Green IT

Cloud computing offers utility-oriented IT services to users worldwide. Based on a pay-as-you-go model, it enables hosting of pervasive applications from consumer, scientific, and business domains. However, data centers hosting Cloud applications consume huge amounts of electrical energy, contributing to high operational costs and carbon footprints to the environment. Therefore, we need Green Cloud computing solutions that can not only minimize operational costs but also reduce the environmental impact. In this paper, we define an architectural framework and principles for energy-efficient Cloud computing. Based on this architecture, we present our vision, open research challenges, and resource provisioning and allocation algorithms for energy-efficient management of Cloud computing environments. The proposed energy-aware allocation heuristics provision data center resources to client applications in a way that improves energy efficiency of the data center, while delivering the negotiated Quality of Service (QoS). In particular, in this paper we conduct a survey of research in energy-efficient computing and propose: (a) architectural principles for energy-efficient management of Clouds; (b) energy-efficient resource allocation policies and scheduling algorithms considering QoS expectations and power usage characteristics of the devices; and (c) a number of open research challenges, addressing which can bring substantial benefits to both resource providers and consumers. We have validated our approach by conducting a performance evaluation study using the CloudSim toolkit. The results demonstrate that Cloud computing model has immense potential as it offers significant cost savings and demonstrates high potential for the improvement of energy efficiency under dynamic workload scenarios.

The use of High Performance Computing (HPC) in commercial and consumer IT applications is becoming popular. HPC users need the ability to gain rapid and scalable access to high-end computing capabilities. Cloud computing promises to deliver such a computing infrastructure using data centers so that HPC users can access applications and data from a Cloud anywhere in the world on demand and pay based on what they use. However, the growing demand drastically increases the energy consumption of data centers, which has become a critical issue. High energy consumption not only translates to high energy cost which will reduce the profit margin of Cloud providers, but also high carbon emissions which are not environmentally sustainable. Hence, there is an urgent need for energy-efficient solutions that can address the high increase in the energy consumption from the perspective of not only the Cloud provider, but also from the environment. To address this issue, we propose near-optimal scheduling policies that exploit heterogeneity across multiple data centers for a Cloud provider. We consider a number of energy efficiency factors (such as energy cost, carbon emission rate, workload, and CPU power efficiency) which change across different data centers depending on their location, architectural design, and management system. Our carbon/energy based scheduling policies are able to achieve on average up to 25% of energy savings in comparison to profit based scheduling policies leading to higher profit and less carbon emissions.

This introductory chapter provides definitions of sustainability, sustainable development, decoupling, and related terms; gives an overview of existing interdisciplinary research fields related to ICT for Sustainability, including Environmental Informatics, Computational Sustainability, Sustainable HCI, and Green ICT; introduces a conceptual framework to structure the effects of ICT on sustainability; and provides an overview of this book.

Green Information Technology (IT) is emerging as an increasingly important issue as organizations come under pressure to address environmental sustainability concerns. Despite increased attention from business, government and more recently, Information Systems (IS) researchers, a measure to determine the capability of organizations to Green their IT remains elusive. The purpose of this paper is to develop a Green IT Readiness (G-readiness) model, identify its key dimensions and develop a reliable and valid instrument to operationalize it. The validity of the proposed model is tested using structural equation modeling based on data collected from a cross-sectional and cross-country survey of Chief Information Officers and other IT managers. The study makes an original contribution to the IS literature in an area that is attracting increasing managerial attention yet lacking in research, that is, the interaction between IT and eco- sustainability.

Green information technology (IT) adoption has helped enhance the overall organization's environmental sustainability. Developing the strategies for effective adoption of Green IT is one of the essential goals of decision-makers. This study purposes to investigate the factors that influence decision-makers' intention to use Green IT and the proposed green IT adoption model in Malaysian manufacturing firms. The 183 valid data were obtained using survey questionnaires from Malaysia's manufacturing industries' industrial managers and examine collect data through two analytical techniques. Two-staged structural equation modeling and artificial neural network applied for hypotheses evaluation and finding the significance level of every factor in the model. The outcomes of hypotheses evaluation through structural equation modeling revealed that managerial interpretation and ascription of responsibility have a significant role in predicting the adoption of green information technology in manufacturing companies. Besides, the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) results showed that the managerial interpretation and ascription of responsibility are considered as the most significant factors of green information technology adoption. This study will help the decision-makers and policymakers develop policies and programs for the effective employment of green information technology in manufacturing industries.

