What Dell can teach India's IT firms

There are some lessons Indian IT companies like Infosys and Wipro can learn from American IT giant Dell.

While Indian IT majors are still far away from waking up to the looming threat of global warming, Dell is seriously converting to green power.

Moreover, several India firms are still to make a serious effort to tackle the e-waste whereas Dell is now powering 100 per cent of its 2.1 million sq ft global headquarters campus, home to more than 10,000 employees, with green power.

According to the company, it is using all of the power generated from Waste Management's Austin Community Landfill gas-to-energy plant, meeting 40 per cent of Dell headquarters' campus power needs. The remaining 60 per cent comes from existing wind farms and is provided by TXU Energy.

Dell America's president Paul Bell said: "Today, we are challenging every technology company to work with their suppliers and partners in integrating green power and energy-efficient strategies into their operations."

Will Indian technology giants take up the challenge. Unlikely. Still they can make an effort to go green and take part in the save the globe campaign, launched by several NGOs.

The Dell chief said powering an entire campus with green power, in partnership with these two leading companies, is an important step in becoming the greenest technology company on the planet, besides reducing operating expenses.

The company is also powering its Twin Falls, Idaho, facility with 100 per cent green power, 97 per cent of which is wind power and three per cent solar.

This effort shows Dell's earlier commitment in September 2007, where the company had announced that it would make company owned and leased facilities carbon neutral in 2008 through a strategy of improving energy-efficiency in its operations and maximising the purchase of renewable power.

This commitment is part of the company's climate strategy which also seeks to minimise carbon impact of supplier operations and customer product use.

Operational initiatives to increase efficiency and reduce electricity use already implemented on the company's central Texas campuses are expected to save the company nearly $2 million annually in operating costs and cutting CO2 equivalent emissions by nearly 12,000 tonnes per year.

Dell's green technology solutions include the OptiPlex 755 and Inspiron 531 desktops, Latitude D630 laptop, PowerEdge M-Series blades and PowerEdge Energy Smart servers.

The company's desktop systems alone have helped customers save more than $2.2 billion and avoid approximately 22.4 million tonnes of CO2, Dell revealed.

Meanwhile, international symposia on Information and communications technologies and Climate Change, featuring high-level experts drawn from industry, government and academia as well as key writers on the topic, will seek to provide guidance to the global ICT sector on how to monitor, mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The meetings will take place from April 15 to 16 in Kyoto, Japan, co-organised and hosted by the ministry of internal affairs and communications; and from June 17 to 18, 2008 in London, supported and hosted by British Telecom.

ICT can play a major role in the effort to combat climate change, which could serve as a potent, cross-cutting tool to limit and ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions across economic and social sectors.

It is estimated that ICTs contribute around 2-2.51 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is likely to grow as ICTs become more widely available.