Sustainable Information Technology awareness

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) is a key feature of the modern world and a core skill in education. However, the growing use of technology is at an increasing environmental cost. Estimates for a typical Western economy — such as the United Kingdom — are that the IT industry is currently producing approximately two to four percent of the national carbon footprint. To put this in perspective, this is equivalent to the airline industry. The converse side to this is the way in which IT can be the catalyst and tool to allow other areas of activity to reduce their environmental costs (see The Climate Group, 2008). However, where such non-IT impact is reduced then the result is to increase the relative influence of IT itself. Furthermore, the absolute impact will rise as the global digital divide lessens, allowing more people across the world to get ready access to computing devices.

Keywords:

• Sustainable Development
• Green IT
• Green Computing
• Education for Sustainable Development

1. Introduction

Within education generally and in particular within Higher Education, the pervasive nature of IT can provide opportunities for educators to illustrate the fundamental and vital issues related to sustainability within their teaching across many subjects. In this paper we consider how to develop this awareness of sustainability with respect to IT — whether in specialist computing courses or as part of other subjects where IT plays a key role. Educators face a number of challenges when considering the incorporation of such material into their teaching, but these are partly balanced by external drivers which can encourage and support the introduction of this material. One of the major drivers for incorporating sustainability — and one recognised by education institutions — is the recognition and promulgation of sustainability by the United Nations, national governments and in turn government national educational departments. The endorsement of education (United Nations, 2009) for Sustainable Development provides a framework within which those educators with an interest and concern about these issues can operate.

2. Issues in teaching Sustainable Development topics

Learners’ expectations can be a challenge; whilst some learners may expect to encounter some aspect of the environment — for example those taking a biology or geography course — learners in other disciplines do not necessarily expect this, and may be unreceptive or even hostile to the inclusion of material which they consider superfluous. Empirical evidence shows that learners on technical courses — such as computing — are often initially disapproving about the inclusion of ethical and social content within their learning.

Institutional barriers include a variety of issues, such as the curriculum design and approvals process which can limit the opportunities for educators to develop content, as well as the antagonism of colleagues who may be concerned about dilution of subject content, or those who are not convinced by the arguments of the need for sustainability and perceive such content as indoctrination of learners.

Professional bodies and industry itself can now offer opportunities for motivating and developing content. Professional bodies — in particularly those responsible for accreditation — are often a driver for the inclusion of ethical and legal content, and many professional bodies are now recognising the need for professional practitioners to have an awareness of green and more general sustainability concepts. Furthermore, the impact of these issues on the practices of commerce mean that industry itself is recognising the value of graduates who have an appreciation of the issues — and as such provides a growing support for these topics, including the provision of materials that are useful in teaching. By linking this learning content into the professional development of learners, they can be made aware of the importance and relevance of this material to themselves and their futures.

The complexity of the systems and decision making is another difficulty faced by educators in that the decisions and choices regarding sustainability are not simple and that clear facts and data on the aspects are not readily available. For example, one may ask the apparently simple question “is it more sustainable to use electronic notes rather than paper hand outs?” Hand outs have a specific cost in terms of resources to manufacture, whilst use of them is low cost. Conversely, electronic notes seem to have minimal resource implications, but in fact require a wide and varied cost- from the computers to produce them, the servers that host them, to the power usage in reading them. Furthermore, if learners then print the notes, the total resource used may be much greater. These kinds of problems illustrate the problems met by educators and provide examples to use with learners. Moreover, they provide a basis for discussions across a wide range of subjects — from engineers who may need to model the power requirements, to computer scientists who may be asked to identify the server requirements and compute cycles involved, to biologists and earth scientists who can begin to answer the question of the amount of carbon dioxide consumed or captured by paper based solutions. Social scientists and humanities learners may need to consider the social and wider issues of acceptability and politics experts can begin to identify how policy needs to encourage and potentially enforce the best approach.

Motivating the topic and synthesis of content within the main focus of study in Higher Education seems to offer the best route to make learners aware of the issues. A module — or even a one off session — on the topic of sustainability which makes this material stand out may appeal to some learners, but may fail to engage with the majority. Conversely, raising the awareness of this topic to learners seems most successful when the sustainable issues are motivated by and embedded within the context of their primary area of study. Through embedding and linking with material which the learners expect, they can begin to appreciate the importance and relevance of this topic to their own studies and lives.

Within IT for example, good examples of the environmental impact can be found — such as the huge costs of continuous upgrading of hardware. Software itself has a cost — this includes the potential need to upgrade or replace machinery in order to run the latest version of operating systems or applications, as well as the actual running costs of the software (processor intensive programs increase power usage). The financial and social costs to individuals, institutions and nations of these examples provides an opening for educators to explore numerous topics, and to develop this awareness in learners. Such explorations may include considering different approaches — such as developing less resource intensive systems or perhaps open source solutions. The legalities around digital rights management and software piracy are tied in to consideration of the global society. Another example is the modern reliance on the Internet as a permanent resource of information, which has a carbon footprint which may be used to help learners in becoming aware of the costs of modern life and to begin to consider ways in which this can be made more sustainable. Teaching resources - such as photos of piles of obsolete keyboards, or of children in third world countries recovering wiring and chips from pc motherboards which organisations such as Greenpeace provide (Greenpeace, 2009) - can bring home to learners the wider global impact of the use of computing equipment and the industry’s continual demand for upgrades and updates. This material also links in with professional development and awareness — for example, within computing material can be linked with the IT industry codes of practice for data centres and other guides which have a growing emphasis on sustainability.

