We polled thousands of IT pros – and sustainability just ain't a priority right now
- Reference: 1716892148
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/28/register_it_sustainability/
- Source link:
In fact, just 16.7 percent of the 2,869 IT professionals surveyed around the world this season by The Register considered sustainability a top issue, and only 38.7 percent considered it a priority at all. That said, the sentiment on environmental friendliness varies by region.
The survey found that US enterprises cared the least about the environmental impact of their IT infrastructure with less than a third rating it as a priority. Meanwhile sustainability ranked slightly higher in EMEA and APAC. This is possibly due to generally higher operating and power costs in these regions, which focus the mind on doing more with less.
In fact, it shouldn't come as a surprise that, of those organizations investing in sustainable IT practices and infrastructure, most were doing so out of economic convenience rather than out of concern for Mother Nature.
More than half of respondents (53.9 percent) cited reducing operating expenses as their primary motivator, followed by curbing their environmental footprint and minimizing energy consumption in second and third place.
Just over a third cited regulatory requirements and improving customer perception as motivating factors. We don't imagine many enterprises have datacenters capable of consuming so much water or power that they feel the need to distract customers, let alone regulators, with massive solar or wind projects. It seems that greenwashing is still a game for the biggest IT infrastructure providers.
As for how IT teams are actually tackling sustainability issues, over half said they were prioritizing energy-efficient hardware and software and using virtualization and other datacenter consolidation techniques to reduce their footprints.
Rack consolidation, through a combination of higher core count CPUs and virtualization or container technologies, has become a major talking point among chipmakers in recent years. During its 4th-gen Epyc [1]launch , AMD boasted that just five, dual-socket Epyc 4 systems could take the place of 15 Intel Ice Lake systems. Since then, chip vendors including Ampere and Intel have made similar consolidation claims.
While more efficient hardware can replace multiple legacy systems, it's also bound to generate more waste, to Register readers' minds.
Asked about how they're handling e-waste, 45.9 percent of respondents said they were donating or repurposing aging equipment, while 39.8 percent said they were giving their systems a second lease on life through refurbishment. Between 30.2 and 38.8 percent said they either handled some form of recycling program or were partnered with an e-waste management firm.
Worryingly, roughly a quarter of respondents said they didn't have a plan for managing their e-waste at all, something that in 2024 you'd think folks would have figured out. It's not 1999. You can't just drag that ancient laser printer out back and take your revenge on it Office Space-style any more, and you certainly shouldn't leave its corpse to leach heavy metals into the soil.
[2]Microsoft's carbon emissions up nearly 30% thanks to AI
[3]AI boom is great news for the nuclear power dreamers
[4]Digital Realty ditches diesel for salad dressing in US to cut datacenter emissions
[5]Intel's green dream is chips without any dips in Mother Nature's health
However, more efficient gear is only one way to reduce the carbon footprint of your infrastructure. A little over a third of respondents said they were implementing power management policies and utilizing renewable energy sources.
While the latter can be rather tricky to predict, since green energy sources often depend on environmental factors like whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, power management features are something industry experts have been arguing in support of for years.
[6]
Schneider Electric has previously [7]encouraged operators to embrace a variety of management systems, including ones related to electrical power, amid the surge in demand for AI compute capacity.
[8]
[9]
Meanwhile, at the platform level, most CPU vendors have [10]put some kind of power management system in their latest generation of chips to help reduce idle power. However, fears over application instability or performance losses mean these features often end up getting disabled.
As for how environmental impact factors into purchasing decisions, it's kind of a mixed bag.
As you might suspect, as enterprises grow larger, sustainability does appear to factor in who they do business with - at least to some extent. The main outlier observed was among the smallest businesses, which appear to be prioritized green gear at the second highest rate.
The survey found that the biggest consideration, when it came to sustainable suppliers, whether they were actively trying to reduce their environmental impact through things like renewable energy use or green datacenters.
Other considerations included whether vendors had committed to ethical and fair labor practices, had documented sustainability policies like ISO 14001 or B Corp certifications, or releasing things like annual environmental, social, and governance reports.
