I welcome Ms Carmel O'Connor and Mr. William McAuliffe from BT. Later, we will hear from Ms Roche and Ms McCarthy from Business in the Community Ireland. I met Ms O'Connor during my visit to the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. I am sure some members of the committee have also met her. She briefed us privately on the work BT was doing to improve the sustainability of its operations. Given that we are always asking others to become more efficient, I thought it would be beneficial to the committee to hear about people's efforts at first hand. We look forward to Ms O'Connor's presentation.
Business Sustainability: Discussion.
Ms Carmel O’Connor
I thank the Chairman for inviting Mr. McAuliffe and me to speak to the committee. My role as head of corporate responsibility at BT involves looking after our community investment, employee and education programmes but also our environment and climate change programmes. Today I will focus on our sustainability and environment programmes. Mr. McAuliffe is here because he is a specialist in some of the areas I will cover in our presentation.
For us, sustainability means taking a very long-term view not just of our business but also of our contribution to all the communities and businesses with and in which we operate. It also means doing this in a way that ensures the environment and the economy are maintained for the future. With a workforce of about 106,000 throughout the world, we have not only an opportunity but also a huge commitment to improve our environmental performance by changing the way in which we work.
I will give a quick overview of the information and communications technology industry as a whole. As the committee knows, BT is a major global ICT company. The ICT industry accounts for about 2% of CO2 emissions, which is equivalent to the contribution of the aviation industry. It has to be said, however, that the ICT industry is not as harmful as the aviation industry. The good news for us is that the ICT industry can address the other 98% by working with customers, employees and other stakeholders to address the issues and activities with which other businesses need help.
Our strategy is founded on our being a responsible, world-class company. For us, that means acting with integrity, but rather than being about what we do, it is more about how we work and engage with our various stakeholders. Underpinning this, we have considered the three big issues that the world faces today and asked how best BT can contribute to addressing them. The three issues are creating a more inclusive society, helping to tackle climate change and providing for more sustainable economic growth.
On our environment and climate change strategy, we do a great deal with our employees not just to educate them and raise awareness but also to bring them with us and empower them. We involve them in what our business is about and show them how they can be part of it and make a difference. We firmly believe people bring the behaviours they learn in the workplace to what they do at home and vice versa. We work with our customers and provide a range of sustainable business solutions, from the consumer in his or her home to the biggest corporates and major government clients. We also do a lot with our suppliers. I will cover that matter in more detail later, but we do a great deal of work on the procurement side and best practice, whether for the public sector or our own supply chain. We seek to ensure that we manage this and work well with all our suppliers throughout the world.
Are we doing enough? Some time ago BT set a competitive and commercially challenging target of reducing its CO2 emissions by 80% by 2020. We said that by 2010 we would have achieved the ISO 14001 standard in eight countries. Ireland was the third country on the list and we achieved ISO 14001 in Ireland in January 2008. We have just undergone a surveillance audit to ensure we are maintaining it. We believe we were one of the first communications companies in Ireland to achieve that standard on an all-Ireland basis throughout our business. In saying that, every succeeding 1% is harder won, but to date we have achieved a reduction of 58%. In the past three years our performance has reached a plateau; therefore, we still have a huge job to do. That is why we have a number of programmes which I will highlight shortly. We will engage with all our customers and keep our employees on the route with us.
ICT can help to reduce a company's carbon footprint in a number of ways. We will touch on work styles, flexible working and conferencing, but there are a number of other ways in which ICT can help. Regardless of a company's core business, everyone needs to travel and everyone needs certain communications. There are countless opportunities and ways in which BT can help. Businesses should care about sustainability. It is not something to be kept aside for the last month of the annual budget when there might be some spare cash to be spent. To a business, sustainability involves considering how it can reduce costs in all areas and take its employees and customers along the same route. Reputation is built over a long period but can be lost overnight. As I said, sustainability is more about the way in which business is done. It is a long-term commitment. Even in times of recession, it is not something on which we look to scale back. We regard it as an opportunity to be built upon in order that when we are on an upward curve we will be in a healthier and stronger position.
