ForgeAhead’s 2007 National Report has found that the drive towards energy efficient homes, cars, and businesses is a largely untapped solution that can help resolve global warming concerns.

Ashraf Patel, head of consulting at ForgeAhead, says that with more than 50 million PCs being disposed of annually, pubic and private sector companies around the world also need to address the e-waste challenge.

“Exacerbating the problem is that many of these unwanted PCs end up in the developing world,” he says. “It’s clear that ICT industry and government users need to develop recycling systems that meet the need for e-waste removal.

”Patel adds that climate change will also impact on political, economic, and social agendas of countries and businesses for a long time to come.

”The energy, mining, aviation, and manufacturing industries realise that they will have to transform their business models to meet the climate change requirements.

“And the ICT sector is no different,” he says. “It must adapt to address these problems, since estimates are that global computing and energy use is on par with the entire aviation industry.

“For example, energy requirements for the world’s datacentres equal the fuel consumed by all jumbo jets in any given year,” says Patel. “This we believe will see a lot of attention being placed on emissions from data centres as well as the growth of energy efficient computing frameworks.

”Patel adds that a good spin-off off the Eskom load shedding campaign has been the drive from corporate IT managers to acquire more energy-efficient data centres.

“With energy efficiency proving to be a cost-effective strategy for building economies, the public and private sectors need to implement plans that put energy efficiency first,” he concludes.