This chapter provides an overview of energy demand issues in the field of ICT with a focus on the history of measuring, modelling and regulating ICT electricity consumption and the resulting methodological challenges. While the energy efficiency of ICT hardware has been dramatically improving and will continue to improve for some decades, the overall energy used for ICT is still increasing. The growing demand for ICT devices and services outpaces the efficiency gains of individual devices. Worldwide per capita ICT electricity consumption exceeded 100 kWh/year in 2007 (a value which roughly doubles if entertainment equipment is included) and is further increasing. Methodological challenges include issues of data collection and modelling ICT devices and ser-vices, assessing the entire life cycle of ICT devices and infrastructures, account-ing for embedded ICT, and assessing the effect of software on ICT energy con-sumption.

Sustainability is a significant field in both research and practice as such Collaborative Enterprise (CE) are adopting sustainable initiatives to achieve efficient resource usage, CO2 emissions reduction, energy utilization reduction, moderate cost incurred, ethical waste management and natural resources conservation. Therefore, this research develops a model based on diffusion of innovation theory and sustainable life cycle process identified through literature review after which survey method was employed. The survey questionnaire was distributed targeting IT practitioners and IT managers of CE based in Malaysia. With 133 valid questionnaires in hand, the collected data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Results reveal that the internal and external characteristics influences enterprise sustainability innovativeness. Furthermore, results confirm the identified sustainable life cycle process derived from the literature. Findings from this study support policy makers in CE understand and develop process towards sustainability attainment. By applying the developed model, CE can strategize their current process towards improving the sustainability of their enterprise.

The energy efficiency of ICT has become a major issue with the growing demand of Cloud Computing. More and more companies are investing in building large datacenters to host Cloud services. These datacenters not only consume huge amount of energy but are also very complex in the infrastructure itself. Many studies have been proposed to make these datacenter energy efficient using technologies such as virtualization and consolidation. Still, these solutions are mostly cost driven and thus, do not directly address the critical impact on the environmental sustainability in terms of CO2 emissions. Hence, in this work, we propose a user-oriented Cloud architectural framework, i.e. Carbon Aware Green Cloud Architecture, which addresses this environmental problem from the overall usage of Cloud Computing resources. We also present a case study on IaaS providers. Finally, we present future research directions to enable the wholesome carbon efficiency of Cloud Computing.

Context: The energy efficiency of IT systems, also referred to as Green IT, is attracting more and more attention. While several researchers have focused on the energy efficiency of hardware and embedded systems, the role of application software in IT energy consumption still needs investigation.

There is a growing consensus that ICT can contribute to the reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, both by increasing the efficiency of existing processes and by enabling substitution effects to usher in more energy efficient patterns of production and consumption. While, however, many studies based on theoretical reduction potentials have been presented, in practice it has only been possible to cite a few examples of such reductions thus far.

This article presents the results of a field experiment for one particular domain in which ICT can be substituted for more carbon-intensive technologies: using advanced videoconferencing technology to reduce intercontinental conference travel and thus travel-related GHG emissions. We organized a large resource management conference simultaneously on two continents and assessed the emissions caused by the attendees’ travel and by the additional ICT equipment utilized to connect the two venues. We further assessed, based on a survey, the emissions in the alternative scenarios of holding the conference at either one of the places, and the satisfaction of the participants with the two-site conference format.

The results show that reductions of 37% and 50% in travel-related GHG emissions were attained as compared to the single-site alternatives, although more people took part than in any of these alternatives. At the same time, the attendees’ experience was clearly positive, showing that the multiple-site format can serve as an acceptable alternative to the traditional one-site format of holding an international conference.

