The Green IT Guide : Ten Steps Toward Sustainable and Carbon-Neutral IT Infrastructure

Table of Contents 5 About the Author 12 About the Technical Reviewer 13 Acknowledgments 14 Chapter 1: Understanding Your Place on Planet Earth 15 What Is Climate Change and Why Does It Matter? 16 The Benefits to Business 17 The Benefits to Individuals 18 Out with the Old? 19 A Brief History of Computers and the Climate 22 Colossus and Enigma 23 ENIAC and ARPANET 24 Birth of the IBM PC 24 The First Data Centers and Supercomputers 25 Watt About Efficiency? 25 Cleaning Up, Saving Money 27 Putting More RISC into PCs 28 big.LITTLE 28 Looking to the Future 29 Right to Repair 29 What a Waste 29 Let’s Go WEEE 30 Banning Powerful Computers 31 Summary 31 Chapter 2: Knowing the Impact Your IT Systems Have 33 The Energy-Efficient House Refit 33 How Power Efficient Is Our IT Equipment Anyway? 37 Let’s Get into the Maths 38 Standby for Action! 39 Getting Smart 40 Okay… Enough Already! 41 Noise and Heat 42 Using an Inverter 44 Power Usage of Cloud Service Providers 45 Why Where You Live in the World Affects Your Climate Impact 46 Summary 47 Chapter 3: Making Smarter Usage of Your IT Equipment 49 Computer on a Chip 50 How Old Is Old? 52 OS Support Life Cycles vs. Hardware Life Cycles 53 Security Concerns 55 Antisocial Engineering 58 Smartphones and Your Organization 59 How Do You Choose New Hardware Devices? 60 What Do You Use Your PC For? 60 The Office Desktop 60 All-in-One Windows PC 61 All-in-One Chrome PC 61 Windows 365 and Azure AD 61 The Mobile Worker 62 All-Metal Body 62 Windows vs. MacBook vs. Chromebook 62 Wi-Fi vs. All the G’s 63 The Power User 63 Buy the Fastest and Most Powerful PCs You Can 64 Look to the Cloud 65 For Everything Else… 65 Upgrading and Repurposing Computers 65 How Hybrid Work Fits with Your PC Choices 66 Summary 67 Chapter 4: Appraising Cloud Services and Climate Change 68 Birth of the Data Center 68 Modern Data Center Infrastructure 70 Legal, Privacy, and Political Issues 70 Privacy and GDPR 71 Data Centers vs. Climate Change 72 Establishing the Climate Credentials of Cloud Providers 73 What Does Net-Zero Actually Mean? 73 What About Carbon Offsetting? 74 Microsoft Azure 75 Amazon Web Services 76 Google Cloud 77 Tencent 78 Oracle 78 IBM 79 Hardware and PC Companies 79 Other Cloud Service Providers 80 A Sustainable Future for Cloud Services 80 Summary 81 Chapter 5: Effectively Recycling and Repurposing IT Equipment 82 Right to Repair 83 A Note About Dumb Phones 84 Continuing to Use Older Hardware 85 Smartphones (and Some Tablets) 86 Ubuntu Touch 86 LineageOS 87 Sailfish 87 XDA Developers 88 Desktop and Laptop Windows PCs 88 Linux on the Desktop 89 Repurposing Older Hardware 90 Reallocating the PCs 90 The Payroll PC 91 The Machinery Monitor 91 The Visitors PC 91 The Training Room PCs 92 The Emergency Laptops 92 The Light Office Duties PC 92 Other Uses for Older Hardware 93 Selling Your IT Equipment 93 Selling Peripherals 94 Chairs and Desks 94 Donations to Schools and Charities 95 National and International Donation Schemes 95 Safely Recycling IT Equipment 96 The Future of International E-Waste Recycling 97 Summary 98 Chapter 6: Managing Power for Your Existing IT Systems 99 Managing Power Consumption in Microsoft Windows 99 A Note About Laptops and Chargers 99 Power Settings in Windows 10 100 Power Settings in Windows 11 106 Managing Power Consumption Using Group Policy 109 Managing Power Consumption with the Windows Command Line 110 Powercfg /availablesleepstates 113 Powercfg /energy 114 Powercfg /batteryreport 115 Powercfg /sleepstudy 117 Powercfg on Linux 118 Industrial Equipment Running on Windows 118 Windows Server Systems 119 Managing Power Consumption in MacOS 120 Managing Power Consumption on Mobile Devices 122 Power Management in iOS 122 It Hertz Your Battery to Be Too Fast 123 Managing Power Consumption on Android 124 The World Is Going Dark, and We Love It 125 Managing Power Usage for Hybrid Workers 126 Summary 127 Chapter 7: Establishing Policies and Procedures for IT Use 128 Never Make Assumptions 128 Start at the Beginning, but Don’t Dumb Down 130 Context Is King 131 Teaching Methodology 132 Step 1: Assessment 133 Learning Styles and VARK 134 Step 2: Observation 135 Peer-to-Peer 135 Why We Observe 137 Step 3: Evaluation 137 Never Use the Word “Understand” 139 Inspiring Your Workforce Through Your Actions 139 Make the Workforce Part of the Solution 140 Keep Everybody Involved 141 Inspiring the Workforce 142 Getting the Ball Rolling 143 Working with Local Communities 143 Locally Sourced 144 Plastics and Packaging 146 Summary 147 Chapter 8: Understanding the Interconnected World of Business and IT 148 The Interconnectedness of the World 148 The Effect of Bitcoin 149 The Other Type of Mining 150 Older Processor Shortages 151 Pandemic Pressures 151 The Interconnectedness of Business 152 Global Reach Is Not Equal to Global Presence 152 All Tech Is Run Out of the United States 153 The Interconnectedness of Nations 153 The Dis-United Nations? 