On recruitment, we find that not just graduates and students but also young people in general examine a company's reputation for sustainability and use that criterion in considering whether they want to work for the company. It is just as important for retention. We have just completed our annual employee survey which shows that 76% of our employees consider how environmentally responsible we are and say it enhances their opinion of the company. Some 90% believe we take our responsibility to the environment seriously.
I do not need to say regulation has a huge impact on the bottom line for many businesses. The current slide also covers the recession and cutting costs, which I mentioned. How has BT saved money? The fact that we have 11,600 homeworkers helps us to save €104 million a year in accommodation costs alone. BT is one of the largest and most progressive companies, embracing the whole concept of flexible working. We have a number of different work styles. Members will see that we have so many based permanently at home where we do not need office accommodation. We have part-time workers and job-sharers. We believe that by offering the full range of different work styles it helps us to equip our workforce and meet the differing demands of different individuals.
Some 97% of women return to BT after maternity leave so one can imagine that that saves us quite a bit in retraining and recruitment costs. Outside staff are 20% more productive. I am an outside worker and spend at least one day a week working from home. I know that Mr. McAuliffe does the same. It allows me to be more flexible and more productive because I find that the computer is on a lot longer in the day than if I was at the office. It does cut back on travel time. Conferencing has helped us to eliminate the need for over 300 face-to-face meetings, which is taking our people off the road and is saving time. It also allows for a lot more flexibility in how we manage and do business with each other. It covers everything from reducing the number of data centres to how we pool them, and simple things, such as providing better curtaining in our data centres. It is something we have looked at very closely as an ICT company. We are going to carry out further audits this year on a number of data centres across the globe, one of which will be here in Ireland. That is just to make sure that we are meeting business efficiency as best we can.
To give members a better picture, I will cover some of those matters in one slide each. As I said, we have one of the largest flexible working projects in Europe. We can do so because as an ICT company, broadband allows us to do that. It is very much a green technology. We find that our home workers take less sick leave and it has helped us to reduce the amount of fuel and energy costs in terms of heating office equipment and areas that we do not need. It has also removed the need for car journeys and travel for meetings, thus saving the equivalent of 1,800 years commuting.
Flexible working requires a commitment from the very top of the organisation. We have found it is something that needs to be driven at board level because one needs to see that cultural and behavioural change.
Conferencing helps us to save €56 million, which was saved solely on permanent home workers. It has eliminated nearly 860,000 face-to-face meetings. Even in my business, there is not a day goes by where I am not working in some sort of web, audio or video conference. If our management and directors need to join a meeting that is happening in London or elsewhere, they do so by video conference. In fact, our CEO has his monthly communication with the whole company by web conference. We can join in and have the full presentation and interaction that this allows.
It helps to improve the work-life balance, as well as allowing for greater, instant and more effective decision making because one is not waiting for people to return to the office from other meetings. We can have a conference call on the way back to the office, for example, and it does not matter where one is. I have had meetings on the train. It allows for a lot more flexibility.
Involving our people is one of the major areas for my programmes. Looking specifically at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, in terms of bringing our people with us to volunteer at that event, it also gives us the opportunity to raise awareness of what we are doing from an environmental point of view with our staff. We can explain to them and let them see at first hand that this is what it means to young people, Government representatives and the general public.
This year we had a pledge wall that some members of the committee may be aware of and may remember. That helped us to achieve 18,000 statements of commitment from young people, the general public, teachers and parents. It was basically one thing they would undertake to do to help the environment. That was a wonderful statement for Ireland to be able to say that. It was a wonderful statement for us here, as BT in Ireland, to be able to go back to our colleagues at group level and say "Here is a lovely big chunk of that 80% production target we are after". It is was done in a lovely, informal and interactive way so that the kids really understood it. We now have those pledge walls in our buildings, which is something the BT group wants to take out across the globe to other offices. It is a simple idea but it was very engaging.
Through doing something separate with external groups like schools, it helps to raise awareness for our own people. The Ireland environment committee is a cross-functional team. That is where we concentrate all our efforts towards ISO and maintaining it.