So while respondents aren't all that worried about public perception, their suppliers ought to be. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/10/amd_96core_epyc/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/microsoft_co2_emissions/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/ai_nuclear_dc_uranium/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/digital_realty_datacenter_biofuel/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/intel_sustainability_summit/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZlX-pY6HzKoFdNEa13GVYQAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/19/schneider_electric_ai_dc/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZlX-pY6HzKoFdNEa13GVYQAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZlX-pY6HzKoFdNEa13GVYQAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/12/cpu_power_management_feature/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
well generally Fossil fuels underpin just about every conceivable aspect of modern life (which is a real problem - they might run out), it must be hard for them to know where to target
And deciding is just too much like hard thinking.
Perhaps the "Just Stop Oil" lot should be pointed at cryptocurrency and ML training.
They're idiots who should be charged with terrorism and crimes against humanity given their antics. Like attempting to destroy one of the most important UK documents, the British Library's Magna Carta. Which on a side note, I hope the police find out just how they managed to get a hammer & chisel in. I've been to the Library a few times and their security is pretty strict to prevent damage to the documents we're reading. Or thefts.
But they follow the money, and accept crypto. Or from the 'renewables' lobby. Dear'ol Dale Vince of Econtricity used to be one of their biggest donors until their antics generated too much negativity. Another big donor was this astroturfing group-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Emergency_Fund
The CEF funded actions supporting the Inflation Reduction Act.
Which included $600m for 'renewables'. If 'Just Stop Oil' were serious about 'Global Warming', they should probably be protesting outside the Met Office and campaigning for them to fix their weather monitoring stations-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/05/26/met-office-creates-warming-out-of-thin-air/
The WMO could not be clearer. Temperatures recorded at Class 3, 4 and 5 sites should never be used where they are intended to be representative of a wider area, only for local purposes, such as to give temperatures at airports for aviation purposes.
Only 24 of the 380 stations used by the Met Office to calculate UK temperatures are fit for purpose, Class 1.
Meanwhile, in other news.. I think the problem with the ESG stuff is the hard sell. Sure it provides jobs for grads in environmental studies, but they're just overheads for businesses and reduce efficiency. On the other hand, a rack full of servers that does more work and reduces energy requirements to power the thing and keep it cool reduces my opex and improves my business's efficiency. So a bit of a no brainer. Business exist to maximise shareholder value, so cutting costs is fundamental. If it allows for a press release saying it reduces emissions, great, but that's not really a business priority. Especially given most of the West's competitors don't really care about the ESG nonsense, so aren't encumbering their businesses with those costs.
Plus I think (hope) the AI bubble will burst soon, thus saving a lot of energy. Physics is a hard taskmaster which has a formal definition for 'work' and efficiency that also flows through to businesses, ie AI uses a lot of energy, but doesn't really do any useful work.
Energy Efficiencey Has Always Been a Lie
This should not come as a shock to anyone. The old line of the latest product being more efficient than the last gen is a fig leave as old as the IT Department. Sure you get more work done with less (a very little less many times) power, but somehow the work that needs doing is always going up at far higher rates than the efficiency can overcome. Consolidation is always the standard, not actually using less energy overall. The tech industry has never had a working moral compass nor even really known what morals and ethics are all about. They just want to be the first ones to hit the next big thing on the next tech rush.
Don't Look Up
[1]At this exact moment, I say we sit tight and assess .
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbIxYm3mKzI
Are we shocked?
'Sustainability' is a fad which falls apart once people have real priorities to deal with. Its a first world problem or an only if you are rich issue.
Re: Are we shocked?
The real priorities are the planet being burnt to a cinder and people along with it, but there's all this late-stage capitalism infinite growth and consumption from finite resources nonsense getting in the way.
Re: Are we shocked?
@AC
"The real priorities are the planet being burnt to a cinder and people along with it, but there's all this late-stage capitalism infinite growth and consumption from finite resources nonsense getting in the way."
Are you sure? Isnt it the state (UK) who thinks Drax burning wood is green? And they have a deal to make wood burning ships which are considered to be green? Capitalism (free market) doesnt assume infinite resources, that is why burning resources on things that dont work (e.g. unreliables) takes away resources for use against actual problems.
