International Journal of Information Systems and Engineering (online), Volume 2, Issue 1 (April 2014)
The Impact of Green Computing in Higher Institutions
Onyechere Ugochukwu Franklin
Mr. Mohamed Ismail Z.
School of Engineering and Computing Sciences
FTMS College, Technology Park Malaysia
Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
activate4u@yahoo.com
Programme Leader cum Senior Lecturer
School of Engineering & Computing Sciences
FTMS College, Technology Park Malaysia
Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Ismail@ftms.edu.my
Abstract
Since the inception of information technology, it has been on record on how the information
technology has contributed positive as well as negatively into the life of individuals as well as in the
development of mankind. IT is one field that has transformed human beings both on the way we
think and act in our institutions. It has brought a lot of changes such as helping individuals to get
their work done faster and it has brought the world together etc. This research work “impact of
green computing in higher institutions” will be dealing on how green computing can help
institutions to save energy consumption, with the help IT. The green computing is a technology
which is based on the environmental use of computer related resources such as processing unit,
storage units etc. The energy consumption is the main concern and Green computing will lead to
reduction in energy consumption and e-waste. This will also include cloud computing services. It
will also highlight on the importance of green computing and why schools should introduce green
computing so as to save our environment and how to achieve green computing via cloud
computing. It will also describe the main interaction with green computing of power energy in
schools which is an interesting topic this day because it can make us greener and is meant for the
development of sustainable economy. It includes a survey questionnaire which takes all the major
factors into consideration.
Keywords: Green, Computing, cloud, institutions, e-waste, sustainability.
1.
Introduction
I always have wondered about the increase of electricity bills that have been sent to me
every month end and when I don’t use any other electrical gadgets other than my Laptop, TV
and Iron box and of which I use Iron occasionally. I once called the electricity company here in
Malaysia trying to find out from them why such a huge amount of money when I know that I
don't use Air-condition & heaters which I think should have a higher filament but today I have
come to comprehend that the computers which I use at home was the cause of it and even living
it on when it is not in use, I then thought of institutions like FTMS College, APIIT etc. that their
Computer laboratory will even be filled with 20 or more set of computer systems and "how
much would they be paying for the electricity bills in a month not to talk about in a year".
The aim of this research is to design and integrate Green Computing in our educational
institutes and to explore green computing in particular cloud computing in the institutions.
The Objectives is to critically evaluate Green Computing and its effectiveness to our
schools and to the society. To critically evaluate the Green computing via Cloud Computing
technology and assessing the benefits, challenges caused due to uptake of Green Computing in
our schools and using IT to help in solving environmental issues such as minimising the
negative impact of IT on the institutions.
This research will highlight how institutions will be able to have a sustainable
environment such as reducing energy consumption of computers and other related products.
This will promote the use of recyclable materials and minimize the use of non-biodegradable
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components. It will also lead to manufacturing of computers and components with minimal
effects on the environment and how to reduce the use of environmental hazardous materials
like Chloro-Fluoro Carbon (CFC), mercury, lead etc. Promoting practices such as energy cost
accounting, virtualization, and e-waste, recycling, refurbishing and reusing old computers as
well as proper disposal, recycling unwanted computers etc.
Cloud computing can also help in virtualization. Virtualization is defined as a
foundational technology for deploying cloud based transportation which allows a single
physical server to run multiple application or operating system concurrently. Virtualization
reduces the total physical server footprint, which has inherent green computing benefits. From
the efficiency perspective, less equipment will be needed to run workload, which proactively
reduces data centre space and with less physical equipment plugged in the data centre in the
school will consume less electricity. Server virtualization is the most widely adopted green
computing project implemented globally since 2011.
The presence of virtualization alone doesn't maximise energy and resource efficiencies.
It rapidly move and scale workloads, the cloud based communications will rely on automated
software and pay-per use or pay as you go will also encourage users to only consume what
they need and nothing more.
2.