We have carbon clubs which are small, informal, fun groups of employees whereby they all undertake a different theme on one aspect of the business and where they feel they can make a positive difference. It might involve promoting cycling to work, improving the look and aesthetic feel of the exterior of their office accommodation, or recycling. It does not matter as long as it is something that appeals to them. It might be getting plastic cups removed from all our drink units, just as long as it is something that engages them and brings them with us. We have about eight of those dotted across our key buildings in Ireland. The club based at our Dundrum building won the carbon club of the year for its efforts involving some of the fun ideas and quirky things they came up with. It helped to snatch the carbon club of the year award for Ireland, which was great.
In the schools education programme we are looking at taking the carbon clubs initiative to schools. Basically, it would join the green flag schools in the Republic of Ireland and the eco-schools in Northern Ireland, focusing on the new climate change theme.
We got this slide from Gartner who did some work for us. The most revealing thing about this was that if everyone across the globe was to power-down their PC at night, or at least put it on stand-by, the effect of the associated powercut would be to reduce total CO2 emissions by 40%. Through a simple campaign, we are trying to say to our staff "This might be something really small for you, but in fact it can have a huge impact if we all do it together". We have said that if they do five things, we as a company will do five things. That is all it will take and over the next three years if we could save 75,000 tonnes of CO2 it would be the equivalent of taking 12,000 cars off the road. It would also be the equivalent of the electricity consumption in approximately 10,000 homes.
We can see that they are simple things, such as turning the light off when an office meeting is finished, and turning a PC off or at least powering it down. It is about working with our suppliers. The new products we are bringing to the market are the most sustainable. We are optimising the whole power-down, stand-by process so that it comes on automatically.
As regards involving our people, it is not just about getting out to the masses right across the business. It is really about creating a whole set of new leadership capabilities and a skill set, from the CEO right across the board of directors and the senior management team. For us it is about encouraging them to see and have a good understanding, not just of the regional and national impacts that the political, social and economic systems can bring, but also thinking globally. It is about that saying "Think global, act local". It is also about anticipating what that will mean for the future. BT can anticipate what that will mean in terms of future opportunities for us as a business.
As regards creating the future, it is about having the ability to envision what that will look like, and creating a compelling vision of a positive and beneficial society and economy mutually for BT, its customers, employees and society generally. It is about inspiring that change and empowering everyone to come along with us. Probably my favourite part is the connecting actions, which is what we call "one-hat leadership". It is not reserving sustainability, an environment programme or a corporate environment programme for a special occasion. It is about trying to ingrain in our senior management that this is something which is part of their daily business. We are very lucky that senior management personnel in Ireland are totally on board with it and that corporate responsibility and our environmental agenda is not something at which they look at a board meeting or one day a month. It is very much integral to our whole business strategy.
Tomorrow, I will visit a charity and the National College of Ireland. It is about speaking to as many stakeholder groups as possible. I will visit schools in the next couple of weeks. It is about being with our employees. Again, it is about getting across the different boundaries and encouraging our people to think, internally and externally, about how they can do that as well. They are basically walking the walk and getting out into the community and making it real.
I will give the committee an example of how BT works with local suppliers. Last year, we renewed an energy contract with ESB Independent Energy. We are now building up a really good renewable energy portfolio with it. It was an investment worth €9 million which not only helped up with CO2 savings, which were 618 tonnes, but made a bottom line saving to the business of €300,000.
Again, it is about providing sustainable solutions to our customers. In the past year alone, we have launched green phones. In the Republic of Ireland, one can buy a BT green phone in Tesco. That will help reduce one's home electricity consumption by one third. It is a very green and environmentally produced product in terms of its packaging and the phone itself.
Is Ms O'Connor talking about a landline phone?
Ms Carmel O’Connor
It is a proper phone. It does not use as much electricity as a normal phone. We hope that 98% of our whole product portfolio will go in that direction.
We do a lot of work with different customer groups but we are trying to encourage SMEs to think about how they can run their businesses better which will help them to reduce costs and add to their bottom line. For larger customers, it is about providing what we call the carbon impact assessment practice and encouraging them to look at their whole networked IT services to make them more efficient.
I refer to our suppliers. Given that we have 18 million customers in more than 170 countries, we are, and should be, making a difference. We are in a position to really help through our supply chain. We spent more than €8 billion. We have been doing some work with local government in Northern Ireland, with the Central Procurement Directorate, not only in helping to create new policy, but in terms of how it, as a business, runs, what that looks like for its own employees in the public sector and actually trying to predict and manage consumption.
