Simple efficiency measures in schools' use of technology are often all that's needed to save energy, resources and the environment.
Sixth-formers at Sawtry community college, Cambridgeshire, where the school is trialling a paperless science department. Photograph: David Rose
In an effort to save up to 20% of its whole school budget over the next year, Sawtry community college has focused on technology to provide some cost-cutting solutions.
As existing hardware wears out, the Huntingdon school is planning to replace its desktop computers with thin client PCs, which function without hard drives with processing done by servers. They use less energy and consequently emit less heat, which, in a room of 30 machines, has the knock-on effect of diminishing air-conditioning costs.
But the school has scored a truly "quick win" in one department by all but dispensing with paper resources.
"In the science department, we are now scanning resources on to the VLE rather than laser printing and photocopying," says associate principal Alan Stevens. "It has saved £1,000 a quarter on paper, laser cartridges and general running costs, and is environmentally friendly."
Less paper and energy used means money saved. The dovetailing of sustainability and efficiency is exactly what children's secretary Ed Balls called for at the end of 2009 when he urged schools in England to make £2bn worth of savings in part by thinking green.
School leaders have been sceptical but, according to the Carbon Trust, a government-funded, not-for-profit company, ICT is one area where UK schools could definitely cut costs. It calculates that around £70m could be saved each year by reducing energy use, which would simultaneously reduce carbon emissions by up to 300,000 tonnes. And ICT equipment is one of the chief culprits when it comes to using electricity in many schools.
This year's national eWell-Being Awards, which celebrate the social, economic and environmental benefits of ICT, are featuring a prize for sustainable use of ICT in schools for the first time this year. Sponsored by Becta, it will reward ICT-based initiatives that raise awareness, improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact.
Professor Peter James, an associate of the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (UK Ceed) and author of the SusteIT (Sustainable IT in Tertiary Education) report on greening ICT in further and higher education, says while ICT obviously has many benefits in education it comes with a "heavy environmental footprint".
"IT accounts for around 2% of global carbon emissions, uses large amounts of materials, and creates toxicity risks in both production and disposal," he says. Alongside more switching off and powering down, he points to better use of ICT applications, such as videoconferencing, as a greener way forward.
Sawtry community college, Cambridgeshire. Photograph: David Rose Sawtry had the help of managed services specialist Innovit and its IT healthcheck – a "green" audit of technology that pinpoints where money and energy can be saved and helps schools to plan their long-term ICT procurement with sustainability in mind.
Managing director Andrew Dent says there are many small measures schools could take that could instantly cut their carbon footprint.
"For example, a lot of schools are still using the default settings on Windows software. But if you change the settings to turn off screens after a few minutes when not in use, it saves on screen wear and tear and on energy."
The chief energy-gobblers are projectors, which are frequently left on because the ceiling-mounted switches are difficult to get at to turn power off – "difficult, but not impossible," Dent points out.
One of the more strategic stumbling blocks is that network managers or others responsible for day-to-day IT use and performance do not have decision-making powers over budgets. In other words, no one is making the strategic link between cost savings, IT and environmental awareness.
Dent adds: "If you look at the amount of ICT in schools, even compared with five to 10 years ago, the amount of energy consumed has grown and a lot of it is down to technology. But changing this is less about technology and more about people and making sure they do things like turn off projectors."
Industry is also playing its part. Asus, for instance, a leading international brand in personal computing, has a dedicated "green team". It aims to use innovation and smarter technology to reduce the environmental impact of all aspects of its business, according to chairman Jonney Shih. Its portable Eee PC and spin-offs Eee Top and Eee Box, designed with specs and a price to suit educational users, offer low-energy consumption and long battery life along with all essential computing functions.
"We have lowered power consumption without affecting performance and reduced material wastage," says Shih. "Longer battery life, for example, means fewer re-charges each week and so a longer battery lifecycle."
Later this year, Asus plans to unveil products to tap the potential of cloud computing (provision of services and applications accessed via the web - rather than being stored on school hard drives). It also "enables schools to reduce their electricity bills without affecting the usability of devices in the classroom," says Shih.
Educational supplier RM is now well known for its ecoquiet technology. It consumes around a third of the energy, and is now used by a conventional computer, is now used in over half its product range, says a company spokeswoman. This includes the ecoquiet serv that uses around 57 per cent of the power needed by a standard pedestal server, and RM UtilEyes, a new monitoring product showing electricity, gas, water and oil use and designed to help schools make energy savings.
The government has unveiled its own plans for a 'G-cloud' to make software applications and services available online for access by all its departments – and hopefully cheaper. Estimates suggest it will take a significant chunk out of the £3.2bn efficiency savings earmarked across government – and reduce energy consumption. Local authorities are being urged to think along the same lines.
The government's technology in education agency, Becta, calculates that up to £10 per pupil could be saved if local authorities switched to cloud-based services for email and basic office tools. However, Graham Cooper, head of marketing for information management specialist Capita Sims, says it is too early to size up the true advantages just yet.
"Cloud computing is cheaper and easier to manage and there are no maintenance costs because someone else handles that," he says. "But the risk of things like data loss means we probably need a more complex analysis of the benefits, rather than seeing this as 'the solution'."
"Julie Nightingale,guardian.co.uk,
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