Clean Advice Becomes an Export

What does a company do after it implements programs to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs? It sells its life story.

NEC will soon launch a consulting division that will provide best practices on energy efficiency, waste management and greenhouse gas reductions, Ryosuke Ugo, chief manager of the environmental management division, and Koichi Inagaki, a manager in the group, said in a private meeting at NEC headquarters on a recent swing through Japan.

The division’s advice will largely revolve around NEC’s own experience in reducing its own carbon footprint. NEC has set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2011: It wants the carbon produced in manufacturing and using its products to equal the amount of carbon reduced by using them to replace travel or older, less efficient machines. (Put another way, NEC wants to halve its carbon output.)

In 2008, carbon output will come to 2.8 million tons while reduction will come to just over a million tons. While that’s far from mission accomplished, it represents a 50 percent improvement since 2005.

Some of the key tools: Web conferencing instead of travel, virtualization, deployment of blade servers, time shifting of server loads, more energy efficient ballasts in lights, RFID instead of bar codes, reflective films on florescent bulbs, thin client computing, better air conditioner in datacenters (air conditioning accounts for 44 percent of the power in their datacenters). Bioplastics, however, are in limbo because of the food controversy.

Expect others to follow. Nearly every conglomerate has set emissions reductions goals. Hitachi has set a goal of reducing its own carbon emissions by 100 million tons from present levels by 2025.