Triplesourced
Reporting, musing and not to mention some random scribbling on tech issues from green/sustainable IT to security. (http://adonoghue.wordpress.com/)
Saturday 6 September 2008, 7:38 PM
BBC must switch on to PC switch off
But as transport costs kind of come with the territory when your a media organisation sending reporters around the world, the Beeb probably deserves some latitude here and they have committed to reduce the transport costs and the resulting C02.
However the Beeb staffer said the real green story with the corporation is not with transport but with PCs and other equipment being left on overnight. This is something all of us have been guilty over time - especially given the eons it can take to power up and down Windows.
However it seems that Beeb employees are especially bad when it comes to switching off PCs and other equipment - many of them have a TV and a radio on their desk. Forgetting why with the likes of iPlayer people would need their own TV at work, this all means that many BBC staff are leaving several devices on over night for weeks at a time presumably.
The contact suggested that I should get hold of an infrared camera - and presumably a helicopter to get a picture of BBC Television centre at night - and compare it to the heat-map of the nearby housing estate to see how much energy is being burned by devices not in use.
The route of the problem is that a lot of the BBC PCs are quite old apparently - which means they might be running something like WIndows 2000 which takes an eternity to boot. I had experience of an old-school publishing company which was still running Windows 2000 which came as a bit of a shock on my first day and I was sorely tempted to leave the machine running to avoid the 15 minute delay to my day the next morning.
The Beeb has made efforts to get people to turn off PCs and my friend claims that people take notice for about a week and then things slide back to normal. Centralised PC management sounds like the way to go - and maybe a migration to Linux desktops - that way the Beeb can probably keep a lot of the same machines but run them with a more efficient OS. (software compatibility and application issues aside of course ;-))
PreviousComments on this post
Surely...if the BBC are running old 2000 rigs, then they could be replaced with todays laptops (bit by bit I would imagine) and be left with plenty of slack on the power side of things as well as new found speed and fast boot ups from sleep mode. The relief on our planet would be worthwhile.
Sound like there's potential for a good documentry
Yep - I guess more efficient hardware makes sense - but then most of the carbon footprint of a PC is incurred during the manufacturing process, so the physical act of buying a new machine means that you are inheriting a carbon debt before you even switch on the device.
A study by Professors Rudiger Kuerh and Eric Williams from the United Nations University in Tokyo have shown that manufacture of a single PC needs 1.7 tonnes of materials, including the consumption of more than 10 times its own weight in fossil fuels. The study also showed that 75 per cent of PC fossil fuel consumption has already happened before the computer is ever switched on.
"...the construction of an average 24-kilogram computer and 27-centimetre monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuel, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,500 kilograms of water – or 1.8 tons in total, the equivalent of a rhinoceros or sports utility vehicle," the study claims. (find it here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=10007&Cr=computer&Cr1)
So although the BBC could get more efficient PCs with better power management - it's hard to say whether the carbon debt incurred from a whole refresh would be more or less than they would save from the current PCs being left on all the time.
An upgrade would have to happen eventually I suppose but the key thing is that refresh cycles have to become longer than the average 3 years at the moment. The less machines we consumer in our lifetime - the better.
My goodness, that was an eye opener for sure!!
The last firm that I did some work for had laptops lying around not being used, and the firm before that one. What a ridiculous situation!
I think machines are good enough now to be in use for years and years in the basic work space, and it doesn't help that a lot of people out there believe that it's time for a new machine just because windows starts grinding to a halt. This I have seen a lot of when it comes to the domestic side of things, but more depressingly I have seen it in the corporate world as well.
There are IT people out there who know nothing of using some well known apps to do some simple house keeping. I've come across machines with GBs of junk files and thousands of registry errors.
This is a great shame when people such as piriform and the like don't mind their freeware apps being used in the corporate world.
whoever told you to use an infrared camera to see what devices were left on should leave the infrared business. You can find energy loss such and heat and cold as well as potential moisture intrusion issues on the roof at night with IR but you will have no idea what is left on and what isn't.
