These days, facilities staff members are constantly immersed in sustainability, what with their roles in planning campus construction, dealing with campus energy systems, and supervising odds and ends like campus waste — all of which are directly tied to sustainability priorities.
The average chief information officer is fairly removed from this world — and that’s perhaps why “green IT” is getting attention much later than more mainstream sustainability issues. Only recently have people really started paying closer attention to the power use and waste generated by campus computing.
One of the first steps in getting a green-IT movement going on campus is to get the facilities manager talking to the CIO, says Warren Arbogast in the latest episode of Tech Therapy. At one college he visited recently to talk about green IT, the technology staff members had never seen the college’s energy bill — something folks in facilities think about every day.
We brought in some people to show what the power consumption was,” he says. “Then we showed the dollar costs. We saw substantial six- and seven-figure savings potentials in their operating budgets.” One of the keys to a green-IT strategy is to get the techies talking to the guys in the Carhart jackets.
Listen to the episode about “How to Start Talking About Green IT,” and check out more Tech Therapy shows here.
