President Obama's 'Green' Executive Order

On the 5th of October, the Administration of President Obama put a stake in the ground establishing its intention to have the Federal Government setting the standard for environmental performance.

In the Executive Order titled "FEDERAL LEADERSHIP IN ENVIRONMENTAL, ENERGY,AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE", President Obama set sustainability goals for Federal agencies in a number of areas, including the area I'm most interested in -- energy efficiency and the lifecycle environmental impact of technology. The Order promotes "green technology" and encourages Federal agencies to procure environmentally preferable technology such as those that are EPEAT-registered [the Order says EPEAT-certified but the Green Electronics Council or GEC which administers the EPEAT program does not certify products, but instead enables manufacturers to declare the environmental attributes of their IT equipment, currently laptops, monitors and screens. To ensure that the self-registration system is not abused, the GEC also administers a verification program for EPEAT).

In all fairness to President Bush, from what I can see, the recommendations in President Obama's Order with respect to green IT merely extend and reinforce President Bush's Executive Order of January 2007 requiring all federal agencies to purchase EPEAT-registered products for at least 95% of their needs.

There were also other boosts in President Obama's order for green IT. For example, a recommendation that federal agencies implement and enable desktop power management as well as the implementation of energy efficiency measures in Federal datacenters (I wonder how many federal agencies are Green Grid members ....?) Even duplex printing and end-of-life management of IT equipment were mentioned!

In the UK, we've had no such orders or mandates. The next best thing is the UK Government's CIO/CTO's Green IT Council founded by the wonderfully persuasive Catalina McGregor which aims to establish best practice in UK Government Green IT.

In my day-to-day role at Computacenter, I'm certainly seeing a lot of interest in Green IT from government. As we get closer to the launch of the start of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Scheme here in the UK, that interest is only intensifying as organizations and particularly government bodies try to get their heads around how technology can be used to increase their energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint and costs.