An Overview of green computing
There is no better definition about green computing because so many researchers have
come up with so many definitions of green computing or green IT but i prefer this definition
because it actually portrait what green computing means and with a broad paradigm to the
efficient use of computing technology via e-waste reduction, telecommuting technologies,
regulatory compliance, virtualization of server resources, cost accounting of the use of energy
and thin solution etc. (D-Link Corp, 2009)
Green Computing is the scientific study of efficient and effective designing,
manufacturing, using ,disposing and recycling of computers ,hand held devices and computer
related products like servers, communication system, network systems, monitors, USBs,
printers etc (Kocherps,2010).
According to (Tech-Faq,N.D), green computing can be defined as a term that is used to
denote efficient use of resources in computing, in order to minimize environmental impact,
maximize the economic viability of a nation and ensure the social duties.
Green Computing was coined soon after the United State Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) launched the Energy Star program in 1992, and the main goals of energy star
where to promote and recognise energy-efficiency in computers, monitors, climate control
equipment, major appliances, lighting and other technologies.
Green schools create healthy environments conducive to learning while saving energy,
resources and money.
Green computing is a vast technology, applicable in many streams. The above topic
focuses on educations and awareness is the only witness for saving the natural resources.
3.
Questions to ask oneself
A reasonable questions arises whether,
•
Do students think about how much power they are using?
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•
4.
Are the educational institutions aware that they should educate students regarding
environmental cost of computing?
Problem statement
Computers have posed serious challenges to the environment, like other electronics.
Computers contain toxic chemicals like lead, mercury and arsenic which are harmful to our
environment. It is understandable that computers consume more electricity, contributing to the
energy crisis, CO2 emission and global warming. Many computers end up with landfills after
their lifecycle are over. (Claerr.J.2010)
The increase of data centres requires constant addition servers to provide the needs of
cooling and ventilation equipment that led to the increase on the demand of energy and the
increase of toxic and hazardous chemicals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, has led one to look
at the ways to apply green computing to alleviate the serious environmental and health issues
as it concerns human.
Example, in the news update and under the present Administration of Malaysian
government, it was proposed a fund of RM1.5 billion to promote the green computing
technology in 2010 through the National Green Technology Centre (Mohd Najib Abdul
Razak,2009). Although, this technology may produce a positive impacts on our environmental
sustainability but it will also involve high cost, a clear comprehensive framework and high level
of knowledge which enforces the need of proper planning, design and implementation which is
effective and efficient(Tiwari,A.2010).
According to Bentley University (2012), it has been reported with the chart below on
the Carbon footprint analysis from the year 2006 to 2012.One can understand that they have
been declining on CO2 emissions as compare to 2008 at 10% and this is as a result of awareness
on green computing. And in 2012 despite an increase in campus space etc the result still
declined to 8%. With the current rate of decline in carbon emissions, I am pretty sure that from
2013 to 2015, it will decline further.
5.
Literature review
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Information technology industry is growing every day and there is more demand for
computing and communication as it continues to advance, servers, networks and data centres
will consume more and more energy.
The computers emit carbon dioxide and other harmful gases and the energy
consumption by various computing devices also play a major role towards our harmful schools
environment.
The data centre of some schools in United States as of 2006 were said to have 1.5
percent of the total energy consumed and at a cost of $4.5 billion.
Have you ever ask yourself this question, “when the institutions purchase a new set of
computer or laptop or electronic devices, what happens to the old ones?” No institution seems
to know what to do with the outdated computers, electronics, phones etc and it has been
estimated that computer equipment taken out of service annually, only 35 percent is recycled.
According to Arun Kumar (2011, PowercutIn) in his article, he said that making
transition to green computing in schools can reduce their energy consumption, save on their
power bill, extend their budget and help to save the environment.
The e-waste contains so many substances that are very harmful to our health e.g., the mercury,
lead cadmium etc.
6.
Importance of e-Waste as it relate to green computing
i.
