Bang for the buck
This week I made my way to Chester to visit oil company Shell’s innovation centre. Perhaps this will sound stupid, but I’m trying to do a bit of research on future fuels for the internet and business in general, so this seemed like a good place to start.
Although the company is investing a small portion of profit into alternative energy sources, such as biofuels, wind and hydrogen research, it seems the oil company will remain an oil company for some years to come. For the next 30 years it predicts that most energy will come from hydrocarbon fuel – and most of that will come from crude oil.
I admit I was disappointed to learn this and despite the investments made in cutting CO2 emissions from processing oil, many were found to be expensive and difficult to achieve.
So this week I’ve mostly been reflecting on this will affect the world of business, IT and people on the street.
I think the IT industry, although waffling and missing the point at the moment, has the potential to change quite a lot – it will be forced to look at one thing that will finally align it with other technologies we have become used to – miles per gallon. Or you could just say efficiency.
IT has become an integral part of many companies today – whether it brings value or not is another matter – but few organisations have stopped to think of the environmental impact it has. And why would they? As profit-motivated entities, their main concerns are around making and saving money.
But if the price of fuel for computers rises, it won’t take long for companies to think differently.
Soon you might see companies looking to run their buildings, IT systems and complete infrastructures the same way we run cars – costs vs mileage. Perhaps IT systems will even control that entire business infrastructure with an aim to getting more bang for the buck.
You might see software vendors claiming their applications only take up small amounts of processing power, which would contribute to keeping chips from working so hard and using as much electricity as they do now. We’ve already heard hardware companies bragging about how clean their products are, but they still run on the premise that for a machine to work, a chip must be heated and cooled – a terrific use of energy.
That needs to change, however. They’ll need to demonstrate in real, numerical terms exactly how much it costs to fuel each product over a certain period of time. I would hazard a guess that many IT vendors are a bit scared of this extra responsibility. But like Y2K and compliance fear/sales campaigns, it could also be seen as another good excuse to get people to spend more money and upgrade.
The unfortunate thing is that while these changes take place, it doesn’t necessarily mean that fuel will be environmentally friendly – that would depend on how available and cheap that type of fuel is. And we don’t really know the answer to that yet.
Yet in any case, none of this will have an effect unless the masses adopt such procedures and put pressure on the vendors to do better. I said there was potential – I didn’t say it would be easy.