Around the time when global leaders were arriving at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, the Australian Government hosted a different summit in Sydney, much of it online. The Realising Our Broadband Futures Summit participants discussed some of the exciting ideas that a ubiquitous high bandwidth network will inspire.
Not surprisingly, addressing climate change through clever use of technology was a strong theme, with the Prime Minister having noting (around the 9 min. mark in the video) that the national broadband network could help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions with, for example, greater use of video conferencing saving travel across government and range of ’smart’ applications.:
Consider the role of the NBN in tackling climate change: it has been estimated that broadband can help reduce Australia’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases by five per cent.”
Transcript at http://www.pm.gov.au/node/6389
How smart video conferencing, smart networks, smart grids and smart infrastructure will help to lighten our carbon footprint will therefore rightly be the subject of far more focussed policy attention for a number of federal government departments and agencies from now on. Green ICT, as the application of information technologies to reduce carbon emmissions is now described, ought to be on everyone’s agenda.
To accompany thoughtful green ICT strategies, we need practical implementation plans, including benchmarking and measuring progress and, critically, the human resources with the requisite skills to do the work where and when it matters.
How we develop the human resources in Australia is therefore an important element of any successful policy. For this reason I referred to Tom Worthington’s new book in my introductory remarks to the first plenary session of the Broadband Futures Conference as it represents forward thinking at the right time to make a real difference.
This book, titled Green Technology Strategies: Using computers and telecommunications to reduce carbon emissions, contains the courseware to upskill our existing ICT professionals to tackle this significant challenge.
I commend his attention to the development of an essential human resource if we are to achieve the goal of reducing carbon emission. To often the professionals skills needed to achieve real change is an afterthought in public policy, hampering adoption when it matters. That’s why I think his book makes a significant and timely contribution to a real problem as well as exemplifying a number of important principles.
First, as I mentioned, Tom’s book is the courseware for the online Green ICT course he developed and commenced in January 2009. This online course, hosted in Moodle, is the first globally accredited Green ICT course for computer professionals and teaches how to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from information and communication technology. The course is sponsored by the Australian Computer Society’s international program for professional education. It also runs at the masters level at the Australian National University. To underline Tom’s commitment to openness, Tom has made this course, and now the book freely available under the Creative Commons licence that permits re-use, modifications, re-selling, using as courseware, or indeed anything so long as it is done with attribution.
Secondly, Tom’s book has the lightest possible carbon footprint! He has published it online and people can choose to print it out, or just refer to the online publication. I guess it is best described as an “e-book” 
Tom makes the point that he will be updating the book regularly so best to use the online version anyway. The printed copies also have a low carbon footprint, as they are printed on electronic printing presses around the world. The nearest press to the recipient is chosen to reduce carbon emissions in delivery. Books ordered in the USA are printed there, books for Australia are printed in Australia. The book will also be available printed on demand at some book stores and libraries, including University of Melbourne Library, Angus & Robertson in Melbourne, Library of Alexandrina in Egypt, World Bank Infoshop in Washington, and Blackwell’s books Charing Cross London: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_Book_Machine#Locations
As I said in my remarks launcing the book at the conference, it reflects a new generation of business and education models: virtual, scalable and based on open data and open knowledge.
Thirdly, Tom has developed and documented what he describes as mentored and collaborative learning techniques. This approach means learning collaboratively and students are required to participate as part of the course. This introduces and then demonstrates the benefits of collaboration in the work place by experiencing it a seeing the positive benefits of collaboration in a learning environment.
Finally, this book will help ICT professionals to meet the carbon emissions requirements the federal government is introducing for both the public and private sector. Higher energy costs will require new skills to assess new aspects of green ICT procurement and also create new opportunities to expand the ICT function into new technology areas to achieve greater energy efficiencies.
All in all, it is a relevant, timely and extremely practical contribution to the process of transforming Australia’s uses and applications of ICT to being responsive to the challenge of climate change.