Get to know your recycler: Be sure that the companies that recycle your equipments
are certified by either e-Stewards or R2 Solutions so as to be sure that your
environment and your data privacy will receive the highest level of protection.
ii. Disposal plan: Create a formal plan for disposal and follow it up.
iii. Saving time: The amount of time to complete or perform a project task is critical.
iv. Saving money: The cost of purchasing, implementing and managing technology has
long been a painstaking effort for most organization.
IBM have initiated a program called IBM's Big Green Innovations, which is aimed at
helping schools to design more energy-efficient data centres to reduce power consumption and
IBM also buys back and disposes of the used computer systems.
Green Computing is offering numerous ways for higher institutions to significantly
improve the bottom line, whether through energy efficiency of the computers, printers via
power management, e-waste and cloud computing. The green computing which started with
Energy Star program back in 1992, have always had this in mind, to ensure that the IT
industry adopt the various environmental sustainable practices so as to create more
environmental sound products etc.
The paradigm of green computing was to have a more efficient computing, better chip
design, more energy-aware software and improved power management, offer opportunities to
reduce energy consumption, improve mobile computing function, increase large data use,
encourage sustainable behaviour and lower cost in both institutions and also environments etc.
However, this technology is moving towards intelligent computation in order to
optimize resources and energy consumption without losing performance, intelligent
computations are done with the help of techniques and mechanisms of new computing
technologies such as hardware and software co-design, application and virtual machine
consolidation to optimize resources consumptions or pay-as-you-go business method to reduce
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cost. It has been estimated that green computing will drive the high performance computing in
the industry. (IEEE Computer Society, Nov 13, 2012)
The British Government have started implementing the green computing many years
ago, they want to make sure that every school in UK start using those equipments such as
desktop computers, laptops etc with the energy star logo on them that can reduce cost and low
amount of energy consumptions. They have also donated solar panels to almost all the schools
in UK.
When the green computing is in use in the schools, it is not only the electricity bills that
will go down but the schools will reduce the amount of CO2 emission which is the greatest
environmental challenge today and is responsible for global warming. Example, Georgetown
University in United States said that since they invested in green power computing, they had
been able to reduce CO2 emissions over 20 percent through a combination of demand
reduction, efficiency and use of cleaner fuels. In the spring of 2013, Georgetown launched a new
on-site renewable energy project through a collaborative student-staff initiative, installing 18
KW of solar panels on a block of historic university-owned row houses which was the first
campus project in Washington DC. It has been estimated that the project is expected to provide
19,711 KW each year and thereby reduce more than 600,000 pounds of carbon pollution over
the 20 year life of the project.
Schools like Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health have started using
green computing because of its advantageous reason.
A London Higher, which happens to be a umbrella body representing 40 universities
and colleges in London pulled together after the research work on Green Computing in the
higher institutions with the result that 42 publicly funded schools in London use 170 million
kilowatt-hours per year, with total energy costs at $33.6 million and contributing 91 kilo tonnes
of CO2 emission in the education institutes.
The largest share of IT energy used was from PCs-namely staff workstations and
computer labs, where the systems are left running all night long and the servers in the data
centres.
According to Metropolitan University, the institution has set a target of reducing its
carbon footprint by 33 percent over five years and green computing will play a major role in
that process.
The university virtualized its data centres and implemented automatic shut down of
unused computers, which i think should all higher institutions can adopt it would save them a
lot.
7.
The key areas of Green Computing
•
•
•
Energy efficiency: energy efficiency is all about making computers and related
technology to reduce the amount of electricity they use and utilize electricity more
effectively in our homes or institutions etc. E.g., normal desktop computer uses 868
kW of electricity per year
E-Waste: The computers we use contain over one kilogram of lead and a veritable
cocktail of chemicals such as mercury, arsenic Nitric acid etc.
Using IT to help solve Environment issues: It is true that technology is causing
some environmental issues but is also one of the best tools available to the human
being to help us understand how we can fix environmental issues.Eg, super-fast
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computers are use in calculating scenarios for our future and climate change
modelling etc.
8.