In terms of climate stabilisation, this is one area which is provided by the BT sustainability practice. It is essentially a framework which helps a company combine its environmental and financial performance. In BT in Ireland, as part of our preparation for ISO 14001, we worked very hard to get our own CSI target. We are the only operating division outside BT UK which has its own operating target. We are setting ourselves very challenging targets to try to manage our own environmental performance in terms of what that means for the bottom line for BT as business in Ireland.
In terms of what this means for the rest of the business, I have received two requests to provide evidence of our environmental performance for major contract bids, which our specialists would work on. That shows that more and more companies are asking us, as a supplier, what that means and how committed we are to being an environmentally excellent and an environmentally-led company.
BT is a leader in the field of sustainability based on its long track record, on some awards and on its reputation. We believe the services we deliver benefit organisations in terms of the things they look for, including reducing their CO2 emissions, lowering their energy consumption, reducing travel, improving their operating efficiencies and, more important, achieving a more sustainable work-life balance. We have first-hand experience because we have been applying all these services to our own business to positive effective.
The committee should not just take my word or that of Mr. McAuliffe's. I will highlight some of the public recognition for our work, including in the ARENA Network environmental benchmarking survey. ARENA Network is the environmental arm of Business in the Community in Northern Ireland. It had to create a new status because we achieved gold last year and came second in our sector. This year, we came at the top in our sector but we also achieved 93%, as did six other companies out of 123. It created a new platinum sector for those companies able to score above 92%.
We are setting ourselves benchmarks and targets to beat. It is just as much about maintaining them as improving them. Some of them are quite global awards but in terms of what we are doing in Ireland, we work with Business in the Community Ireland to try to make a difference in regard to how we communicate our CR practices and our environmental best practice internally and externally.
We are also going for company of the year, as an Ireland company, with Business in the Community. That is based on our whole CR commitment.
That is probably a quick overview but we will be happy to follow up with any information required. I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before it.
I thank Ms O'Connor and Mr. McAuliffe.
I thank the delegation for making the journey.
Ms Carmel O’Connor
I am in Dublin every week. I work between the two locations.
This was useful for us on one level in that we often get an academic dissertation about climate change and carbon trading or fairly complex dissertations on the impact of climate change and what needs to be done. This was a very practical example of things which can be done in companies.
BT probably employs more people in the State than the Government. It is an example of how a company, or a country, could lead by example in terms of how it and the people it employs behave and use energy in terms of ICT. The fact that BT has set itself a target of 80% emissions reduction by 2020 is a benchmark at which we should consider applying to other areas in which the State has an involvement. There is no reason Departments cannot do something similar if a company such as BT can do it. One could make the case that they should be able to make even higher savings considering they do not have the same transport costs, or at least some do not.
On the practicalities, the biggest saver, apart from the obvious one of switching the off button on one's computer, is the working from home initiative. BT has 11,500 homeworkers. I have met more and more people working from home, whether for companies such as Ericsson, when out canvassing recently. Many of the IT companies have people working often in quite rural locations but making a significant contribution.
How does BT monitor the performance of people working from home? What is to stop somebody being highly productive for a couple of hours in the day and then taking the afternoon off? Is there a clocking in system from home or is there a performance monitoring system for people working from home? Are people simply given jobs to do and that as long as they are done, no questions are asked? How does BT monitor almost 12,000 people working from home in terms of productivity?
Ms Carmel O’Connor
First, not every job will be suitable to home working. For example, it might not be practical in our consumer sales and service call centre. For those for whom it is practical, however, there are no clocking-in or clocking-out systems. It is very much based on trust and on the person's performance.
We have not seen performance suffer as a result. In fact, we have seen the opposite, as I mentioned. We do not have very much time for not doing our work when we are working from home. Speaking from my own experience, I actually do a great deal more when I work from home because it cuts out the need to travel to the office. I might drop my kids to school. It allows me to be more flexible, but the computer is on a great deal more so that in the evening, I go back to finish something so that I do not have to do it the following day.