The environmental performance of presently operated GSM and UMTS networks was analysed concentrating on the environmental effects of the End-of-Life (EOL) phase using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. The study was performed based on comprehensive life cycle inventory and life cycle modelling. The environmental effects were quantified using the IMPACT2002+ method. Based on technological forecasts, the environmental effects of forthcoming mobile telephone networks were approximated.
The results indicate that a parallel operation of GSM and UMTS networks is environmentally detrimental and the transition phase should be kept as short as possible. The use phase (i.e. the operation) of the radio network components account for a large fraction of the total environmental impact. In particular, there is a need to lower the energy consumption of those network components. Seen in relation to each other, UMTS networks provide an environmentally more efficient mobile communication technology than GSM networks. In assessing the EOL phase, recycling the electronic scrap of mobile phone networks was shown to have clear environmental benefits. Under the present conditions, material recycling could help lower the environmental impact of the production phase by up to 50%.

Assessing the average energy intensity of Internet transmissions is a complex task that has been a controversial subject of discussion. Estimates published over the last decade diverge by up to four orders of magnitude — from 0.0064 kilowatt-hours per gigabyte (kWh/GB) to 136 kWh/GB. This article presents a review of the methodological approaches used so far in such assessments: i) top–down analyses based on estimates of the overall Internet energy consumption and the overall Internet traffic, whereby average energy intensity is calculated by dividing energy by traffic for a given period of time, ii) model-based approaches that model all components needed to sustain an amount of Internet traffic, and iii) bottom–up approaches based on case studies and generalization of the results. Our analysis of the existing studies shows that the large spread of results is mainly caused by two factors: a) the year of reference of the analysis, which has significant influence due to efficiency gains in electronic equipment, and b) whether end devices such as personal computers or servers are included within the system boundary or not. For an overall assessment of the energy needed to perform a specific task involving the Internet, it is necessary to account for the types of end devices needed for the task, while the energy needed for data transmission can be added based on a generic estimate of Internet energy intensity for a given year. Separating the Internet as a data transmission system from the end devices leads to more accurate models and to results that are more informative for decision makers, because end devices and the networking equipment of the Internet usually belong to different spheres of control.

A life cycle assessment was carried out based on a detailed life cycle inventory for a typical GSM 900 mobile phone network and related End of Life (EOL) treatment infrastructure. The environmental relevance of the three life cycle phases: production, use and EOL treatment was analysed using IMPACT2002+. The environmentally preferable EOL treatment alternative was identified on the basis of six previously developed EOL treatment scenarios.The results indicate that the environmental impacts attributable to the use phase dominate the environmental impacts incurred over the entire life cycle of the network. The impacts of the production phase are primarily attributable to the energy intensive manufacturing of printed wiring boards (PWB). The EOL phase dominates the impacts on ecosystem quality. In particular the long-term emissions of heavy metals have critical effects. Detailed analysis of the EOL phase shows that recycling of network materials in general leads to a two fold reduction of environmental impacts: in the EOL phase itself as well as by means of the avoided primary production of materials recovered in the EOL phase. An increase in the material quality of the secondary precious and rare materials leads to a significant reduction in the impacts on human health.

For quite some years now, there has been a growing debate under the label of “Green I(C)T” about reducing the energy consumption of ICT equipment. More recently, the discourse started to partly shift towards a novel discussion on using ICT to induce energy savings in sectors other than ICT. Advocates suggest that the cumulated potential for ICT-induced savings is several times larger than the entire energy consumption of ICT itself. Numerous studies on ICT-related energy consumption exist, and also an increasing number of studies looking at ICT-induced energy efficiency. The few studies, however, considering both aspects, typically do so independently, without relating the two aspects. Moreover, in the energy efficiency discourse, ICT is usually treated as a monolithic block of technologies – only the application areas that are expected to benefit from it being differentiated. In this paper, we make the case that ICT energy consumption and ICT’s potential for inducing energy efficiency can – and should – be related to each other. We further argue that this can only be obtained by decomposing the “ICT monolith” and look at its (naturally heterogeneous) parts separately. Based on a first round of expert interviews, we show that it is possible to qualitatively determine for every single technology subsumed under ICT its potential for inducing energy efficiency. We finally argue that only by consequently following low energy consumption targets for technologies with a low energy efficiency potential, while at the same time not suffocating technologies with a high energy efficiency potential through restrictive consumption targets, the full ICT-related energy saving potential can be unleashed.

