Assessing DICT carbon footprint contribution through employees’ practices in operating its ICT devices and equipment

Abstract

Alongside with the increasing demand for technology comes along the increase in the total carbon emissions in the world. And due to the advent of technology and major changes in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT), it has been found out from recent studies that this industry is contributing 2 to 2.5% of the overall greenhouse gas emissions. Equipment under the ICT industry already plays a major role as an enabling technology in aiding to decrease other industry sector‟s footprint, however raising its own emission. In this paper, the researchers aim to assess the carbon footprint contributed by the Department of Information and Communications Technology Luzon Cluster 3‟s data center including other office equipment situated in Kumintang Ibaba, Batangas City, Philippines. The data on DICT staff‟s common practices on utilizing ICT equipment were gathered through a survey whereas each of the equipment‟s power usage when in use, on standby and switched off were based on the equipment technical specifications. Duration of data collection for the actual operation of the ICT devices and equipment in the office started from July 11, 2017 until July 11, 2018. To analyze the total contribution of DICT in the carbon footprint computation, the following data were gathered: the equipment‟s „usage hours‟, „on stand-by hours‟ and „switched off hours. Power rating of the equipment was also gathered with reference to their respective specification sheets. All equipment under study is operated by electrical power and is also affected by outages therefore data on electrical outages within Kumintang Ibaba were gathered using Meralco as reference. As a result, ICT infrastructure has a total contribution of 20,201.84 kg of CO2 or 89.90% while office equipment has a total of 2,270.18 kg of CO2 or 10.10% carbon emission.