How IT can cut Carbon Emissions

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:15:00 PDT

The McKinsey Quarterly article of talks about - How IT can cut carbon emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions associated with making and powering the world’s computers and telecom networks are growing fast. Despite efforts by technology manufacturers and users to make these tools more energy efficient, rapid growth in demand for computing and communications—particularly in developing nations—is creating a big carbon footprint.
The good news is that information and communications technologies can reduce far more emissions than they generate.

I agree with all of the comments that they make. IT, even though it generates some greenhouse and other gases, displaces many many activities that are far more GhG producing. A perfectly legitimate approach to a companies GhG footprint issues maybe to increase the footprint of the IT Department and overall reduce the footprint of the company. Of course, doing both at the same time is a valid option as well.

We need to be very careful about goaling IT departments to lower their GhG footprint.