KiteBlue

An openly green letter to the software industry

Today’s “green” software applications leave a lot to be desired. In this open letter to software industry CEOs, Jyoti Banerjee of KiteBlue argues that we need fresh thinking and leadership to make a genuine difference to the industry’s poorly-served customer.

Dear software CEO,

First of all, warmest greetings for 2010. I know that 2009 was a rather unusual year, to say the least, and I am certainly looking forward to what 2010 has to offer. But this letter is not about New Year greetings or resolutions. So, on with my missive.

The carbon footprint of information and communications technologies is growing and growing. Laptops, servers, mobile phones, networks, cloud farms and their like are expected to contribute around 1.5 gigatons of carbon to our planet’s footprint, at least three times more than their contribution in 2002. Yet these same technologies are enabling all sorts of other industries to cut their carbon footprints. The smart guys at McKinsey have estimated that IT – an industry in which your companies play a key role - will enable around 7.8 gigatons of emissions to be cut from other industries by 2020, or around a sixth of global emissions today.

So it should be worth doing.

But is it? Are we really seeing myriad industries abating their environmental emissions as a result of the output of the ICT industries? Quite possibly we are; I am not in a position to comment. But the one industry that I have tracked for nearly two decades, business application software, seems to be pulling up short.

Yes, that is your industry.

Carbonated apps have no fizz

The software industry seems to have little to offer its customers in terms of value in environmental management. Some of you say that this is because your customers have shown no interest in green software apps. And you would be right - most of your customers have ignored green software, at a time when climate change and the environment are two of the hottest properties around.

But why is that?

I think it is because your "carbonated" software applications have no fizz whatsoever. What do I mean by that? Well, do read on.

It’s not as if we don’t have countless little carbon apps on offer, thank you. If the number of carbon calculators from application software companies and on the Internet was a measure of how seriously climate change was being tackled, then the problem of carbon emissions would have to be filed under the category “solved.” But carbon calculators and environmental dashboards are just window-dressing. They are very limited in their scope and their thinking, and their perpetrators are condemning the business software industry to the role of bit-players in the climate change saga playing out in front of our eyes.

Let me give you some reasons why.

Dealing with carbon regulations

While the Obama administration is moving fast to break with eight years of "climate denial" under George Bush, the UK government seems to have lost its early focus on introducing climate change regulations. Jyoti Banerjee investigates.

For a time, a year or so ago, it looked as if UK companies would be required to meet mandatory regulations on carbon emissions. But the focus seems to have been lost, under pressure from business lobby groups that are concerned about the impact such regulations will have on British companies. Instead, UK companies are urged to report their carbon emissions following recommended guidelines, and the soonest we will have a carbon regulatory framework will now be 2010, when only Britain's largest companies will have to meet the forthcoming Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) mandatory framework.

The Americans are still debating the merits of carbon trading schemes versus carbon taxes, with carbon trading, based on existing EU schemes, gaining ground among policy-makers. Right now, no one really knows what the Obama administration will seek to put in place but it is quite certain that whatever happens in the US will be felt over here in the UK.

Medium enterprise and the low-carbon economy

Climate change, whether you believe in it or not, is going to change every business on the planet, either by force of regulation, or by a competitive drive towards low-carbon business models. Medium enterprises have a great opportunity to be the next generation of big winners in a future low-carbon economy. Or big losers. Jyoti Banerjee investigates the balance of probability.

Last week BBC Radio 4 featured an interview with a Canadian academic who has developed a prosthetic knee that generates electricity every time the knee flexes. It’s a great idea for helping provide power to disabled people but it turns out that there are other applications as well. The military could generate electricity for their communications devices while walking. And the rest of us could walk around to power up our iPods, mobiles and GPS units.

Walking to generate electricity is not going to turn back the tide on climate change but it is just one more example of the way clean-technology approaches are gaining traction in the market.

Medium enterprises are probably as concerned as everybody else about climate change but many executives of such organisations that I have met wonder what they can do to really make a difference. After all, the industries that have to make the biggest changes to their carbon productivity, such as energy, transport and heavy industry, are usually not populated with medium enterprises. Executives in medium enterprises agonise over installing efficient heating, or motion sensors to switch lighting in less-used locations like toilets because they know that these things make good business sense anyway, but surely none of these are going to tackle the problem of climate change.

Personal footprints, global change

Climate change is a serious challenge for every single one of us except, it seems, George Bush. Jyoti Banerjee checks out his own carbon footprint while assessing the environment’s impact on growth.

Nick Stern’s review of the economic consequences of climate change (commissioned by the UK Treasury) is nearly upon us. He is expected to announce that climate change will result in a 20% fall in global output, the sort of scale of negative impact on growth and development we might expect from a world war. Read Robert Peston's review of the Stern Review here.

In macro-economic terms, the plunging economic performance comes from a mix of factors:
dealing with lower agricultural and food output; the increased depreciation of capital due to its redeployment on things like sea defences as well as the greater pace of technological obsolescence (we will be throwing away our heating systems and installing air-conditioning, for example); and the adverse impact of climate change on people’s skills and development.

There is no doubt that climate change has moved into a higher gear. Many environmentalists now doubt that we can turn back the tide. We, and our children, will have to live with the consequences of our actions, and the actions of our parents and grandparents.