ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of carbon emissions is alarming and ICT is playing an important role in changing this trend. On the other hand, ICT usage is growing exponentially and the carbon footprint of the ICT sector itself has already surpassed in 2008 that of the aviation industry. This chapter, on current developments in Green IT, deals with greening the ICT sector itself, as with deployment of ICT to green other sectors. Greening IT requires greening the datacenter where most of the energy is being consumed. Virtualization and proliferation of cloud services will make computing and data access ubiquitous for the users and will help increase the utilization factor of ICT infrastructure, therefore increasing its energy efficiency. Green software and data life cycle management help decreasing the overall footprint of applications and avoiding over-sizing of hardware. ICT has been widely recognized as an enabler for a low-carbon future and greening by IT has become the motor of the rapidly growing green economy. Smart Grids is one of the most promising areas of greening by IT, as it enables optimization of electricity consumption, decentralization of energy production and deployment of renewable energy sources. ICT has also a major impact on decreasing the large carbon footprint of the transport sector by optimizing logistics, improving filling rates, reducing congestions and reducing the necessity of moving people and material. Smart buildings use ICT for improving insight in energy consumption and reduce its carbon footprint. ICT enables rethink building design and energy use and making buildings part of the energy solution instead of the problem. Greening the industry is a must as the world is since 1987 in overshoot in terms of raw material consumption. ICT can help in improving the efficiency of the industry, optimizing supply chains and raw material (re-)use and leading to customer participation as a prosumer of the industry. ICT is also widely deployed for dematerialization of content delivery and Big Data will help understanding customer behavior and assist in improving the adoption and deployment of sustainability measures. Finally, to avoid a rebound in energy consumption as a result of improving energy efficiency, a holistic approach in Green IT is highly recommended.
