A friend recently remarked that if he had a rupee for every time he came across the word green in conversations or media, he could have happily retired by now. There is hardly any magazine today which does not carry a story on some flavour of green. Conferences on environment sustainability perhaps exceed conferences on any other subject today. Firms are vociferously extolling their green pedigree.
Providing advice on becoming green is rapidly emerging as a lucrative opportunity for consultants. While most of us would struggle in a marathon, a Greenathon is slated to make its debut in India shortly.
I suspect that someone somewhere is quietly writing the next bestseller titled ‘Green for dummies’ or ‘101 ways to become Green’. Interestingly, according to the US Patent & trademark office, ‘Green’ is perhaps the single most trademarked term.
While this may make me sound cynical, I actually welcome this tsunami of concern regarding environment sustainability. But I often wonder whether the talk is commensurate with the actual effort being invested in making a difference to the environment around us.
Given the ubiquity of IT today, little wonder that green IT has perhaps seized centre-stage in the wider debate on green. However even in the case of green IT, the focus is more on merely making IT green rather than becoming green through the transformational potential of IT, which is rather unfortunate.
Let me explain that this is more than a mere exercise in semantics. In spite of the horror stories of the insatiable energy need of gigantic data centres and the growing number of power hungry PCs and servers, IT infrastructure actually consumes very little power comparatively. According to a recent study, even in a country like the US which is heavily invested in IT, only 2 per cent of the total energy consumption is attributable to IT infrastructure.
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If I had to hazard a guess, the figure would be lower still for India. However, it is also true that in a country like India which is very under-invested in IT, energy consumption attributable to IT will only increase as its adoption proliferates. Hence it perhaps makes eminent sense for us in India to focus on making IT green through well designed data centres, shared IT infrastructure, supporting new technology paradigms like cloud computing, stimulating e-commerce, e-wastage management, etc.
However, while IT has been getting the attention, the real culprits of environment sustainability continue to be power generation and distribution, manufacturing, transportation, logistics and commercial real estate. To make a lasting impact on environment sustainability, it is critical that the energy consumption curves of these sectors are reduced and this is where IT can play a transformational role.
Smart grids enabled by IT can automatically monitor power consumption in homes and office buildings and supply power based on real-time requirement instead of sanctioned load. IT can help in identifying transmission & distribution leakages and reduce the gap between electricity generated and electricity supplied.
Intelligent transport systems can ensure efficient management of traffic movement in congested cities, leading to fewer traffic grid-locks and thereby reducing fuel consumption. Video-conferencing through cheap, ubiquitous & reliable connectivity can drastically reduce business travel.
Dematerialisation solutions enabled by secure and mass market electronic transactions and delivered through mobile and other computing devices will obviate the need for people to use paper and visit banks, government offices, etc. Smart buildings using IT-enabled technologies including motion detection sensors, heat and light detection sensors, etc. can efficiently manage energy consumption in large office buildings where there is typically a high degree of energy profligacy.
While all this may sound like science fiction or magic today, landing a man on the moon sounded equally implausible 50 years earlier and the democratisation of knowledge by the internet would have been wildly beyond anyone’s imagination.
Creating solutions for a greener world is perhaps the biggest opportunity for ‘blue sky’ innovations today, as existing paradigms will have to be unlearnt and new paradigms created. Disruptive game-changing innovations created through large research investments and public & private sector collaborations are sine qua non. Incrementalism and business-as-usual behaviour will simply not suffice.
Firms which seize this opportunity ahead of the curve will reap first mover-advantage with others forced to follow in their wake. Toyota’s Prius is an example of a firm seizing an opportunity where others saw an obligation.
Someone recently remarked that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. There is no bigger crisis facing us as nations and individuals than climate sustainability. We can either choose to treat this as someone else’s problem or take the hard and long road to relentlessly innovate in creating game-changing solutions for a green world. The choice is a no-brainer.
The author is vice-president Nasscom. Views expressed are personal