The direct energy demand of Internet data flows can be assessed using a variety of methodological approaches (top-down, bottom-up, or hybrid/model based) and different definitions of system boundaries. Because of this diversity, results reported in the literature differ by up to two orders of magnitude and are difficult to compare. We present a first assessment that uses a pure bottom-up approach and a system boundary that includes only transmission equipment. The assessment is based on the case study of a 40 megabit per second videoconferencing transmission between Switzerland and Japan, yielding a consumption of 0.2 kilowatt-hours per transmitted gigabyte for 2009, a result that supports the lowest of the existing estimates. We discuss the practical implications of our findings.

This paper provides a preliminary insight on the status of the diffusion and maturity of “Green IT” as well as some of the driving and inhibiting factors that influence it. The report is largely descriptive and is based on a survey of 143 organisations from Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
Overall, the findings indicate that organisations are developing the “right mind-set”, taking a number of “softer actions”’; and investing in new technologies to use IT as part of the solution to pursue both eco- efficiency and eco-sustainability objectives. Nevertheless, the state of Green IT among the surveyed organisations can be considered at the early stage of maturity.

Environmentally friendly and sustainable initiatives have emerged as important topics in IS research over the last few years. However the existing discussions and scientific contributions in this field are mainly based on case studies and empirical surveys. Less research is firmly based on existing IS theories. Furthermore, little research has been undertaken to analyze the contribution of outsourcing to environmental sustainability. This paper takes a theory-based approach to link outsourcing with sustainable IS to examine the possibilities of organizations engaging in green and sustainable initiatives. To ensure a broad scope the model is built on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework. This framework is extended with the diffusion of innovation (DoI) theory to incorporate implementation success, technology acceptance and the transaction cost theory (TCT) to integrate outsourcing success into the model.

This paper received Outstanding Paper Award 2010, Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce sustainability as a new dimension of information systems (IS) evaluation. Customers, policymakers and business partners increasingly require the monitoring and reporting of the organisational impact on sustainability. However, traditional IS evaluation approaches are not able to capture the impact of information technology (IT)/IS on sustainability, especially in relation to social and environmental dimensions, so the authors want to stimulate discussion and research related to this area.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper is conceptual. However, it is based on the results of an existing related research project focussed on supply chain evaluation.

Findings – In order to stimulate discussion and research, the authors propose a framework that was originally developed to evaluate supply chain practices, in which IS often play a major role. The framework is built on three dimensions – economic, social and environmental – which are divided further into three sub-dimensions. It can be used as a starting point to develop a framework for sustainability-oriented IS evaluation.

Research limitations/implications – The framework was originally developed for supply chain evaluation; however, it has generic features that can be adjusted or modified in order to be applied to a whole range of IT/IS initiatives

Practical implications – Sustainability and its new dimensions create new challenges for information systems evaluation. Companies require frameworks and tools that can help them to measure and evaluate the impact of IS on sustainability. The researcher's role is to answer such needs and focus on this emerging research topic; this paper aims to stimulate such research.

Originality/value – Sustainability is a new dimension in IT/IS evaluation. Current approaches do not include all sustainability dimensions (environmental aspects are excluded, evaluation of the social impact is limited).

This paper is based on the paper submitted by the authors for the European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems EMCIS 2008, 25-26 May, Al Bostan Rotana, Dubai (ISVN 978-1-902316-58-1). For more details about EMCIS, please visit www.emcis.org

Emerald: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1817308

To ensure their competitive advantage an increasing number of organizations adopt business process management for design, automation, and analysis of their business processes. In order to reduce cost, improve quality, save time, and increase flexibility, techniques for business process improvement and re-engineering are applied. Improving the environmental impact of a business process is a new challenge organizations are faced with. However, current approaches and techniques for business process optimization do not cover the ecological dimension explicitly. In this paper, we propose patterns which describe good solutions for green business process design to address this gap from a business perspective. The patterns are described independently from concrete business process modeling languages and execution environments in order to provide a broad applicability of the patterns within different scenarios. In addition to the patterns, we discuss the general usability of the patterns based on different aspects relevant to an organization.