Power consumption is a good example of the problems that can arise when the implications of decisions and new technologies are not thought through. An example from the U.K. is that of digital television and the apparently separate issue of the standby function in digital devices. On the one hand, the government has been encouraging people to switch devices off, even going so far as to consider banning the incorporation of standby functions in future devices. This has been supported by ad campaigns to remind the public to be considerate with their use of standby functions. On the other hand, the switch from analogue to digital television has had the converse impact: manufacturers have not been forced to address the need for digital decoding to be a standard feature of devices until very recently. This means that many people are using separate decoding devices alongside traditional analogue televisions etc. — thus multiplying the number of digital devices which are always powered (whether on or in standby). This illustration can bring home to learners the need to consider the implications of decisions, and to also consider better planning and design processes which take account of this.

Another feature of embedding sustainability in the curriculum is the opportunity to motivate the consideration of practical legal and ethical issues. Learners can find such topics somewhat abstract, but in bringing up questions about the need to upgrade versus the global cost they can begin to appreciate the tensions between ethical and strictly commercial views. Furthermore, the implications of legal requirements, such as the European Union’s disposal of waste electronic products (WEEE), can be considered in light of the actual implementation — again photos of piles of obsolete European computer hardware in third World countries demonstrates that the effect is just to move the problem rather than to reduce it. There are numerous links between computing and sustainability (Gordon 2007), and these are relevant to fields beyond computing. Some examples of this link directly with the social aspects of sustainability, for example the changing nature of communication and global perspectives. The Internet allows new platforms for eco-activism, and can increase the feeling of being part of a global community — something that can be encouraged by the use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools. But this is balanced against the role of the Internet as a global marketplace and the increasing pressure of consumerism with the consequential environmental and social impact. Another key area is the enormous growth of computer games as a pastime, which has seen increasing concerns about possible negative consequences, such as the impact on physical and mental health, but which are themselves being addressed with newer technologies and approaches to gaming.

Whilst the use of examples in teaching material — such as some of those identified above — offers one route to make learners aware of these topics, educators are well aware that the most effective form of learning is through action and active engagement. Whilst the debate over the cause of global warming and the ethical position of the off shoring of waste are to some extent individual matters, we can use learning activities to demonstrate the measurable benefits that individuals and companies can accrue through embracing sustainable policies. One example learning activity is to model the financial cost of individual/domestic or commercial IT and ICT equipment. This could be used within the context of an IT module or more generally across a range of disciplines and a wide range of educational levels. The complexity of the model and the detail involved can be amended as appropriate.

3. Example learning activity

An example learning activity is to provide learners with a simple model of the power usage of a collection of typical devices. For typical learners in H.E., this could be a computer, hi-fi, television, cooker, washer, and set top box. Depending on the level of the learners, they can be provided with a sample spreadsheet or software which has the necessary calculations and data built in, or they can be asked to find the data (e.g. the power usage of the devices) and/or the calculations for power usage (i.e. how to calculate the KW Hours per device). Within the context of a computing or related degree, students may be expected to produce an application that would do this, and could use Web Services or other mechanisms to automatically capture the latest data. By calculating the daily usage, based on so many hours switched on, x say, the number of hours on standby, y say, and the number of hours turned off, z=24-(x+y), they can calculate the daily power usage of a device and thereby the annual power usage. Making use of the Internet they can find the cost per KW Hour of electricity in their area, and hence the daily and annual cost of powering the device. With the model in place, they can see the immediate effects of altering the amount of time on standby in terms of power usage and actual monetary benefit. Finally, by finding the carbon footprint per KW Hour, they can calculate the environmental cost of that device and how they can best minimise this.

This activity can be linked in to the numerous carbon footprint calculators; the task could be simplified to simply be that of using one of these calculators or expanded so that the task is to create an online carbon calculator. The benefit of the approach as described is that it brings home the financial cost of ignoring sustainability — something which is necessary with some learners, and which reflects the imperatives that drive the commercial environment. One interesting outcome from this is that learners can become aware that due to the growing dependency on computing hardware, for many learners the environmental cost of their annual use of ICT is actually equivalent to that of their other domestic devices. For details of other ways to integrate sustainability into the curriculum, see some of the case studies available through the HEA ICS Subject Centre.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, through embedding sustainability issues within course content, learners can be informed of and develop their understanding of this fundamental topic. This can be included under Professional issues or as part of technology, where the issue of the impact of technology itself can be developed. The growing awareness of professional bodies and industry of sustainability means that learners can begin to appreciate the potential impact in terms of their future careers and lives — regardless of whether they personally accept all of the arguments themselves. The social and environmental impact of IT and the opportunities it offers to improve things can be enabled through the education of the next generation of scientists, policy makers and engineers to ensure that future IT and related systems take more account of sustainability and help to provide for a better future.