154 The United Nations and Climate Change 155 Short-Term Political Interest vs. Business Sense 156 The Interconnectedness of Climate Action 157 The Backbone, and Why You Have One 157 One Person Can Make a Difference 158 One Business Can Make a Difference 161 Mental Health and Well-Being 162 Bringing Everything Together 163 Summary 164 Chapter 9: Placing Your Environmental Policies in the Wider World 165 How Business Leaders Are Changing the World 166 The Projects Led by Business Leaders 167 The People Providing the Solutions Could Also Be Causing the Problems 169 How Big Is the Problem Caused by Businesses and the Rich? 169 How Business Is Changing Post-Pandemic 170 How You and Your Business Fits into the Bigger Picture 171 Getting on the Right Side of Customers and Stakeholders 172 Is What We’re Doing Enough? 172 Is This the Right Time to Be Announcing Anything? 173 What Is the Right Way to Make the Announcement? 174 Creating a Narrative 175 Considering the Things Outside of Your Control 175 Staying Agile and Keeping Plans Flexible 177 Summary 178 Chapter 10: Assessing Future Technologies 179 The Solar Effect 179 Being Generally Efficient 181 Leading the Charge 182 The Lithium-Sulfur Battery 182 The Seawater Battery 182 The Sand Battery 182 Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes 183 Graphene and the Environment 183 The Most Interesting Future Environmental Technologies 184 Coffee Power 184 Fighting Fire with Noise 184 Laboratory-Grown Meat and Dairy 184 I’m Not a Celebrity, Feed Me Insects! 185 The Carbon-Capture Tree 186 Kinetic Energy–Generating Flooring 186 Floating Farms 187 Solar Roof Tiles 187 Living Buildings 187 Thorium Reactors 188 Electricity Generation from Waste Water 188 Biofuels 188 Hydrogen Vehicles 189 So the Future’s Bright? 189 What Can We Do Today? 190 Government Help and Support 191 It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint 191 Pulling Together 192 Closing Thoughts 192 Index 194 Become part of the solution to climate change and learn how you can reduce the carbon footprint and increase the sustainability of your IT systems. Learn how to ensure new equipment is as power efficient, sustainable, and repairable as possible. Uncover the sustainability policies of your cloud and IT service providers so you can make thoughtful, cost-sensitive, and environmentally sound decisions when purchasing cloud-based SaaS and other services. Also learn to reduce e-waste in a way that inspires your employees, your stakeholders, and your customers. This book looks at our understanding of climate change and the impact that IT systems have through their constant demand for electrical power from increasingly over-stressed electrical grids and ever-rising energy costs. You will learn what you can do in your own business or organization to lower the electrical and carbon footprints of yourIT systems. You will learn to discover the environmental policies of your cloud providers so you can make cloud-based computing choices with reduced carbon footprints in mind. Author Mike Halsey provides guidance for desktops, with a discussion of settings and practices that can reduce power usage of Windows systems, including home workers using their own equipment, and covering smartphones and tablets with all operating system types. The book will help you examine the broader world and how IT companies and business leaders are pressing ahead toward ambitious climate goals, and you will look at new technologies you can expect to see developed in support of those goals. What You Will Learn Manage the power requirements of your existing IT equipment and systems more efficiently Ensure high levels of power efficiency of any new IT equipment that you purchase Know where to look for the sustainability policies of cloud and IT service Ask the right questions of suppliers and stakeholders Inspire employees and stakeholders to want to do more to reduce their own carbon footprint Work within charitable, business, and governmental structures to reduce e-waste and help communities Who This Book Is For For business leaders and system administrators who have been tasked by their company to find cost-efficient and effective ways to reduce the local, national, and global carbon-footprint of their business or organization. For IT professionals looking to bring the company into line with existing and forthcoming national and international environmental standards and regulations. Also for individuals and power users who are keen to reduce the carbon-footprint of their own computer and IT systems.