Carbon Footprints And Cost Saving

Hello guys it's Akash. in this post I'll share my knowledge about Carbon footprints and Cost Saving , I hope this post is helpful for you..

Company's Carbon Footprint

(Write a short note on carbon footprint)

• A carbon footprint of organization is defined as the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions caused by organization expressed as CO2. Since Carbon Dioxide can be produced by natural events, total amount of carbon footprint cannot be calculated.
• So, when measuring company's carbon footprint, one must decide how complete one wants to be. Measuring carbon footprint of company actually requires collecting a lot of information from various areas of company like facilities, operations, transportation, purchase, travel etc.
• Because of the requirement of gathering a lot of information for measuring carbon footprint, one need to decide boundaries in measurements like how far one must go in upstream and downstream direction. For example, when new servers are added to the data center, some amount of greenhouse gas will be generated. So, whether that amount will be calculated under company's statistics or under manufacturer's statistic
• Also, who your company or your consumers) will be responsible for climatic impact of use and disposal of products that are being purchased by your company. Also, information which is being collected should be consistent so that it can be entered in the report of facilities, departments, locations and so forth.

1. Measuring

(How to measure carbon footprint of the company?)

To measure carbon footprint following four steps are used

• Define what all things contribute to carbon footprint
• Baseline should be set 
• Track and analyse carbon footprint of organization
• Report the results to stakeholders

1) Defining the borders

• First step is to define what all things need to be measured. More the number of measurements, more difficult it will be. Also, talking less data will not give accurate information 
• In the calculation one must consider both upstream and downstream event
• For example: Impact of suppliers will be integrated in your company's carbon footprint or not Also, what about the products which are sold and out the door ? will those products impact be counted in your statistics?

2) Set Baseline

• In this stop, baseline yearned to be established to measure the future progrets. Look for the unusual data in year selected. If there is drastic change in the data because of some changes in work environment, choose some different year.
• These changes in work environment may be because of study introduced government guidelines

3) Tracking and analysing data

• The next step involves finding out problems by tracking and analysing data collected. This step involves looking for any anomalies present in the data for e.g if there are 5 locations having same size and setup.and one location is showing unusually largo reading then it can be easily made out that there is some problem with that location
• To the site like, if 5 locations are of different sizes and setup and all of them having home reading, then it can also be easily made out that there is some problem.

4) Reporting to stakeholders

• Last step is reporting to the stakeholders. The stakeholders tan be CEO, employees etc Report will contain information about carbon footprint of company, steps taken to reduce it.
• If not able to reach to the milestones, then all the problems faced should be explained to stakeholders

2. Details

Following steps need to be followed by organization to gather all details

1) Start with the basics: That I find out amount of energy used by employees of companies Le the energy used to get employees to work in organisation. Any online calculator can be used for calculating the amount of greenhouse gas generated by commuting employees. One can also calculate the amount of greenhouse gases created by organization because of electricity consumption in the data center .
2) Next step in examining the operation of company. That is considered what company buy, sells and produce. There are many outside consultant or other expert who can help to find out most accurate accounting of greenhouse gas emissions.
3) One should follow GHG (Greenhouse Gas) Protocol Initiative, a globally recognized reporting standard, to calculate amount of greenhouse gas emission. Using GHG protocol initiatives, companies must calculate their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions.

• Direct Emission by company: These emissions are from the sources owned by the company. For Example factory smokestacks, company vehicle, vents
• Indirect Emission by company : These emissions are generated by the activities of company but the sources can be owned by outsider. For ample: when employees are travelling outside for company work emissions are generated by third party but it is because of employee.

3. Reasons to Bother

Measuring carbon footprint ways of measuring progress towards becoming green Reduction of carbon footprint can help meet various business goals like :

• Improving efficiency of company

• Cost can be reduced by efficiently using energy resources.
• Adopting green practices can help smaller companies become more competitive.
• Also, companies get more public recognition as they are reducing or eliminating their carbon footprint and thereby protecting environment and human health.
• It helps suppliers to stand out within the supply chain as many organizations require commitment towards minimizing climate impacts from their suppliers

5. Plan for Future

     While measuring the carbon footprint one also need to plan for future. In future company, will grow, it will have many new servers in data center, and y more things which can increase company's carbon footprint. So no need to plan about how that growth's impact on be minimized

Cost Savings

Adopting Green IT can save up amount of organization money as compared to current practices Justify?

Adopting Green IT can have huge amount of organization's money compared to current practices. One of main reason for any organization to decide whether to green or not is cost. Following green practices does require cost initially but it saves not only money in Future but also environment.

1. Hardware

• Cost factor can be reduced by reducing the number of hardware used in organisation and data center. For example, using virtualization technique, work of multiple servers can be done by one server thereby reducing cost and impact on environment.
• Also, instead of disposing old computers and buying new energy efficient computers, use those old computers (if they can be repurposed on thin client which are just for displaying what is going on server.
• All the computation and storage will be done by server. Also, if old computers om needed to be discarded then instead of purchasing conventional PCs, purchase thin clients as it requires less energy as compared to workstation.

2. Power

• Power consumption is very important issue. The more power organization use, the more money organization has to spend. Also, the more power organization use, the more fossil fuels have to be burned by electrical utility thereby causing more greenhouse gases to be generated that is polluting environment by using power.
• Power used by computers and data centers can be managed easily if one is enabling power management settings. There are many ways of reducing power consumption of PC:

1. One should not use screen saver and keep its monitor on Monitor should go in suspend mode if it is not being med
2. Set the timer for turning off the display. If computer is not being used for some time, display will power off automatically
3. More brightness, more power consumption. So set the appropriate brightness level for screen to reduce power consumption.
4. Instead of shut down, use sleep mode hibernate mode if PC is idle for longer time. In sleep mode/hibernate mode, power consumption is very low

• If all computers of organization, follow the above ways of reducing power consumption the great amount of power can be saved.

There are some ways for reducing power consumption of data center:

• Consolidating many applications onto fewer servers will reduce energy consumption and cooling requirements of server.
• Virtualization improves hardware utilization and reduce the number of servers and storage devices thereby reducing power usage
• Turn off the idle equipment
• CPU power management feature should be turned on.

Review Questions

Q1. What is e-waste? Explain various toxins generated from e-waste,

Q2. What are the benefits of recycling electronic components?

Q3. How to reduce power consumption in the organization?

Q4. How to measure carbon footprint of the organization?

Q5. Write a short note on various ways to reduce cost.

Q6. Write a short note on equipment disposal.

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