We draw upon Henderson and Cooprider's [5] model of IS planning and design support technology to inform our framework to assess CASE usage for systems development. They identify that a planning and design support technology such as CASE should address three key processes, namely production,

Due to tremendous growth of Industrial activities throughout the globe, the climate of the earth is gradually changing. The Increase awareness of climate change and more concern for the environment, has forced the big industries to review their environmental credentials. The Global IT sector, for example, accounts for between two and three percent of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions which contribute towards global warming and climate change. So if the IT companies are increasing exponentially then the global warming will be more and more. Keeping all these facts the companies throughout the world are now paying more attention to Green IT as an initiative towards cost savings and a greener environment. However, a significant percentage of total population of the globe unaware of the various good practices in ICT towards Green IT. In the present work the authors tried to make a systematic study on the issues of climate change and also explore green computing from the business and IT perspective, and also to find the best practices of green computing into the users of ICT.

Concerns about energy and sustainability are growing everyday involving a wide range of fields. Even Information Systems are being influenced by the issue of reducing pollution and energy consumption and new fields are rising dealing with this topic. One of these fields is Green IT, which deals with energy efficiency with a focus on IT. Researchers have faced this problem according to several points of view. The purpose of this paper is to understand the trends and the future development of Green IT by analyzing the state of the art and classifying existing approaches to understand which are the components that have an impact on energy efficiency in Information Systems and how this impact can be reduced. At first, we explore some guidelines that can help to understand the efficiency level of an organization and of an Information System. Then we discuss measurement and estimation of energy efficiency and identify which are the components that mainly contribute to energy waste and how it is possible to improve energy efficiency, both at the hardware and at the software level.

Requirements engineers are in a unique position to encourage the consideration of sustainability at a formative phase in the software development life cycle. In this paper, we look at how we can develop sustainability as a non-functional requirement (NFR). We describe an NFR framework that is informed by sustainability models and discuss how it can be integrated into the development of software standards for sustainability. We outline a roadmap for how we may integrate sustainability in requirements engineering from a theoretical NFR framework to an applicable software quality.

The present paper explored the relationship between environmental sustainability and the use of IT. Based on interviews with seven “Green IT” experts and evangelists, we constructed a questionnaire for CIOs on this important issue. After collecting interview data from CIOs in ten organizations, we found that organizations are at different levels of maturity regarding environmental sustainability and IT use. The maturity levels ranged from an awareness of the sustainability issue to implementation of specific practices to promote environmental sustainability through IT use.

The objective of the present study is to empirically explore the implementation of Green IT measures from the perspective of the dynamic resources in organizations. To this end, the paper integrates two streams of research- 1) the dynamic resources or capabilities of a firm and, 2) the adoption of Green IT measures. The findings suggest that two organizations in our sample have been successful in mobilizing their dynamic resources while implementing Green IT. As a result, these organizations have leveraged Green IT implementation for strategic purposes. Organizational awareness about Green IT is critical to initiating strategic actions in this area.

his paper proposes a comprehensive framework of the individual factors that influence organizational decision-makers to adopt Green information systems (IS), based on a review of psychological theories and empirical studies on Green IS and technology adoption. The objectives of this paper are, firstly, to explain that the adoption of Green IS by managers is directly influenced by their intention, which is assumed to be influenced by their attitude towards Green IS, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and personal norms. In the framework, attitude towards Green IS is influenced by managers’ positive and negative affect in response to Green IS. The findings of this study show that subjective norms are reflected from three sources containing primary, secondary and work referents. Perceived behavioral control includes self-efficacy, monetary cost–benefit assessment and the ethical climate of the organization. Personal norms are influenced by awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibilities and personal values including self-transcendence and self-enhancement. Secondly, the paper aims to assess the importance of the individual factors that influence the organizational decision-makers to adopt Green IS. Accordingly, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is applied to rank the importance of the factors incorporated in the proposed framework. The data for this study is collected by conducting an online survey through a structured questionnaire-based instrument comprising 5-point Likert-type scales. The findings of this study contribute to the Green IS literature by improving the decision-making process in IS adoption for the purpose of environmental sustainability enhancement. It is hoped that the proposed model would help
to clarify the relative importance of the psychological and socio-demographic factors influencing the adoption of Green IS by organizational decision-makers.

