Environmental impact assessment and environmentally conscious design for IT systems

IT systems have both negative and positive environmental effects when introduced into the business world. In order to reduce their environmental impacts through the use of IT systems, ecodesign of IT systems is essential. To address this need, we propose an ecodesign framework for IT systems. In the framework, system integrators assess the environmental impacts of IT systems and the results of the assessment are used both internally and externally. This framework serves as a means to develop environmentally friendly IT systems and to demonstrate the ecodesign efforts to customers. We reviewed the progress of the framework to examine its feasibility. It was found that two technical difficulties remained, even though considerable progress has been made in the areas of assessment tools and external use. The two difficulties were in the areas of database and analytical methods. Two approaches were made to enhance the framework and to resolve the technical difficulties. One approach was to add cases of environmental impact assessment of IT systems to the database. By assessing the environmental impacts of electronic government and supply chain management systems, we were able to add two cases in the database, which resulted in 50 cases in all. The other approach was to develop analytical methods. We analyzed the database using the amount of CO/sub 2/ emission reduction as an index, and the results suggested that full dematerialization systems were the most effective way to reduce CO/sub 2/ emissions considering both reduction amount and rate.