RECAP | ROUNDTABLE | Environmental Sustainability at the Executive Level

Inside Track members discussed how to achieve environmental sustainability in an hour-long roundtable held August 27th, 2018. During the session, representatives from seven companies, plus Scott Killian, Kevin Heslin, and Amber Villegas-Williamson from Uptime Institute, examined different approaches to sustainability.

For the most part, these companies tended to focus on energy savings, with the frustration expressed that new loads complicated the task of achieving further reductions. In one case, a financial institution noted that regulatory requirements required new servers and other hardware that hampered energy reduction goals. In another instance, customer growth had the same effect on infrastructure.

All companies agreed that pursuing virtualization strategies made energy reductions of these sort “low-hanging fruit.” That said, one company noted that energy reductions through virtualization might be low-hanging fruit but it was still hard to do. He noted that the task was complicated by zombie servers, other underutilized IT gear, and legacy equipment.
Interestingly, the report from a hosting company kicked off a discussion about renewable energy credits (REC). The hosting company noted that its three California data centers would be 100% powered by renewables through the use of RECs. RECs are more easily attainable at reduced scales compared to on-site renewables, said the hosting facility. On-site renewables would require a significant investment in land, for example which would generally be unavailable at its facilities. The hosting company also noted that the move to renewables was motivated by a large customer in a new facility but would benefit other clients. The company is extending the practice, where possible, to other facilities owned by this hosting company.

Amber Villegas-Williamson added to this conversation, noting that the REC market could be very complicated. And the hosting company agreed that some RECs have more value than others.

Uptime Institute staff wanted to know what the next step would be, especially as companies completed extensive energy reduction schemes based on virtualization. The answer was less than clear for many companies. But Kevin Heslin and Scott Killian noted that the major environmental reporting standards and Uptime Institute’s Efficient IT program are based on the idea of continuous improvement, with Efficient IT being a pathway to establishing a management plan to achieving greater resource and IT efficiency.

One of the largest companies involved expressed the greatest familiarity with environmental reporting and acknowledged following both the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) and GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) formats. The company noted that the shareholders and investor interest in these reports drive a great deal of change at large, publicly traded companies. In addition, companies also use these reporting formats to qualify themselves or other firms as vendors in supply chain management programs, especially those involving government as end use customers.

Key takeaways from the discussion:

• Ways for data center physical infrastructure to be more efficient and sustainable are well documented, with most organizations implementing these steps where appropriate.
• Virtualization is a sustainability strategy that is now seen as “low-hanging fruit,” but legacy hardware is still a major issue for most organizations.
• Sustainability is driving internal and external customer decisions (e.g. renewables and RECs, hardware virtualization, and reduction of old and underutilized hardware).
• IT and data center facilities should proactively engage with their corporate sustainability organizations. If you haven’t already, know your corporate sustainability goals and determine how you can help impact them.
• Publicize your IT and data center sustainability efforts to corporate sustainability to create awareness and recognition.