White paper highlights green role for NBN

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 29 September 2010 16:04

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Without a National Broadband Network many of Australia's green initiatives will stall according to an Australian Information Industry Association white paper presented to the Government today.

Ian Birks, ceo of the AIIA, which is the peak ICT industry body, said that; 'Smart use of technology and ICT can significantly reduce carbon emissions.' But according to the white paper which was today presented to Stephen Conroy, the minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy; 'Without a NBN many of the published sustainability initiatives that can play a role in reducing our economy's carbon footprint will not be possible.'

Bob Hayward, the chief technology officer of CSC in Australia and leader of the AIIA's environmental sustainability council welcomed the broad consensus which he said was emerging from Canberra that Australian needed a national broadband network. He said that the final sticking points now seemed to be; 'How fast should it be and who should pay.'

But Mr Hayward added; 'What has not been talked about are the environmental sustainability implications of the NBN and they are profound.' One important role for the NBN would be to underpin faster national data centre reform he said.

'There are probably more than 350 reasonably sized data centres in Australia. The vast majority have exceeded their use by date and are taking up expensive real estate.'

Many of these centres were; 'Reasonably inefficient and draw power from the national grid which is powered by coal fired power stations. If we had the NBN we could consolidate to a couple of dozen' which could draw their energy from co-generational gas fired power stations, he argued.

However Mr Hayward acknowledged that such a consolidation was difficult to justify without the underlying broadband infrastructure to transport data.