How can you be sure that you’re not contributing to the problem?
•
Re-use it
•
Give your old electronic or computers to the charity
•
Enable power management of your computers: power management software is
used to put your computer in sleep when it is not in used or hibernate.
•
Get longer wear from your laptop battery: It has been estimated that laptop uses
about half as much power as a PC but the battery can be a source of pollution and
expense. Remove your laptop battery when your laptop is connected to the power
source.
•
Move to thin client computing: These are thin devices that depend on the main
server processing. E.g. workstation.
•
Turn your computers and electronics off.
•
Consolidate your servers: one server can take the place of four or five servers.
•
Introducing cloud computing system.
9.
Achieving Green Computing via Cloud Computing
Green Computing and Cloud Computing are the most recent trends in Information
technology industry today and we will examine how cloud computing can help institutions in its
goal for green computing and one may even mistake it that the green computing initiative
maybe a reason to use cloud computing.
IT is one department where power consumption is a large budgetary concern, and here
is where cloud computing maybe able to save money and energy for the institutions.
Gartner (2011) defined Cloud Computing as a style of computing where scalable ITenable capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using internet technologies.
Jay (2010) said that cloud computing gives small and medium-sized companies,
institutions a way to avoid having to invest in difficult and expensive IT capabilities that they
aren’t good at, and which cannot help them to be more competitive, while some large companies
or organizations can look at cloud computing as a model for better use of their internal data
centre resources.
Vendor organizations like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and salesforce.com have invested
millions in setting up cloud computing platform, which they offer to the third parties. Despite
the fact that it is emerging technology, it has both advantages and disadvantages.
10.
Reasons why higher institutions should adopt cloud computing in order to
achieve Green Computing
10.1
Built-in Disaster Recovery and Back-Up sites
Disaster recovery costs are estimated at twice the cost of the infrastructure. But with
cloud based model true disaster recovery is estimated to cost little more than the cost of the
traditional because cloud service providers replicate their data, even when there is loss of one
or more data centres it will not result in data lost.
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10.2
Scalability
This is the key portion of the cloud computing. It is the ability of the platform to expand
automatically based on the capacity needs. The cloud computing provides resources on demand
for many of the scaling points that institutions will need including servers, storage and
networking etc.
10.3 Device and location independent
Cloud Computing allow device independent, because of it portability and it has greater
opportunities for interconnection and collaboration. With software and data located in the
cloud it becomes much easier to enable users to have access to the system anywhere they are.
10.4 Business agility
Cloud computing enables institutions to be more agile.
11.
How schools can use Green computing practices
Institutions are beginning to understand their corporate responsibility towards the
environment. Most schools believe in conserving energy, power and using environmentally
friendly products that help in reducing their energy consumption etc.
There are so many ways in which higher institutions can green-up their computer
systems:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Using efficient computer applications.
Power management techniques can save an estimated $411,000(1,355,442.00 MYR)
per year. (by Metropolitan University)
Centralisation of all the desktop computers in the school labs.
The school should set up a committee to form a Green IT plan.
Publicising the Green computing to the students and staffs.
By using server virtualization technologies to combine a number of servers onto
one or more hardware systems to save more energy.
By setting monitors to go into sleep mode at a set time in order to cut power
consumption.
By purchasing only energy star compliant products.
By citing students access to virtual schooling at home to reduce the amount of
electricity consumption, this is also very important to those student who live in
rural area so as to cut transportation cost.
By using intranet with Microsoft SharePoint technology for posting internal
information, schools can reduce the amount of storage space needed on individual
machines and cut the number of printed emails.
Only print documents when needed and set your printer on draft.
Dispose of equipment properly.
Replacing individual photocopies and desktop printers with multi-function devices
will reduce paper waste by 20 percent and power use by 80 percent.
It is Greener! In a cloud computing environment, the resources are shared across
software applications which will result in greater use of resources for the related energy costs.
