ICT4S Conference

The first ICT4S (ICT for sustainability) conference was held last week (14-16 Feb 2013) in Zurich, Switzerland. In the organisers own words “ICT4S is about utilizing the transformational power of ICTs for making our world more sustainable: saving energy and material resources by creating more value from less input of limited natural resources, increasing quality of life for all without compromising future generations’ ability to meet their needs.”

The TSBE was represented by Dan Williams, our Microsoft EngD researcher. Dan submitted a paper ‘The Greenhouse Gas Abatement Potential of Enterprise Cloud Computing’ which can be viewed in the online conference proceedings here. The paper explores how cloud computing can have the potential to reduce greenhouse gases whilst increasing productivity and saving organisations significant costs. The paper was accepted for oral presentation and chosen to be furthered into a journal paper. You can also watch the presentation here.

For Dan, the key takeaway points from the conference were:

  • Cloud Computing is viewed as insecure which is hampering the adoption of a potentially ‘environmentally friendly’ technology.
  • The rebound impact of cloud computing and ICT in general is not well understood and could end up increasing ICTs greenhouse gas impact. This needs much further research.

 

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