ICT for Energy Efficiency

I’d like to poit you to these following interesting documents from the High Level event on ICT for Energy Efficiency, organised by the European Commission’s Information Society and Media Directorate-General, in cooperation with the Spanish Presidency of the European Union:

• “Mobilising Information and Communications Technologies to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy.” , European Commission Recommendation – C(2009) 7604 – Brussels, 9.105.2009
• “Mobilising Information and Communication Technologies to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy”, European Commission Communication – COM(2009) 111 – Brussels, 12.3.2009
• “Addressing the challenge of energy efficiency through Information and Communication Technologies”, European Commission Communication – COM(2008) 241 – Brussels, 13.5.2008
• “Information and Communication Technologies for a Low Carbon Society”, European Commission Public Consultation Report – Brussels, September 2009
• “Information and Communication Technologies Enabling Energy Efficiency”, European Commission Public Consultation Report – Brussels, May 2008
• “Impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on Energy Efficiency” by Bio Intelligence Service, European Commission Funded Study Final Report – September 2008
• “ICT for a Low Carbon Economy – Smart Buildings“, European Commission Publication – July 2009
• “ICT for a Low Carbon Economy – Smart Electricity Distribution Networks”, European Commission Publication – July 2009

Green ICT 2.0 (ICT for sustainability) taxonomy

The taxonomy for Green ICT 2.0 is more interesting than Green ICT 1.0 and keep on evolving (details in a following post), till now I’ve identified these classes (see the semantic net for additional relations):

• Smart City: Planning & Deploy modern simulation and analysis software to improve urban life. The main involved sectors are:
  • Traffic Management  & Intelligent Transport: Synchronized traffic and alert system
  • Smart Utilities:
• Heating/Cooling network and storage
• Water supply micro monitoring
• Smart meter: water consumption
• Waste differentiated collection
• Public Lightening
  • Public safety

note: See other voices for Smart Buildings, Dematerialization, Green Procurement.

• Smart Buildings:
  • Smart metering
  • Smart Appliances
  • Distributed power generation

Dematerialization & SMART work:

• Electronic Document & Payment
• Virtual office (tele-work)
• Mobile services
• Smart Industry / Smart Manufacturing:
  • High-value product remote monitoring module
  • I-optimization
  • Analytics
  • Manufacturing synchronization
    • Improved logistics
    • Packaging Intensity
    • Carbon account and tracking
    • Green Procurement
      • LCA
    • Environmental health and safety application (EH&S)
  • Smart Grid
    • Energy network monitoring
    • Smart meter:
      • micro-power generation
      • loading optimization
    • Energy Trading and Risk Management
  • Radical transparency and efficiency in Supply Chain
  • Smart logistics
    • Centralized tracking
    • Decentralized tracking
    • Loading optimization
    • Onboard telematics
    • Remote supply control
    • Increase communication

Top level taxonomy: Green ICT 1.0 (make greener ICT) and Green ICT 2.0 (ICT for Green)

In this blog I’ll follow the proposed Forrester taxonomy about Green IT that refers to:
Green IT 1.0 as solutions and technology efforts to reduce the direct impact of IT (or better ICT) to the environment, mostly related to the energy usage by ICT devices, but including also other resources such as paper and life cycle impact of electronic devices up to e-waste.

Green IT 2.0 or ICT for Green as solutions that are enabled by ICT for improving the sustainability in other processes, leveraging innovation and transparency and improving the efficiency of many wectors.

A good explanation of Green IT is in the following report that I really liked:

Mapping IT’s Green Opportunities Get Ready For Green IT 2.0 by Christopher Mines, March 5, 2009

Vendor strategists must raise their sights to take in and capture the full value of IT across the landscape of green business opportunity. The foreground of energy efficiency and waste reduction – the green IT 1.0 zone where many strategists focus today – will soon be eclipsed by a broader horizon. IT will drive new sustainability value in business processes and public infrastructure projects – the world of green IT 2.0 – that will spur IT innovation and growth for years to come.

In my following posts I’ll explain with growing levels of details my collection of Green ICT technologies from several sources, starting from SMART 2020 report, including valuable studies from Accenture, Forrester, IDC, Gartner, WWF, etc.  Obviously I’ll also add a few of my own and later I plan to periodically updated due to new solution proposed and your feedback. I hope that you’ll enjoy it and find it valuable.