Environmental Performance of the Försäkringskassan IT Infrastructure : A Green-IT case study for the Swedish Social Insurance Agency

University essay from Mittuniversitetet/Avdelningen för ekoteknik och hållbart byggande

Author: Caspar Honée; [2013]

Keywords: Green-IT; Sustainable Computing; LCA; IT-Infrastructure; Data Centre; Data Center; Computer Center; Storage; Servers; Free Cooling; DCiE; PUE; Carbon footprint; Eco score; Environmental Performance; Försäkringskassan; IT; Sweden ; Grön-IT; LCA; IT- infrastruktur; datahall; lagring; servrar; frikyla; DCiE; PUE; koldioxidavtryck; ekobetyg; Försäkringskassan; Sverige;

Abstract:

This Green IT case study commissioned by Försäkringskassan (FK), the Swedish National Social Insurance Agency, quantifies the environmental performance of the IT infrastructure (IT-IS) in use during 2010 in a lifecycle perspective. Adopting a system view in Green IT analysis can mitigate risks of problem shifts. IT-IS concerns the equipment that enables office automation and external web application services. The size of the FK IT-IS is in the order of 300 branch offices with 14000 pc’s, 2100 printers and a 1 MW data centre hosting 1200 servers, 5 Petabyte of central data storage and serving about 80 key business applications.

The carbon footprint of the FK IT-IS in 2010 accounts to 6.5 kiloton CO2-equivalents. The total environmental impact is calculated across 18 themes and expressed as a single indicator eco score amounting to 822.000 ReCiPe points.

The contribution of capital goods is large with 44% of the carbon footprint and 47% of the eco score linked to emissions embedded in material equipment. The environmental effects from distributed IT deployed at local office sites, dominate at two thirds of the total FK IT-IS impacts. Important drivers in the local office sites category are the relatively short economic life span of pc equipment and the significant volume of paper consumed in printing activities.

Within the data centre category, operational processes dominate the environmental impacts and are linked to intensive power use. In comparison to industry benchmark scores, the data centre infrastructure energy efficiency (DCiE) is relatively low at 57%, or 59% when credited for waste heat utilisation. Airflow containment measures in computer rooms are identified for efficiency improvement. Enhanced airflow controls also act as a prerequisite to better leverage opportunities for free cooling present at the location in northern Europe.  With regards to the data centre hosted IT, environmental impacts linked to storage services dominate and remarkably exceed those of servers.

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