaster University
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Messiah College
Metropolitan Community College
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Middle Tennessee State University
Millersville University of Pennsylvania
Millsaps College
Mississippi Valley State University
Missouri University of Science and
Technology
Monmouth College
Montana State University Billings
Montana State University–Great Falls
College of Technology
Montclair State University
Montgomery County Community College
Moravian College
Mott Community College
Mount Allison University
Mount Vernon Nazarene University
New York City College of Technology/CUNY
Northern Arizona University
Northern Illinois University
Northern Michigan University
Northland International University
Northwestern University
Oakland University
Oberlin College
Oglethorpe University
Okanagan College
Parker College of Chiropractic
Pennsylvania College of Technology
The Pennsylvania State University
Pima County Community College District
Pomona College
Portland State University
Prince George’s Community College
Princeton University
Green IT in Higher Education
Providence College
Purdue University Calumet
Raritan Valley Community College
Rhodes State College
Rio Salado College
Roosevelt University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Saint Louis University
Saint Mary’s College
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
Salisbury University
Samford University
Santa Clara University
Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science
& Technology
Savannah College of Art and Design
Schreiner University
Seattle Pacific University
Sewanee: The University of the South
Shepherd University
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
Solano Community College
South Dakota State University
Southeastern Louisiana University
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Southern Oregon University
Southside Virginia Community College
Southwest Baptist University
Southwest Tennessee Community College
Southwestern University
Springfield Technical Community College
St. Lawrence University
Stanford University
Sullivan University
SUNY College at Oswego
SUNY College at Plattsburgh
Sweet Briar College
Syracuse University
Texas Lutheran University
Thomas Jefferson University
Trine University
Tulane University
United States Air Force Academy
University at Albany, SUNY
University of Alaska Fairbanks
The University of British Columbia
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
University of Calgary
University of California, Office of the
President
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Irvine
University of California, Merced
University of California, Riverside
University of Central Florida
University of Denver
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of La Verne
University of Maine at Farmington
University of Maine at Fort Kent
University of Maine at Presque Isle
University of Maine System
University of Manitoba
University of Maryland
University of Maryland Eastern Shore
University of Massachusetts Boston
The University of Memphis
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
University of Minnesota Duluth
University of Minnesota–Crookston
University of Mississippi
The University of Montana
University of Nebraska
University of Nebraska at Kearney
University of New Hampshire
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
University of North Dakota
University of North Texas
University of North Texas Health Sciences
Center at Fort Worth
University of Notre Dame
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
University of Pennsylvania
University of Puget Sound
University of South Carolina
The University of South Dakota
University of Southern California
University of St. Francis
University of St. Thomas
University of Texas at El Paso
University of Texas Health Sciences Center
at San Antonio
165
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University of the Fraser Valley
University of the Pacific
University of Toronto
University of Victoria
University of Washington Bothell
University of Washington Tacoma
University of West Florida
University of Windsor
University of Wisconsin Extension
University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
University System of Maryland
University System of New Hampshire
Virginia Tech
166
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Wagner College
Washington College
Washington State Community College
Wayne State University
Wells College
West Virginia School of Osteopathic
Medicine
Western Carolina University
Western Michigan University
Western New Mexico University
Western State College of Colorado
Whitman College
Wofford College
Green IT in Higher Education
ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Appendix B
Interviewees in Qualitative
Research
Adelphi University
Jack Chen, Chief Information Officer
Athabasca University
Brian Stewart, Chief Information Officer
Colorado College
Randy Stiles, Vice President for Information Management
Columbia University
Alan Crosswell, Associate Vice President and Chief Technologist
Richard D. Hall, Project Manager
Ian Katz, Data Center Facilities Manager
Robert Litvak, Senior Communications Specialist
Nilda Mesa, Assistant Vice President for Environmental Stewardship
Cathy Resler, Manager, Recycling and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Program
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Joanne Kossuth, Vice President for Operations and Chief Information Officer
Furman University
Fredrick Miller, Chief Information Officer and Director of Computing and Information Services
Howard Community College
Sung Lee, Director, Student Computing Support
Portland State University
Sharon Blanton, Chief Information Officer
Ann Gire, Sustainability Coordinator
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
Greg Day, Director, Desktop Support/User Services
Stanford University
Joyce Dickerson, Director, Sustainable IT
Syracuse University
Christopher M. Sedore, Vice President for Information Technology/Chief Information Officer
University of California, Irvine
Wendell Brase, Vice Chancellor, Administrative and Business Services
University of California, Santa Barbara
Arlene Allen, Director, Information Systems
University of Central Florida
Joel Hartman, Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer
University of Colorado, Boulder
David Bodnar, Information Technology Operations Director
Larry Levine, Chief Information Officer
Shannon Roberts, Facilities Management Administrator
Ken Schuetz, Director, Information Technology Services
University of Maine at Farmington
Tom O’Donnell, Manager of Network and Server Systems
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Mark Askren, Chief Information Officer
University of New Hampshire
Nancye Jenkins, Director of Telecommunications and Client Services
University of Victoria
Mark Roman, Chief Information Officer
University System of New Hampshire
Tom Franke, Chief Information Officer
University System of Maryland
Suresh Balakrishnan, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Deputy Chief Information Officer
Don Spicer, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
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Appendix C
Supplementary Tables
Table C-1. Supplement to Table 5-3: Characteristics of the Institution’s and the Central IT
Organization’s Environmental Sustainability Practices
Institution
Characteristics of ES Practices
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Well organized
3.24
249
1.000
Applied consistently
3.00
245
0.917
Well documented
2.96
248
0.985
Assessed regularly
3.06
237
1.004
Closely aligned with the institution’s overall strategic objectives
3.27
245
1.018
Central IT
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Well organized
2.79
256
0.850
Applied consistently
2.91
256
0.890
Well documented
2.50
256
0.840
Assessed regularly
2.54
256
0.862
Closely aligned with central IT’s overall strategic objectives
3.09
253
0.946
Closely aligned with the institution’s overall strategic objectives
3.21
252
0.919
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
©2010 EDUCAUSE. Reproduction by permission only.
