Andrea DiMaio

On Tuesday last week I had the pleasure to moderate a panel on “Is There Anything Greener Than The Dollar?“. Panelists were Terry Redman, CIO of South West Florida Water Management District and Richard Boe, Director of IT Operations at FAA Air Traffic Organization.

Terry spoke about their current green IT program and how much focus they are putting on the measurement piece, in order to build a reasonable baseline. He shared with the audience that just instrumenting the electrical network to place energy meters that allow to capture more granular information about consumption is far from easy. The desire for precision needs to be balanced against cost and time required for these additional devices.

Richard shared the FAA-ATO experience, where they recycle their PCs through an agreement with Dell and receive exchange credits, have cut their equipment removal time from six months to five days, and have virtually no hazardous waste going to landfills.

Both are examples of a concrete, down-to-earth approach to different aspects of green IT and In both cases green IT is meant to save money. I asked them how they felt this particular aspect and they confirmed that returning on the green IT investment in a relatively short time is key.

This panel was perfectly in line with the several meetings I had during Symposium and the week before on green IT. Green has to save money or won’t be, especially in the current economic situation.