The Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) have both released sustainability reports in the past two weeks. The AIIA report anaysed the capability of Australian ICT firms to deliver environmental ICT solutions, while the ACS report focused on analysing the Australian ICT industry's energy consumption and carbon footprint.
Unsuprisingly the ACS study found that the major contributor to the ICT carbon footprint was the data centre environment, coming in at 18.18% of the total, closely followed by PCs, servers and printers & imaging equipment.
Source: Carbon and Computers in Australia, ACS 2010
Overall the estimated electricity use equated to 13 million kWh and over 14 megatonnes of CO2, essentially confirming that ICT in Australia is responsible for 2.7% of the total carbon emissions and over 7% of all electricity generated.
The ACS report goes on to breakdown carbon emissions per sector, state and household Vs business; and provides recommendations to the industry on reducing ICT carbon emissions.
With the AIIA report, developed by RMIT University in Melbourne, the focus is on the capability of the industry and rated 133 ICT firms on their ability to deliver. Overall the report found that ICT firms only met a basic level of maturity:
Source: ICT for Eco-Sustainability, AIIA 2010
Download the two reports:
