Green Computing and India’s role in it

Green Computing has been a focus area for the global community for over a decade now. Our lives were fast transformed when IT invaded every sphere of our life. Initially it was assumed to be a medium with no adverse impact on environment. However gradually the misconception was removed. Now the global community including governments, corporate, social communities and individuals realize the significance and urgency of adopting green computing.

Global community and India

Many governments and corporate across the world have taken leadership roles towards green computing. A number of global consortiums/forums have been established. The keys to green computing such as Green Use, Green Disposal, Green Design and Green Manufacturing have been proposed by them. Green IT and E-governance policies have been enforced by governments across the globe. Industries, investors and policy makers are becoming more and more aware of the criticality of Green IT. Today the focus is not only on higher computing power, faster analysis etc. It is also on achieving energy efficiency, reduction of E-waste and using the computing resources efficiently. Governments and corporate leaders have jointly started working towards it. Many global corporates have put policies and practices that help reduce their companys environmental impact.

In 2005, 128 nations came together and signed the Kyoto Protocol and published their charter to reduce the GHG (Green House Gas) emission (Chuang and Huang, 2014). India is a signatory of UN Climate body, UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). So Indian IT companies have a huge responsibility towards the nation and the entire global community towards implementing green computing. The commitment made by India in October 2015 to UNFCCC , outlines action plans to reduce its emission by one third as compared to 2005 emission levels. Many initiatives have been taken up by the Indian government and other private bodies in this direction. National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) by Government of India includes Green IT in its strategy for reducing GHG emission. NASSCOM and TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) -business council jointly have started an initiative called Corporate Action Plan on Climate Change: ICT as a game changer (WBCSD, 2011). It tries to identify those sectors where ICT can play a significant role in reducing carbon footprint.

The task force formed by Government of India outlines specific recommendations for the Indian IT and telecom industry. It includes aspects like standardization, declaration of carbon footprint of their network operations to TRAI, having a Carbon Credit policy, getting tax incentives etc. Corporations have come up with implementation framework for the same. A few companies publish their report as well.

Initiatives by Indian government and corporates

To fulfill the commitment given to UNFCCC, the government of India has launched a number of initiatives in the country. The government regulations have been one of the drivers for Green IT in the industry. An expert group has been set up to formulate a roadmap on low carbon strategy. The recommendations from this group have been included in the twelfth five year plan of India. This shows the significance put by the Indian government to the Green IT initiatives (Chawla, 2012).

The recommendations include standardization of IT and Network equipment, cleaner and green data center standards, inclusion of energy consumption standards in all government purchases as part of green procurement policy and so on. It encourages organizations to invest in cleaner technology which can be a costly affair initially. So it also extends tax incentives to such organizations for funding cleaner technology.

The population growth, rapid urbanization and related constructions have caused concerns for the depleting natural resources and increase in energy consumption. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has made the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) mandatory for building designs and specifications for all new and renovated buildings. All the state governments have been mandated to implement the same by 2017 (Times of India, 2014).

The Ministry of IT and Communications have also put adequate focus on Green IT in their national IT, Electronics and Telecom Policy (Chawla, 2012). As per these policies all telecom service providers must declare the carbon footprint from their network operations to TRAI twice a year, all their products and equipment need to be certified as Green Passport, they have to adopt Renewable Energy Technologies for certain percentage of all the rural and urban mobile towers. The telecom service providers are encouraged to come up with their own code of practice of energy efficiency for their network and infrastructure planning. On doing so they will be given carbon credits in line with the governments carbon credit policy.

All the above initiatives and mandates by the Indian government have encouraged the Indian business houses to adopt green computing.

At the same time, the awareness about global environment changes and sustainability issues are growing among the Indian corporate. There is also a growing demand from investors and all other stakeholders to become environment friendly. The other main motivator is the reduced operating cost by adopting green technology.

As per the Gartner report Hype Cycle for Green IT and Sustainability in India, 2014, the Indian organizations are moving towards integrating their environment sustainability commitment with their core business. As per the analysts, the spending by government and private corporate houses towards Green IT would reach USD 34 billion in 2014 and USD 70 billion in 2015 (Gartner Inc., 2014).

It has been observed that although everybody believes that Green IT is important, so far very little has been actually implemented in this direction. In the year 2010, Fujitsu Australia published a report on Green IT Global Benchmark. It contains a multi-country benchmark to determine the maturity of Green IT practices and technologies in end user organizations across all industries in USA, UK, Australia and India. As per this report, the overall maturity level for these four countries is 56.4 and that of India is 52 only. So while coming to actual implementation, a lot remain to be achieved.

Green IT Index by country

References

Chawla, R. (2012). Green IT Initiatives in India.

Gartner Inc., (2014). Gartner says India Green IT and Sustainability Spending To Reach $34 Billion in 2014. [online] Available at: http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/archive/Gartner Says India Green IT And Sustainability Spending To Reach $ $34 Billion In 2014 [Accessed 8 Jun. 2016].

Green IT – The global benchmark, A REPORT ON SUSTAINABLE IT IN THE USA, UK, AUSTRALIA AND INDIA. (2010). 1st ed. Fujitsu.

