Sustaining computing for the future

The hard fact about computers is that they consume energy. Anyone who has ever had to run even a laptop off their car’s cigar lighter socket will know that it is the alternator that is doing the heavy lifting. Seen in this light, information technology, for all of the green badging, has little to say about sustainability. But is that the full story?

Concern about energy use by IT does highlight a real issue, but debate on the area has tended to obscure a number of counterpoints. First, while it is true that energy consumption is rising as global computation and data storage rises, new generations of chips, such as Arm derivatives and Risc-V, are designed to be ultra-low power and solid-state storage is rapidly replacing spinning disks. While CPUs are not the whole story – power-hungry GPUs do gulp down electricity – it is not in the interests of anyone paying an electricity bill to spin-up workstations or servers for no reason.

Secondly, remote work in particular has a positive impact in reducing energy use in other areas, notably commuting. With working from home more normalised than ever, the positive contribution of IT could begin to show itself, not just in terms of energy, but also areas as diverse as planning, rural redevelopment and distribution of wealth.

Moreover, optimisation of the grid, including the integration of more renewable – and, soon, nuclear from France – power, will go some way to reducing the carbon output of all Irish energy users.

The pandemic also had other impacts. Despite promises of the paperless office that had failed to pan out since the 1970s, the pandemic had a real effect. In 2020, Nikkei reported that global demand for paper started to decrease as remote work grew. Even if a piece of work is finally printed – such as this article for instance – it will likely pass through a number of hands as a purely digital artefact (at least three people in this case).

This is an acceleration of a trend that has long been noted by the print and managed services industry, which is increasingly positioning print as a luxury item rather than a quotidian one. Indeed, statistics show that the US, admittedly the leader, has logged an office printing decline of 19 per cent as a result of digitalisation since 2008.

Primary industry

Against that, however, is the fact that the digital world is not quite as weightless as we might like to imagine. In fact, never mind bits, it is downright atomic.

Rare earth minerals are used in the manufacture of computers and associated devices, and lithium and cobalt are used in batteries. Such elements require energy-intensive mining and processing and represent a significant use of not only energy, but non-renewable resources, and this is something that cannot be ignored.

One factor that can offset this is recycling and repurposing.

This article was written on a ten-year-old laptop (complete with that rarest of things today, an actually usable keyboard) that this writer has no intention of surrendering. While decade-old equipment is probably off the agenda for most businesses, used equipment can be a serious part of the tech arsenal of any business.

Despite the breathless claims of breakthroughs in processing power, the reality is that few tasks require a bang up to date machine, something borne out by the fact that an old business-grade laptop remains more powerful than the brand-new budget ones that themselves seem to suit many users.

Sustainability, then, must be viewed in the round, including both the positive impact tech can have as well as its very real environmental impact.