During Cisco Live U.S. 2023, Cisco’s flagship global event, the company highlighted its culture of advancing sustainability, along with some critical new product announcements. These reflected the company’s purpose: Powering an Inclusive Future for All.
Ahead of COP28 in the UAE, Abdelilah Nejjari, Managing Director for the Gulf Region at Cisco, commented: “Cisco stands at the intersection where sustainability and technology converge. We have a distinct goal of developing innovative solutions that focus on a sustainable future in key areas of business operations such as data centers, Internet of Things (IoT) systems, and buildings.”
Data Centers
Data centers are responsible for significant energy consumption and costs, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimating that 1 percent of all global electricity is used by data centers.5. According to IDC’s Datacenter Operations and Sustainability Survey, energy consumption, in fact, can represent up to 30 percent of data center costs. So, optimizing energy usage should be a major concern for forward-looking organizations.
To address this energy consumption and costs challenge, Cisco has introduced innovative solutions – such as first-step functions and efficiency insight capturing – including:
1. Nexus Dashboard, an intuitive interface for cloud and data-center networks, provide real-time and historical insights into data center energy consumption, costs, and greenhouse-gas emissions of Cisco Nexus switches and other IT equipment. It will also monitor data center temperature to improve cooling efficiency.
2. Webex Control Hub, Cisco’s collaboration platform, will integrate Carbon Emission Insights to monitor energy usage from Webex devices and services. Sustainability Insights will also enable organizations to estimate data-center carbon emissions, track monthly energy consumption trends, and empower them to improve sustainability practices.
Servers from prior server generations can help reduce power consumption by up to 40 to 56 percent (based on various configurations), reduce the amount of hardware and raw materials, and cut operating costs. Cisco’s IoT Operations Dashboard, for example, can have environmental impact enables remote detection and troubleshooting, reducing response time, expenses, and carbon impact associated with on-site visits.
Buildings
The buildings and construction sector accounts for over 34 percent of energy demand, and around 37 percent of energy and process-related CO2 emissions. This includes both operational emissions, which come from energy use for heating, cooling, lighting, and appliances, as well as embodied emissions, which come from the construction materials and processes.
Cisco, however, is supporting energy efficiency in buildings in a variety of ways. To summarize just two examples:
1. Energy Networking: Cisco’s energy networking technology, which powers low-voltage systems such as lighting and security cameras directly from the network’s DC power system, can eliminate energy loss during power conversion from AC to DC. This technology is already implemented in Cisco workspaces and is being extended to customer buildings and offices.
2. Energybox Partnership: Cisco partner Energybox utilizes Cisco IoT devices and software to optimize energy usage by remotely monitoring, managing, and controlling systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), as well as and lighting.
This includes both operational emissions, which come from energy use for heating, cooling, lighting, and appliances, as well as embodied emissions, which come from the construction materials and processes.
Overall, new Cisco equipment is designed from the ground up with energy efficiency as a priority. Energy management continues to be a big part of Cisco’s long-standing focus on sustainability, along with its goal to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain by 2040.
