A forthcoming ECAR study of green IT will reveal that surprisingly small percentages of IT organizations have taken such basic steps as completing an energy audit, adopting an EPEAT purchasing policy, repositioning equipment racks to create hot aisles and cool aisles, reducing data center illumination levels, and ratcheting up data center thermostat settings. Why?

Within higher ed, IT has an established culture of autonomy and perceived uniqueness. A less elegant way to say this is that we're perceived as a "silo," internally focused with our own language and our own agenda that may not have much to do with sustainability. Another problem is the rate at which we change our physical infrastructure — a short timeframe that can cloud the normal expectations regarding payback and financial feasibility of efficiency investments.

So how can IT overcome these barriers?

IT leaders in higher education spend a lot of time worrying about whether they have a place at "the big table." This concern may be misplaced when it comes to getting green IT projects from idea to implementation. The silos are the problem, not "the big table." We need to ensure that a meaningful, goal-focused dialogue occurs between our data center management and facilities engineers and energy managers. These people are probably busy planning efficiency measures and retrofit projects within their own silos, so IT needs to reach out to them.

Focus initially on projects with a payback of fewer than four years, since your budget office might look skeptically at retrofit investments that require more than three years to recover. This is a realistic limitation when it comes to IT. However, within a few years a five-year payback project could become a three-year payback project, since a cap-and-trade system (or any other regulatory process that affixes a price on carbon emissions) will sharply change the savings picture for any project that avoids the generation or procurement of combustion-based power. Institutions that must reduce their carbon footprint to meet a state regulatory requirement or that will voluntarily move in the direction of carbon-neutrality will incur yet another cost — procuring offsets. Simply stated, paying for carbon emissions permits and paying for offsets are separate and additive, and the total expense will suddenly make longer-payback energy retrofit projects appear far more feasible.

How, then, can IT shift the focus to longer-payback green IT projects?

The key is to provide data that show the rate of growth of IT-derived energy consumption. While IT, even if totaled institution-wide, might constitute less than five percent of a campus's carbon footprint, it is almost assuredly the fastest growing part of that carbon footprint. At compounded double-digit growth rates, IT will eclipse many parts of a campus's carbon footprint within a decade. Project that impact and focus on retrofit projects that will alter the model, looking one decade into the future. Financial planners and facility managers will understand such a strategy, which will shift the focus beyond short-payback projects to longer-term facility investments such as consolidating into data centers designed around once-through natural ("economizer mode") ventilation rather than traditional, recirculated, mechanically cooled equipment environments. Once this intellectual hurdle has been cleared, you can begin to tap into a number of best-practice design features that mechanical and electrical engineers have begun to apply to the most efficient data centers, such as variable-volume ventilation, more efficient power management and distribution technologies, UPS systems outside the data center, and maximized benefits of once-through ventilation.

Perhaps it will take a seat at "the big table" for IT to get campus leadership thinking about comprehensive, long-term investment projects and actions. But the place to start is by ensuring that your organization's silo intersects and engages the facilities and energy management silos on your campus.

We have enjoyed the opportunity to engage you on IT sustainability issues this past year. Keep up the collaborative innovation, and best wishes for a greener 2010 (and beyond)!

© 2009 Wendell Brase and Mark Askren. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license.