Kategorie: sustainability

My 2017 MacBook Pro 13″ Batterry life went down to about 45 mins. I can’t blame it, since its running basically round the clock since 4 years.

After (another) temporary switch to the Dell Windows world, I became so annoyed I decided to get the new M1 16″ – 16″, beacause my eyes are not getting any better 😉

I went for the M1 PRO and not MAX because of my daily tools inlcude more Teams than Xcode nowadays, so that seemed to be fast enough. I went for 32GB RAM though.

Boy, is this a fast machine. There is NO app (Teams, Safari, Excel…) which is NOT starting in under 1 sec. I can have endless Safari windows and tabs, and I don’t notice any slowing down. But the most amazing thing – is the battery life. I literally use Teams and Slack all day, and especially Teams is infamous for its performance.

The screenshot above shows 1:12 hours of operation still possible, and this is after about 9 hours since last charge and heavy usage. As far as I know, battery capacity is the same as in the older models, but this is the Apple Silicon which has such a fantastic power to energy consumption ratio.

remarks on the posting picture: Its a photo I took from a revent trip to Amsterdams Straat Museum – not sure if I am allowed to use it here, but its become my desktop background since then.

Last week I wrote about the inherent connection of Sustainability and IT and why digitalization should be at the heart of every Sustainability effort.
Today I want to go into more detail of the two dimensions of

1. Sustainability of IT.
2. Sustainability by IT.

Sustainability of IT.

You may have heard of the term „Green-IT“ which origins somewhere from the 90s. IT all started with the ’92 established Energy-Star label, introduced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The label promoted and made energy efficient monitors and other hardware more recognizable. For example, the sometimes better or worse working „Sleep-Mode“ was adopted by more and more hardware producers and OS developers as a prerequisite to get the label. Today you may have seen the Swedish TCO label on the back of your monitor which stands for low magnetic and electric emissions.
Whilst these labels cover the hardware side of Green IT, on the software side we don’t have any certifications or labels yet.
On that side though lies significant high leverage, as there is an analogy to your driving style:

• the hardware is your car – you want to have that working efficiently
• the software is your driving style: your car might consume 3l at 80km/h – if you take it to 200km/h it will consume exponentially more.

Besides having no label, there though are several initiatives and principles on how to write and operate efficient software. For example using hashed or indexed algorithms for search is much more efficient than using linear ones.

Another high, but rarely recognized leverage, lies in the retirement of software. As a study by the German Bundesamt for Environment in 2019 laid out, about 30% of software installed in datacenters is not being used. All tough latest studies show, that the effectiveness of datacenters during recent years improved drastically due to high effective coolings and more and more switching to green energy, we are talking an estimated total co2 emission of roughly 900 billion kilograms here (2018 Pearce) which is about the global aviation industry (pre Corona, Air Transport Action Group 2020). Reducing that by 30% is a lot.

As sustainability is not only about emissions and energy consumption but about decent work and economic growth, reducing risks of software-hacks and data-loss is a further essential goal to be achieved by software retirement.

Sustainability by IT

There are a lot of examples in which IT helps Sustainability efforts of organizations:

1. Reducing emissions for business travel through virtual meetings
2. Proving a transparent supply chain by using blockchain technology
3. Reducing poverty by enabling internet access in 3rd world countries and teaching development skills
4. …

Though IT and digitalization can add a lot to reach SDG goals and are a key driver, one has to be aware of the drawbacks:

1. Digital platforms can lead to alienation and loneliness
2. Training Algorithms can be tricky and lead to faulty, discriminating results
3. IT for itself is not sufficient: business-processes have to have people in their focus, have to serve the people with purpose

In this article I tried to lay out the two different aspects of IT and Sustainability. I hope you liked it and I am happy to find out about your opinion to IT, Digitalization and Sustainability.

If you have more questions or ideas regarding this, visit us over at https://www.motionet.de

References
Pearce, F. (2018). “Energy Hogs: Can World’s Huge Data Centers Be Made More Efficient?” Yale Environment 360, April 3rd, Https://E360.Yale.edu/Features/Energy-Hogs-Can-Huge-Data-Centers-Be-Made-More-Efficient
Air Transport Action Group (2020). Facts And Figures. Https://Www.atag.org/Facts-Figures.html

It all started with Digitization: when the first Electronic Mail was sent nearly 60 years ago at MIT, a silent revolution enfolded: Digitization meant the transition from analog data (often represented in wave-based technology) to a very simple concept: on or off, zero or one, abstracted in a binary layer.
But Digitization was just about the data. With Digitalization it was about the processes, so how the data is flowing through organizations.
Now Digital Transformation is about the purpose of the organization itself. It‘s about people, customers, employees, added value – and their interactions. It’s strategy first, technology second.

As a MIT Research study shows, digital transformed companies are about 26% more profitable then the norm. A PWC research says, that 80% of CEOs think, that „the production technology their companies use, will change in the next five years“. That’s why its common sense nowadays, that digital transformation is at the heart of every organization that wants to succeed in the future.

The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.

Oren Harari

When an IT powered Digitalization is at the very heart of an organization, a Sustainable Transformation Strategy also has to be driven by IT, has to understand Digital Transformation. This means, not only IT itself has to sustainable (often labelled GreenIT), but sustainability has to be driven by digital technologies.

As in the process of Digital Transformation, most organizations are still on the first steps of the road to a Sustainable Transformation Strategy. GRI powered reports are mostly a mere greenwashing PR tool than a real change strategy. IT is being used to fuel these reports – but its transformational power has not been unleashed yet. When it comes to implementation of sustainability strategies into organizations, Digital-Transformation and Sustainability are natural allies, which can enfold superpowers.