Monday 21 March 2011

Update on the SUSTE-TECH project.


To date, the SUSTE-TECH project has recruited 15 institutions. It has received
10 completed tools with 14 accompanying Action Plans from 7 Y&H, 3 Welsh and 5 South West FHE institutions. The participants are a mixture of 10 HE & 4 FE institutions with one participant offering both HE and FE courses.

The 10 Suste-IT tool results indicated that Servers, PC’s and Networks  are the main consumers of ICT related energy followed by Imaging and to lesser extent : HPC’s, Telephones and VC equipment. 

Each of the institutions, regardless of size, are experiencing similar ICT related energy use problems and are choosing to avail of the same types of  sustainable solutions.
11 institutions are decommissioning, virtualising, or consolidating their servers or even moving servers off site altogether.

14 institutions are tackling their PC & monitor energy consumption by replacing them with Thin Client technology, installing PC power down, virtualizing their desktops and procuring for greener computers.

In terms of reducing paper use, 7 institutions are either consolidating to MFD’s,  introducing charged or code printing or  setting their printers to print double sided by default.

Just 2 institutions are tackling their networks and just one institution has stated they intend on increasing their use of VC and will be addressing their IP phone use to reduce their overall carbon footprint.

However, each of the participating institutions are implementing a “general” energy management system. They are either;
·        automating the powerdown or switch off of their various types of ICT equipment,
·        are creating awareness of campus wide energy use,
·        recycling old ICT equipment,
·        procuring for greener equipment,
·        auditing and consolidating all ICT equipment thus establishing a baseline of how much equipment is in operation and what their combined power usage is.

 In short, they are working towards lowering ICT running costs & reducing waste.
While here has been significant improvement in the past 5 years, there is still huge scope for improvement, with many of the changes being simple “quick wins” that require minimal capital costs.

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