UNPOPULAR OPINION:  The recent super high electricity costs are a good thing…

…….. for the environment at least….

I suppose a little disappointing, but nonetheless predictable – when its hitting businesses and consumers in their pockets, there’s a rush to be more efficient and to reduce power consumption.

It’s everywhere right now – there’s a huge buzz around sustainability and emissions reductions.  You cannot scroll through your feeds without seeing prominent issues particularly in the IT industry which is responsible for quite so much of the consumption and CO2 emission.

Stories of datacentres halting expansion, of local power limitations slowing homes and housebuilding, and the ever rising cost of living and inflation driven largely by rising in power costs.

While companies talk about ‘ambitions’ to lower emissions, ‘targets’ to reduce consumption, ‘moral obligations‘ to be more sustainable – there’s nothing quite like hitting the bottom line to stimulate ACTION rather than prose!

Too many walls and lofts aren’t insulated, too many homes still using incandescent bulbs and too many devices are left on when they aren’t needed.  There’s too much inefficiency in the datacentre, there’s tens of thousands of racks of legacy IT kit chewing up megawatts of power and consuming equal quantities of cooling to keep the old and dirty circuits alive.

Even if the current situation is a transient one (lets hope the energy markets stabilise once the Ukraine conflict and Russian energy dependency is reduced) – the changes that business and consumers can make now will hopefully be long lasting.  The media recently took delight in taking the piss out of Boris Johnson with his suggestion to replace your old kettle – but in spite of his bumbling, his intention was quite right. 

Review your IT CPU and Storage utilisation, can you condense, can you consolidate, can you remove mechanical devices which require more cooling, are less reliable and consume more power? 

ACT NOW! – your business case won’t get any better if you procrastinate, in fact you’re wasting money and spewing out unnecessary CO2 every single day you don’t make a change.

#kettlegate #environment #sustainability #energycosts #energycrisis #electricity #co2 #emissions