If you think the world is gonna burn to a cinder and people with it then you are in the fantasy of propaganda, just as the advert of a drowning dog because someone didnt turn off a light switch.
Re: Are we shocked?
The world is already at 1.56°C above pre-industrial levels and has been above 1.5°C for the past year, the target set in Paris was 1.5°C by 2100. But you keep chuntering on about dogs and light switches, that'll convince everyone.
Re: Are we shocked?
The world is already at 1.56°C above pre-industrial levels and has been above 1.5°C for the past year
How do you know this, and why is this a problem. Is it because people you should be able to trust keep lying to you? Like the dear'ol Bbc claiming 'Global Waming' caused the turbulence that affected a couple of flights recently, even though there is no evidence for this..
Re: Are we shocked?
even though there is no evidence for this
In section 1 of both of the following papers you can find further sources:
[1]Global Response of Clear-Air Turbulence to Climate Change
[2]Increased Turbulence in the Eurasian Upper-Level Jet Stream in Winter: Past and Future
Please do write a paper of your own debunking all the previous work if you feel it's necessary.
[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL074618
[2] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EA001556
Re: Are we shocked?
Please do write a paper of your own debunking all the previous work if you feel it's necessary.
I don't need to. It's already been done-
https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safety-studies/Documents/SS2101.pdf
Your problem is you've never really understood what evidence means. So the NTSB has presented evidence in that report's Chapter 3, which shows a negative trend. There may be multiple reasons for this, ie better forecasting, route planning etc. Meanwhile, your 'evidence' is based on computer models and perhaps false attribution-
Anthropogenic activities have been increasingly strengthening the meridional temperature gradient in the upper atmosphere, which has a profound impact on the wind shear and turbulence in mid-latitudes.
Which makes the huge assumption that any attribution is due to those anthropogenic activities, not natural variations like AMO/PDO which have been known to affect the jetstream since Lamb's days. But this is also where climate 'science' becomes cult-like with the prophets of doom like the Bbc seeing changes in the weather a consequence of Mann sinning against Nature. It's also where projects like CMIP are good because they allow predictions to be tested against reality, and if necessary, revise model assumptions. Plus there's the possibilty of transient events like the recent CME that dumped a carpton of energy into the upper atmosphere.
Re: Are we shocked?
If you think the world is gonna burn to a cinder and people with it then you are in the fantasy of propaganda, just as the advert of a drowning dog because someone didnt turn off a light switch.
A lot of people just aren't capable of context and critical thinking. We must 'prevent 1.5C warming'. Which is basically the temperature difference between say, London and Glasgow. Londoners don't need to don asbestos underpants to visit Scotland, although some may wear their tinfoil hats. A stab vest may be more sensible. And being that time of year, thousands will be jetting off to the lower latitudes to expose themselves to deadly radiation that they could avoid by sheltering in a reactor hall.
People are weird.
But those that think we're going to burn to a cinder also have never bothered reading the physics behind global warming. So the critical assumption (or true value) for climate sensitivity wrt CO2. If that's around 1.2 per doubling, and the first doubling is 275-550ppmv, the next doubling is 550-1,100 for a total of a terrifying 2.4C. But some.. slight snags. Assumption is the relationship between CO2 and temperature is logarithmic, so we've already seen all CO2 can do for the first doubling. Then based on the amount of CO2 emitted and fossil fuels consumed, there aren't enough proven fossil fuel deposits to hit the second doubling. But then this is also where climate 'science' drifts into homeopathy. If you assume CO2 is the 'control knob', then lower levels of CO2 caused more warming.. somehow, in a physics-defying way where fewer molecules can somehow 'trap' more heat.
Plus businesses are already directly incentivised to be more efficient, so produce more work for less energy.. Especially given the artificiall high energy costs in the West.
Re: Are we shocked?
The Tufton Street is strong in this one.
Re: Are we shocked?
