Greening Your Institution's Networks Systems

The agenda for the July 20^th Networks Greening Your Institution's Networks System event was circulated to 100’s of contacts earlier today. The event has only 4 speakers in total (including the SUSTE-TECH project manager) despite almost 50 Network contacts being asked to present. I started to wonder if this may be because not enough research has been done on the subject so far? Have research institutions and ICT manager focussed too much the energy use of other categories of ICT equipment? Did moving into the cloud distract institutions from examining the impact the use of switches, routers and cables have on their energy use ? Perhaps it’s because their energy use  may be more difficult to monitor than other pieces of ICT kit and their environmental footprint almost impossible to quantify (much like all pieces of ICT equipment)? The response from many of the Network manager asked to present was just that; they simply hadn’t enough information and/or data on the subject to be able to present on.  In addition to this, results of completed Suste-IT tools (from the SUSTE-TECH) project showed that Networks were amongst the higher users of ICT related energy use, yet only 2 institutions included addressing the issue in their Action Plans. Perhaps this is something that ICT research institutions, HE’s and their funding bodies should consider examining at some point?