The increasing trends of electrical consumption within data centres are a growing concern for business owners as they are quickly becoming a large fraction of the total cost of ownership. Ultra small sensors could be deployed within a data centre to monitor environmental factors to lower the electrical costs and improve the energy efficiency. Since servers and air conditioners represent the top users of electrical power in the data centre, this research sets out to explore methods from each subsystem of the data centre as part of an overall energy efficient solution. In this paper, we investigate the current trends of Green IT awareness and how the deployment of small environmental sensors and Site Infrastructure equipment optimization techniques which can offer a solution to a global issue by reducing carbon emissions.

To achieve lower energy consumption many green strategies (e.g. virtualize applications and consolidate them on shared server machines, or optimize the usage of the private cloud by opening up to external consumers) have been discussed. In practice, however, the major incentive for a company to go green is reducing costs. While green strategies often focus on technical and environmental issues, they hardly address the economic impact that they may bring. If green strategies do not lead to an explicit (and significant) reduction of costs (hence increase in revenues) they are nice but not part of the business strategy of the company. In this paper we propose a green strategy model that provides decision makers with the information needed to decide on whether to take green strategies and eventually how to align them with their business strategies. This model provides a means to codify green strategies in such a way that the link between green strategies, their economic impact and green goals becomes explicit. We applied the model in a case study to codify 132 green actions collected from Dutch data centers. This exercise further confirmed the advantage of using the proposed model and helped us identifying future improvements.

This study examines the development of a mobile phone-based pervasive game that related its user's environmental footprint. It discusses the design challenges, development and evaluation of the prototype game in order to identify the key strategies and mechanisms that relate to the production of pervasive systems for mass participation. Designing the user experience for such systems is particularly difficult, as the game had to educate and entertain without patronizing or preaching to the user. A prototype system was developed and trialed in order to identify and understand how users related to the experience and how the game may be further developed. We found that character-led tailored physical activities were generally found to be the most enjoyable, while players wanted more interaction with each other and more score-based content. Creating interdependent question sets and orchestrating the game arduous process. In the future a fully automated system will be key to its use.

Goal, Scope and Background: Telephony as well as remote data transfer is increasingly performed via mobile phone networks. However, the environmental consequences, in particular of the End-of-Life (EOL) treatment, of such network infrastructures have been investigated insufficiently to date. In the present report the environmental implications of the EOL treatment of a single GSM 900 antenna rack have been analysed.
Methods: Based on comprehensive inventories of a GSM 900
antenna station rack and currently applied EOL treatment, the environmental impacts related to the EOL treatment of the rack are investigated. Six different EOL treatment scenarios are developed to find an environmentally safe treatment alternative. System expansion, i.e. inclusion of the production phase, is applied to all scenarios in order to consider different amounts of regained materials.
Results and Discussion. The production of primary rack materials, especially that of palladium (accounts for almost 40% of the ecotoxicity impact category), to substitute lost materials dominates the overall environmental impact. Releases of heavy metals from landfilled rack components / materials and of byproducts to the environment greatly influence the overall impacts on human health and ecosystem quality. The final disposal of rack components contributes to about 70% of the non-carcinogenic effects. Landfilled dust from steel production contributes to nearly 11% of this impact category.
Conclusions: The results suggest that all precious metals containing electronic scrap should be treated in specially equipped metal recovery plants. A complete rack disassembly before processing in high-standard metal recovery plants is not necessary. An elaborated pre-treatment and fractionation of the scrap prior to precious material recovery does not lower the environmental impacts and is not mandatory and would only become environmentally interesting if high recovery of heavy metals is achieved. To avoid the formation and release of volatile and toxic heavy metal, incineration of electronic scrap as of by-products prior to landfilling should be avoided. To reduce the overall environmental load, a standardisation of the sizes of rack components, facilitating their re-use, is recommended.