Some of the location based software applications will reach their prospective through the use of
cloud computing and a good thing that most Smartphone’s comes with built-in GPS technology
and that will provide advantage of this capability. For higher institutions spreading over
different time zones the computing power lying idle at one geographical location during off
work hours or days can connect at a location in different time zone.
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With cloud computing virtual offices can be quick to set up, some staff of the institutions
can work from home and the level of carbon footprint can as well be reduced.
12.
Methodology
12.1
Introduction
To achieve the said objectives of the research work, a system of research methodology
was chosen in order to collect the sample data and analyse it. The two fact finding techniques
were interview and observation methods. It was conducted at FTMS College and APIT College
which was conducted between the staff and students of the institutions.
It is selected because of it’s an interpretative research pattern and also because it is
identified as a successful form of research in the field of virtual computing and Green
Computing. It enables one to get closer to the participants and to help me penetrate their
internal logic.
12.2
Interview method
Below are the outcomes of the survey carried out during the interview:
1. How do you dispose of your old computers
or electronic devices?
Throw them in the trash
Always sold them away
Look for a recycling centre and dispose of it properly
38%
23%
39%
2. Does your institution currently have a
Green Computing/IT Policy in place?
No
58%
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Yes
42%
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3. Is Server Virtualisation part of the
institution’s Green computing/ IT Policy?
Yes
33%
No
67%
4. Telecommuting is a way companies can
make their offices greener.
25%
1
0
75%
5. Cloud computing is the future model of IT
Strongly agree
Agree
Disagree
Strongly disagree
13%
Undecided
25%
12%
20%
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30%
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6. Is your organisation willing to use/adopt
cloud computing for (parts of) your IT?
2%
10%
30%
58%
We are already using cloud
computing
We expect to adopt cloud
computing soon
We have no intention to
adopt cloud computing
No knowledge on cloud
computing
7. Has cloud computing been formally
incorporated into your organisation’s strategy?
2%
Cloud computing has
been discussed it is part
of our IT
38%
60%
Cloud computing has
been discussed formally
and it is not part of our
(IT) strategy
Cloud computing is not
yet discussed and not
incorporated
13
Research Approach
I used two research approaches on this research, which are quantitative and qualitative
approach. It adopted a quantitative approach because it has the potential to inform the public
policies, existent social movements, and daily community life and they provide information on
what they do and what they think.
The qualitative approach enabled me to study in details and the data collected is not
limited to predetermined categories. This methodology allowed me to test an existing
theoretical framework.
14
Research Strategy
The research strategy adopted in this work is archival research and case study research
is particularly appropriate for research which deals with practice based problems where the
experiences of the people who practice the system is important, and the context of the action is
critical (Bonoma, 1983).
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15
Plan, Ethical considerations
15.1
Study plan
This research is based on primary and secondary datum collected and at the beginning,
the literature about the green computing.
In addendum, primary data from the institutions from both the staff and students were
collected which underpins the paradigm.
15.2
Ethical Consideration
The research was undertaken in the comportment which ensures that staff and students
are able to be confident that their privacy and confidentiality will be protected.
16.
Conclusion and Limitations
The research work was confined to limited resources from the institution. As green
computing together with cloud computing are emerging technologies in Malaysia, the results
can’t be predicted in the positive way.
Perhaps, the methodological approach will need to be followed to project the data in the
effective way.
After a successful interview with the both staff and students of the institutions i came to
a conclusion that the both institutions are still using the old systems in carrying out activities in
the schools and they have not adopted or implemented green computing in their institutions
because of some important factors such as
•
Creating awareness to the users or the staff and students of the institutions.
•
Users will need to be educated on the use of green computing and the importance of
it.
•
Institutions are still concerned about the operational factors such as the office and
output of the system and also the environment will determine the successful
implementation of the system so that users don’t go back to the old system.
17.
Recommendation
It is advisable that institutions like FTMS and APIIT should embrace the idea of green
computing and cloud computing in their various departments so as to reduce cost and save our
environments and also try to inculcate this idea into the students and staffs since they are the
key actors.
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