What "real priority", shifting porn and cat videos slightly faster? Running LLMs that are unlikely to ever turn a profit? Mining crypto whose entire economy is based on crime? Those "real priorities"? It's not a first world problem, and it's not a rich people only problem. It's a short-term versus long-term problem.
Corporations have a next-year horizon at best, more often next-quarter. Given that, of course they don't give a crap about sustainability. I mean, they rarely give a crap about the sustainability of their own business model , nevermind society at large.
In theory, that's why we have governments; so that we can work towards long-term objectives. In practice, governments now have a horizon of next-election at best. So, we're screwed.
Climate change is going to cause tangible economic damage, easily in excess of whatever we're saving by not acting to prevent it. This is a "rich people problem" only in the Vimes' Boots sense, except that we're being too stupid to buy the good boots even if we could.
"Long term" nowadays means "next year". I could offer to give someone a million bucks now, but kill them in ten years time, and they'll not only take the money, but mock anyone who doesn't, because the million buck is a "real priority".
That is what is really unsustainable. It's not climate change that will get us in the end; it will be inability to plan on the time scale of a society.
Re: Are we shocked?
@Filippo
"Climate change is going to cause tangible economic damage, easily in excess of whatever we're saving by not acting to prevent it."
We are still waiting on evidence for that. I know there are a lot of claims, often wrong, but nothing really concrete to suggest warmer will be more dangerous than colder (often demonstrated the other way) or that we have much of an effect.
"That is what is really unsustainable. It's not climate change that will get us in the end; it will be inability to plan on the time scale of a society."
I am fairly sure similar logic was used for going up a hill to be rescued by aliens or whatever before the end happens the following day.
However as an alternative-
Humans have innovation and the ability to control our own little climates to keep us comfortable and safe. While the actual poor look to get cheap reliable energy which will vastly improve their lives, we in the rich countries fall for unproven scares. So much so that if MMCC Co2 theory was an honest and serious we wouldnt be doing the so called solutions which work counter to the tale.
Instead of opposing nuclear for decades the believers would have been driving our development of such. Instead of squandering vast resources on unreliables and other glitzy but not ready tech we could have used that to create a cleaner environment with plenty energy to research further viable solutions instead of awaiting some magic future tech. Between government and doom prophets we have a lot of propaganda that has been shown to be lies and garbage to push this belief on people and wasted huge resources to make us all poorer for no good reason. So obviously people get hostile against the idea. Especially when it hits their standard of living.
With an election coming up in the UK ...
if you think that climate is important [1]https://voteclimate.uk/ will help you work out how to vote. A [2]of background .
[1] https://voteclimate.uk/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/28/no-tory-mps-voted-positively-on-climate-issues-since-party-took-power-study-finds
Re: With an election coming up in the UK ...
I did one of those "who do I vote for given my beliefs" thing at the last election, thinking I'd come out "lib dem". Was surprised that I actual came out Labour, who do appear to have a uch better grip on the climate than the Tories, who seem to use the RAF as their own personal Uber
Re: With an election coming up in the UK ...
I'm surprised you could insert a cigarette paper between the main parties' policies on climate for the last few years. As fas as I can see, all parties are in favour of switching off all of the stable generation, and just dealing with the intermittent power that results. Oh, and "you, lowly citizen! Get out of that car and walk!".
Re: With an election coming up in the UK ...
nice one
I feel that the problem is, with the vast amounts of power being pissed away on AI (crypto before that) and the endless deluge of useless cheap crap from you know where, plus oh so many companies still making it as hard as possible to repair devices, we are bound to arrive at a situation where a person could easily think "why am I inconveniencing myself to save the planet when so many far larger problems don't give a fuck".
[Case in point, what do you think will happen over the left side of the pond when Trump gets his second term?]
Easy enough to say "that place where the cheap stuff is made" not so easy to realise we are why that exists.
No where would make cheap landfill items if "we" in the west didn't demand exactly that, and put the entire chain of dependencies in place decades ago to make it that we can get cheap stuff and not have to think about the consequences of it.
Not so easy to own it and look at the vast array of things surrounding you that came from where ever it is you might be alluding to.
Perhaps the "Just Stop Oil" lot should be pointed at cryptocurrency and ML training.