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As a major contributor of emissions, the information technology sector is coming together to find ways to reduce damage to the environment and provide its customers with more energy efficient products. During today's OnPoint, Dave Douglas, vice president of eco-responsibility at Sun Microsystems, discusses the financial and environmental benefits for IT companies to go green. Douglas discusses the recommendations his company is making to lawmakers regarding efficiency in the technology industry. He also encourages the government to provide some clarity on future approaches to climate change so the IT industry can begin to make long-term investments.
Monica Trauzzi: Welcome to OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. Joining me today is Dave Douglas, vice president of eco-responsibility at Sun Microsystems. Dave, thanks for coming on the show.
Dave Douglas: My pleasure. Good to be here.
Monica Trauzzi: Dave, you've been meeting with lawmakers and administration officials recently to talk about the approaches to energy efficiency and eco-responsibility. What's the pitch you're making to lawmakers?
Dave Douglas: The general area we're talking about is about IT and the energy used in IT and the potential for energy efficiency. IT today is roughly 2 oercent to 4 percent of all energy used in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. And it's small, but it's been doubling about every five years, so it's growing very rapidly. And what we've been doing is talking to lawmakers about the opportunities for energy efficiency and savings within that piece of the energy footprint of the government is nation overall.
Monica Trauzzi: So specifically, what recommendations are you making?
Dave Douglas: Well, we're talking about things like factoring, factoring emissions and energy and environmental impact into purchasing decisions and so forth. The federal government is one of the largest purchasers of IT equipment in the world and so could have an impact internally just by paying attention to how much energy is being used by the equipment they buy. So that's a big piece. We're also talking about future roles of Energy Star and how measuring energy is important as part of the products.
Monica Trauzzi: And throw out some names. Who have you met with specifically on the deal?
Dave Douglas: Well, we've been meeting with folks in the vice president's staff. We've been talking about energy in the speaker of the house's staff and in a number of different senators and representatives.
Monica Trauzzi: How should Congress be handling the climate change issue? Should there be a mandatory cap on emissions?
Dave Douglas: You know, from our perspective the important things are, A, we figure out where we are. How much emissions do we have today? B, set goals, and then C, have a system that of one or more different legislative priorities and it will start to drive toward those goals. You know, from Sun's perspective, in our role, we're not experts in exactly which way that might be best addressed. It's more important to us that it be transparent on what the goals are and how we're being legislated to get there.
Monica Trauzzi: So is there any piece of emissions legislation that's out there right now that Sun is lending its support to?
Dave Douglas: No. We're in general through things such as a series called Action. Lending our support more to the need to get something in place and measured and have it be, you give us a long enough window so that people can start to make investments. A classic case would be somebody who's building a new data center, which might cost $20 million or $30 million. Where I put that might have a big difference if there's going to be a carbon tax, versus say a general cap and trade system. How I calculate where that goes might come out very different. And so we're looking at people needing to make long-term investments and just went in clarity about what the overall environment they're making those investment is in.
Monica Trauzzi: The technology sector is coming together to promote eco-responsible technologies like you just mentioned. Talk about why it's important and how Sun is specifically contributing to those efforts.
Dave Douglas: Yes, we believe it's very important because technology, on both sides of the fence, is part of the problem, but it's also part of the solution. Some of the biggest computer installations we've made this year are done to measure global climate modeling and weather patterns. We're selling a lot of computers into the auto industry to help design more efficient cars. So we go and instead of driving to the bank, we may go do things online now. So computers are increasingly part of us having a more sustainable lifestyle. On the same side IT technology has a very large environmental footprint. So it's important to put the two of those together. Internally we're looking at everything from how much energy our products use, how we can engineer them so that they'll require less air conditioning. And even in our internal operations, how we keep employee commuting down to a minimum and try to drive down the footprint of our own operations in innovative ways.
Monica Trauzzi: So what are some of the direct benefits that are being brought to Sun's customers?
Dave Douglas: They really come in two big camps. The first is by lowering people's energy usage with more efficient computers they pay less for energy. So there's an economic benefit. The flip side is there's also an environmental benefit and our customers are increasingly sensitive about that. So I often joke the eco in my title is both about ecology but also about economics. And we always are looking to try to do things in a way that brings benefits on both sides to our customers.
Monica Trauzzi: How are new alternative energy companies, generation companies, affecting your day-to-day business?
Dave Douglas: You know, for us, in our day-to-day business it's bringing up more opportunities for ourselves to use green power. There's interesting ways that that power can interact with data centers, and in particular as data centers, you know, you don't know where the Google servers are that you use when you search, right? So it opens up opportunities, the networking today, to put data centers wherever is interesting. And new green energy opportunities bring up the opportunity to put the data centers near where that energy is. So maybe in the future North Dakota, with its large wind farms, will be an ideal point to put data centers. And so it's causing people to rethink the whole idea of where I put the equipment.
Monica Trauzzi: And how our customers generally reacting to these new technologies, these new efforts that you're putting out?
Dave Douglas: Yes, we're finding uniform acceptance and excitement about energy efficiency in computing. For many customers it's not about the environment or the energy costs yet, but they've got practical issues like they're running out of air conditioning. But we've got an increasing number of customers who are worried about their energy use and a small but growing side who are worried about their environmental impact. So we're finding we can go talk about energy with just about any of our large customers today because even if they aren't on the environmental side they've got energy issues that are starting to hit their data centers.
Monica Trauzzi: And to that note, as we start to see more and more companies turning to eco-friendly practices one really has to wonder whether they're doing it for the environmental benefits or to benefit their bottom line. Are Sun's efforts for the environment or for money reasons?
Dave Douglas: Absolutely for both. We're a business at the end of the day and we see huge opportunity in our environmental efforts, both as far as doing good, but also as far as our bottom line, both from increased sales when we produce energy-efficient products and decrease costs as we do more energy-efficient activities inside our own business. The other important one is it's important to our employees and we're increasingly getting feedback from them that this is important. They feel it's important to be part of a company that cares about these kinds of things and is paying attention in its work. And so we see it as a multifaceted thing and really don't ever focus on just one aspect of it. We always try to bring it all together when we evaluate things.
Monica Trauzzi: And is it something that shareholders are very interested in as well?
Dave Douglas: I think increasingly, as they look at the success of a product like our Niagara servers and see that it's the fastest-growing product in the history of the company and that energy efficiency is clearly a part of that, then yes, they get excited about that.
Monica Trauzzi: Right. All right, we will end it on that note then. Thanks for coming on the show.
Dave Douglas: Oh, thanks for having me.
Monica Trauzzi: This is OnPoint. I'm Monica Trauzzi. Thanks for watching.
[End of Audio]
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