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Table C-2. Supplement to Figure 6-5: Institutional Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
Supported by the Central IT Organization, by the Central IT Organization’s Environmental
Sustainability Practice Maturity Score
Percentage of Institutional Environmental Sustainability
Initiatives Supported by the Central IT Organization
Type of Support
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
65.3%
78
0.311
Medium (2.50–3.50)
76.0%
141
0.274
Providing Technical Solutions/Services
High (3.51–5.00)
82.9%
38
0.213
Total
73.8%
257
0.283
Low (1.00–2.49)
47.5%
78
0.337
Medium (2.50–3.50)
61.0%
139
0.302
Educating Other Departments about Initiative
High (3.51–5.00)
76.7%
38
0.208
Total
59.2%
255
0.315
*Scale: 0–100%
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ECAR Research Study 2, 2010
Table C-3. Supplement to Table 9-3: In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly
Changed Its Activities to Become More Environmentally Responsible, by Institution Is
Actively Engaged In Environmental Sustainability Initiatives
Institutional ES Initiative
Minimize Growth in Electrical Energy Use
Business Activities
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
No
2.78
40
0.920
Yes
3.49
181
0.779
Total
3.36
221
0.849
Instructional Activities
No
2.62
39
0.782
Yes
3.15
176
0.824
Total
3.06
215
0.841
Research Activities
No
Yes
No Significant Association
Total
Business Activities
Purchase EPEAT Products
No
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
3.09
99
0.846
Yes
3.57
79
0.858
Total
3.30
178
0.882
Instructional Activities
No
2.76
95
0.808
Yes
3.29
76
0.830
Total
2.99
171
0.857
Research Activities
No
2.68
56
0.834
Yes
3.16
44
0.861
Total
2.89
100
0.875
Business Activities
Adopt Alternative Sources of Electrical Power
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
No
3.09
117
0.847
Yes
3.66
87
0.760
Total
3.33
204
0.857
No
2.88
Instructional Activities
115
0.850
Yes
3.23
86
0.792
Total
3.03
201
0.842
Research Activities
No
2.75
67
0.910
Yes
3.23
52
0.783
Total
2.96
119
0.887
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
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Table C-4. Supplement to Figure 9-2: In Past 12 Months, Institution Has Significantly
Changed Activities to Become More Environmentally Responsible, by Institutional and
Central IT Environmental Sustainability Practice Maturity Scores
Business Activities
Institutional ES Practice Maturity Score
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
2.96
55
0.962
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.26
102
0.703
High (3.51–5.00)
3.75
79
0.742
Total
3.36
236
0.836
Low (1.00–2.49)
2.58
52
0.893
Medium (2.50–3.50)
2.99
102
0.751
Instructional Activities
High (3.51–5.00)
3.43
75
0.738
Total
3.04
229
0.839
Low (1.00–2.49)
2.23
26
0.908
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.00
60
0.736
Research Activities
High (3.51–5.00)
3.25
51
0.771
Total
2.95
137
0.860
Business Activities
Central IT ES Practice Maturity Score
Mean*
N
Std. Deviation
Low (1.00–2.49)
2.92
74
0.824
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.48
131
0.807
High (3.51–5.00)
3.70
37
0.661
Total
3.34
242
0.841
Instructional Activities
Low (1.00–2.49)
2.63
67
0.795
Medium (2.50–3.50)
3.15
131
0.786
High (3.51–5.00)
3.44
36
0.809
Total
3.04
234
0.838
Research Activities
Low (1.00–2.49)
2.61
41
0.862
Medium (2.50–3.50)
2.99
75
0.830
High (3.51–5.00)
3.41
22
0.734
Total
2.94
138
0.861
*Scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
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Appendix D
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