The Focus of the GREENS workshop is the engineering of green and sustainable software. Our goal is to bring together academics and practitioners to discuss research initiatives, challenges, ideas, and results in this critically important area of the software industry. This second edition of the workshop was held at ICSE 2013 in San Francisco, CA, USA. The theme of GREENS 2013 is Leveraging "Energy Efficiency to Software Users." It featured a keynote talk, ten research papers and three breakout sessions that discussed topics that ranged from qualities vs. energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, to green models and views for (software) products/process and to stakeholders, relevant metrics and measurements. In this report, we present the themes of the workshop, and summarize the results of the discussions held in the breakout sessions, as well as the identified research challenges for future investigation.

Carbon emissions are receiving increased attention and scrutiny in all walks of life and the ICT sector is no exception. With the increase in on-demand applications and services together with on-demand compute/storage facilities in server farms or data centres there are self-evident increases in the power requirements to maintain such systems. Proponents of the impact of increased carbon emissions when powering electrical systems in general however, regularly impress negative side-effects such as influence on climate change. Action is subsequently being encouraged to halt further environmental damage. The problem is explored in this paper from the point of view of carbon emissions from data centre operations and the development of energy-aware management and energy-efficient networking solutions. Data centre energy consumption costs drive the evaluation process within a Data Centre Energy-Efficient Context-Aware Broker (DCe-CAB) algorithm designed as an original solution to this significant carbon-contributing network scenario. In this paper, performance requirements and objectives of the DCe-CAB are defined, along with case study demonstration of the way in which it optimises selection and operation of data centres using context-awareness.

Green information technologies and systems IT/IS
are initiatives, strategies and programs that directly
or indirectly address environmental sustainability in
organizations. While practitioners have begun to
focus on Green IT/IS, however there is few research
in this area. The aim of this paper is to develop a
framework to assist practitioners and organisations
in the adoption of green IT/IS practices in IT
Governance. Existing green IT/IS literature were
reviewed. Hence the paper concern research that
addresses Green IT, Green IS and environmental
sustainability mainly in domain of information
technology governance (IT Governance). Findings
from this paper show the components and attributes
that are to be considered in implementing Green
IT/IS in IT Governance. Thus the framework can
also be used as a guide for future research in this
domain.

Most part of the “Green IT“ or “Green ICT“ discussion is addressing issues of energy efficiency, implicitly assuming that more energy-efficient technologies will substantially contribute to a reduction of total energy consumption and, as a consequence, of CO2 emissions. This assumption is usually challenged by historical evidence for the rebound effect. This paper presents a case study on smart vending machines, showing that the ocurrence and size of the rebound effect can vary greatly depending on several factors. Some suggestions on how to avoid rebound effects when
applying “smarter” technologies to save energy are derived.

Computing is an activity that is based on natural resources like any other human activity. Technological progress has made it possible to perform more and more computations with less material and energy input. This paper looks at this development through the lens of the three concepts of efficiency, sufficiency, and self-sufficiency, asking the question of whether it could lead to a state of self-sufficiency. This vision, which seems attainable for the activity of computing, is then taken both as a model and as an enabling element for a transition towards a sustainable circular economy based on relative regional self-sufficiency.

The issue of sustainability has been among the top concerns of IT practitioners for some time now. Although sustainability of and through IT can only be reached if all stakeholders work together, current teaching and on-thejob training approaches do not provide the required understanding of how to govern the cooperation. Furthermore, there is a general gap between IS academia and practice regarding skill teaching, stakeholder informing and contributions towards sustainable business practices. In this paper, we adopt a design science research methodology to develop and evaluate a first approach to close this threefold gap.