Greenwash: Our Guide to Carbon Offsetting Schemes

Kelly Smith, managing director, Smartbunker

As industry's impact on the environment becomes apparent, we in IT need to recognise our responsibility.

We can't keep powering up machines, by burning fossil fuels. On the other hand, data centres are a very power-hungry animals. Given their predicted population something pretty drastic needs to be done in this area.

The good news is, we've learned to manage their appetite for fossil fuels. We've had to, because electricity prices are going through the roof. Something had to give.

End-users want it both ways these days. They want all their needs met by a data centre service. But they don't want any carbon footprints. Data centre managers are left with a dilemma. Which scheme will come closest to meeting their business needs, without melting the ice caps?

There are plenty of environmental schemes and policies. But which are genuine? They all are, to a certain degree. They're all a load of greenwash.

We define Greenwash as, “misleading information designed to conceal abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image.”

Most environmental power generation schemes are either disastrous (melting ice caps) or acceptable (if not exactly environmentally friendly, then at least sustainable). Acceptable is as good as it gets, for now.

Here's a guide to Greenwash.

Fossil Fuels

Obviously, no one wants to burn fossil fuels. But, says the DTI, we create 5 million tonnes of carbon emissions each day by doing so now.

Carbon Offsetting

Carbon Offsetting is the first draft of a green IT policy. And the first draft of anything is always useless, as Ernest Hemmingway said. Offest your car journey by planting a tree, runs the theory. Despite being rubbish, it's a growing business.

CarbonTradeWatch.org estimates that 89 million euros were sold all over the world in 9 months of 2006, up 300 per cent from 2005. They predict a rise to 450 million euros in three years's time.

But carbon offsetting schemes have their critics. Once carbon is out the ground, up the power station chimney and in the air, it's part of an active carbon pool. Planting a tree won't recapture it. Not for many thousands of years, anyway. So even if tree-planting schemes are effective, there'd be more carbon in the atmosphere. And when that tree inevitably gets hacked down, the effect will be even worse.

Carbon offsetting schemes are great for managing guilt though.

Carbon Neutrality

Again the terminology is misleading. It implies the overall amount of carbon in circulation stays the same. The great hope for carbon neutral power generation is the use of biomass fuels. These are agricultural or products, like rapeseed oil. Biomass fuel contains only carbon already in circulation in the environment, albeit temporarily locked into plant form.

If you burn biomass fuel, you're only releasing carbon that was taken from the atmosphere by the plant.

Sounds great, but it is not without problems. Biomass fuel would only really be carbon neutral if the numbers were even. But burning biomass releases far more carbon than the plant originally extracted from the air. There are other factors, such as the carbon used in the fuel processing techniques. And the sustainability of the farming techniques used to create the plants.

Take trees - the most likely source of biomass fuel in Scotland. Each tree takes around 30 years to grow from seed to full tree. If a tree is felled to use for fuel, the carbon released will be reabsorbed in 30 years time. If trees (or whatever original biomass was used) are harvested at an accelerating rate to furnish power stations with fuel, without planting new trees at the same rate, or without allowing new trees to mature, there will be an overall gain in carbon in the atmosphere.

Another thing: creating fuel on an industrial scale requires industrial farming techniques. These farming methods are not typically linked to local ecological health.

Again, carbon neutral biomass schemes are a step in the right direction. In theory they offer a credible alternative to traditional power generation. Not in practice. Yet.

Verdict: a light coat of greenwash.

Zero Carbon

Renewable power supplies, wind, wave, tide, hydro and solar release no carbon into the atmosphere. The government has set a target of 10% of UK power to be generated from renewables by 2010, up from the current 2.5%.

Nuclear energy is also zero carbon and currently accounts for 22% of UK power generation. It is likely that the UK will at some point invest in an expansion in its nuclear capacity. However, given the potential environmental damage that this type of fuel can bring, no one outside of the nuclear industry is likely to hold nuclear energy up as the green beacon of power generation.

Some say building a renewable site creates carbon emissions. True, but it's not signficant over the the life of the plant. Local populations are often less than keen on a change to their local scenery caused by industrial scale renewable power installations. But this hasn’t stopped the Navarre region of Spain generating 70% of their power from wind and solar sources. The most significant criticism of renewable energy is its inherent unpredictability. What happens if it isn’t windy?

Nothing is simple

On a macro scale, the UK is likely to invest in a combination of reliable carbon neutral energy from biomass fuel, more desirable but unreliable zero carbon renewable schemes and nuclear power. We'll probably use up the rest of our existing coal and gas fuelled power stations.

Some time in the future, some boffin may make a technological breakthrough enabling the generation of power in a way that benefits the environment. In the meantime the best we can do as a country is opt for the best mix of the most acceptable solutions.

But data centre managers can decide what source of energy they want to use. This is down to the way that the UK’s electricity market is constructed. Power generation companies are independent from the delivery mechanism, the National Grid. The company selling power to the data centre can be different again.

The data centre manager can buy zero carbon renewable energy, the most environmentally sound option of all, and not have to worry about the overall strategic needs of the country.

No need for greenwash

www.centri.net

www.smartbunker.com

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