Tagged with: GHG, Green Computing, Green Index, Green IT, UNFCCC
Posted in Blog, Green IT, IT Strategy

E-waste scenario in India

Introduction

Since the last couple of decades, IT has become an integral part of our life. In this era of globalization, the social, economic and cultural boundaries have blurred. The exponential growth of IT in all spheres of life can be credited for the same.

Businesses have become extremely competitive. Innovative ideas are abundant in making lives better in all aspects. Technology controls every aspect of our life be it interaction through social media, banking, healthcare, agriculture, learning, entertainment etc. Due to this reason (for being heavily dependent on technology), every business is striving to make huge investment in IT facilities and Infrastructure.

All the above have also created a highly negative impact on environment, human health and natural resources. Initially IT was perceived as a non-polluting industry with no adverse effect on the environment. However, in the last decade this misconception has changed and the global community is becoming increasingly aware of its impact on climate change and global warming. One of the main causes is generation of E-waste at an alarming rate. It contains hazardous elements like lead, mercury, cadmium, black carbon etc. that are extremely dangerous for the environment and human life.

As per the report called Global E-waste Monitor 2014, published by United Nations University (UNU), the U.S. and China are the biggest contributors of E-waste, producing 32% of the overall global E-waste in 2014. As per this report, the overall volume will increase by 21% in the next three years. Developing countries like India are catching up fast; India being the fifth largest E-waste generator, with 1.7 Mt E-waste generated in 2014. Another major challenge faced by India is the lack of stringent regulations and legislations for E-waste disposal. As a result, many developed countries ship their E-waste to India. This has made India a global dumping yard. When these E-wastes are not disposed properly, it creates disaster to the nature and human life.

E-waste scenario in India

In 2017, the number of mobile phone users world-wide is projected as 4.77 billion. The global shipment figure for laptops, PCs and tablets together is close to 650 Million worldwide (Shipment forecast of tablets, 2016). As per a study, fortune 500 companies assign on an average 3.5 devices to each of their employees.

Due to this high volume of usage of electronic devices world-wide, the generation of E-waste is also increasing as a result of discarding old and obsolete devices. As per global statistics, electronic devices are producing 50 MT E-waste annually and it is growing at a rate of 5% every year. It has been predicted that this growth rate will be faster and by 2020, computer based E-waste will increase by 500% and mobile phone by 18 times compared to the year 2007 (C. VATS and SINGH, 2014).

In India, the IT industry has grown at a rate of 42.4% between the years 1995 and 2000 (C. VATS and SINGH, 2014). This includes growth in software as well as hardware sectors. The telecom industry has grown very fast in the last decade and mobile phones have penetrated deep into the rural India as well. The total mobile phone subscriber base crossed the 1 Billion mark in October 2015 (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2015). Moving towards newer technology, frequent upgrade of infrastructure etc. have resulted in discarding obsolete electronic equipment and network infrastructure at an alarming rate. These mainly include PCs, laptops, servers, mobile phones, televisions, music systems and other electronic devices used by industries as well as for personal use. Considering a population of 1.25 billion, this is a cause of great worry for India.

The main challenges are rapid growth of cities, lack of landfills, lack of awareness among people and low environment standards set by government. Due to low environment standards and absence of stringent environment laws, many multinational companies from the developed countries ship their E-waste to India for disposal. Although the per-person GHG emission in India is significantly low compared to developed countries like USA and Germany, the poorest of the poor in India remain most vulnerable to the health hazards caused by it.

Proper disposal of E-waste:

The policy of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle-Refurbish is very relevant to E-waste management. By reusing and recycling hardware components like ink cartridges, old PCs instead of throwing them away, reduces the landfill requirement. Most of the unwanted electronic equipment land up in landfills which should never be the case. In order to avoid accumulation of toxic materials in the landfills, infrastructure for recycling and refurbishing must be developed.

As per the reports published with respect to India, 60% of E-waste remains in the warehouses or storages. Only 40% is made available for recycling by both formal and informal recyclers. In the recycling process, as high as 95% of the E-waste is used for refurbishing. Only 5% needs to be disposed (C. VATS and SINGH, 2014). This shows the huge potential for energy saving and pollution reduction by the recycling process.

As part of the E-waste management policy, strategies should be drawn out for the main action items such as Collection, Recycling and Disposal. Multiple levels of collection points (local, urban, state level etc.) should be created for maximum amount of collection of E-waste. Awareness should be generated among the local population about the harmful effects of E-waste if not handled safely. Infrastructure and training facility should be provided to the registered E-waste recyclers for easy recycling and disposal (C. VATS and SINGH, 2014).

Some other measures can also be taken to minimize the E-waste. E.g. instead of using toxic materials like lead, other more environment friendly materials like copper and silver may be used.

Conclusion

A robust E-waste management policy includes reduce, reuse and recycle of E-waste. There could be guidelines that reduce E-waste generation e.g. unnecessary printing. The policy should take into consideration more efficient recycling of electronic scraps whereby useful scraps can be reused and the harmful components are safely disposed. In developing countries like India, this can be a sustainable business model with job creation, skill development of the local population and environment benefits.

References

VATS, M. and SINGH, S. (2014). Status of E-waste in India – A Review. International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, 03(10), pp.16917-16931.

Tagged with: E-waste;Reduce-reuse-recycle, GHG, Green Computing, Green IT
Posted in Blog, Green IT, IT Strategy