People have a positive mentality towards working at home and it has very much become part of our culture. It is open to so many. We launched occasional home working in Ireland approximately 18 months ago and some of the comments in the employee survey sought to open up home working to more staff. It is not that it is done on a case-by-case basis. It is very much more that if it works for the person, why not?
Every month and every quarter my performance is measured against my targets and the BT values. Unless Mr. McAuliffe has anything else to add, it is now part of our culture and it is not something that we have ever found to have been abused.
Mr. William McAuliffe
There are a variety of jobs and a variety of score cards against those jobs. It can be output based or task based and it can be in terms of elapsed time. The anecdotal evidence is that it is not a great challenge to trust our home workers. In fact, as Ms O'Connor stated already, the opposite is the case.
It takes a sophisticated degree of man management to prepare and counsel staff to operate in that kind of environment. It is not so much a trust issue. It is more a time management and work management environment that must be properly set up and underpinned by the right technology in terms of its consistent performance and reliability so that the individuals are properly supported, both in organisational terms and in technology terms, to achieve their potential and to deliver in an optimum way to the organisation. We have had the benefit over a number of years of being able to refine that so that those workers who choose to work at home for the majority of the time get the most out of themselves, in terms of contributors to the business and from the business in terms of their contribution.
I welcome and compliment the delegation on its presentation. A couple of issues arise from it. I am interested in the presentation slide on knowing the carbon footprint of the company's products and services. Next year is the relevant date for that and, obviously, that is a horrendously complicated task, but I wonder if the company is close to determining the carbon figure for the business and to see whether the trend is going up or down.
I note the company has reduced its data centres to just 100 servers. Is it using the waste heat from them at all or does the company have any plans to use it? From what I hear anecdotally, server firms are a notorious creator of waste heat and often they are air-conditioned. It is always nice if one can use that waste heat to do something else and I wonder whether the company has looked at that and if it has had any success in that area.
On the energy that the company uses, particularly electricity, I see from the fourth case study in their presentation that it is supplying its Belfast headquarters with green energy. Does the company prioritise green energy in its procurement process? In buying electricity, does it rate the carbon complement of that electricity as a factor in purchasing electricity? Does this apply simply to the company's Belfast headquarters or is the company sourcing green electricity elsewhere?
There are three questions. Does the company know its carbon footprint at this stage? Is the company doing anything with the waste energy from the server firms? The final one was about the sourcing of the company's electricity.
Ms Carmel O’Connor
Our carbon footprint relates to the 58% figure. Is that what Deputy Cuffe means?
Do the representatives have a figure in tonnes per year for the organisation?
Mr. William McAuliffe
We developed a methodology some years ago for estimating our global carbon footprint and we have set the targets for the future against that base line. We would be happy to share that methodology. In fact, it underpins the consultancy assessment offering or proposition we have for our customers. That is published data and we would be happy to share it. We will give that to the committee in the next couple of days.
In terms of reusing heat from the data centre, I am not aware of any examples that I can offer but I know it is under active consideration at present. As the industry moves towards more consolidation and trying to persuade individual client companies not to use their own services and not to host their own applications, but instead centralise those in data centres, the entire energy model and energy management associated with data centres is a very high priority for BT, as it is for other major ICT companies. Before too long we will see some practical examples of the reuse of heat from data centres. I will do some research to see whether there are any pertinent examples.
As part of the company's overall carbon footprint reduction, we are focused on procuring green energy. It is a carrot and stick approach, as far as I understand it. In some countries the governments are setting strict guidelines in terms of carbon footprint and they are applying certain taxation or levies to penalise companies that are not showing the correct level of progress or the correct direction.
In keeping with that, BT is sourcing green energy from utilities or in some cases it is generating its own green energy. There are two examples of which I am aware. In the United States, in the Los Angeles office, the company has implemented a very large photovoltaic cell that actually covers the carpark in the roof of the building. It is not so much to do with the total generative effect of that technology but with it being an off-set against some of the local taxation or levies in place for carbon footprint.
There is also an active plan in the UK to build a wind farm on some of the remote BT sites to take advantage of wind energy and then to source that into the grid to get the benefit in terms of a carbon off-set against the company's larger usage.
I wanted Mr. McAuliffe to be more specific. For example, on the island of Ireland the company presumably purchases electricity and in doing so sets out points on a tender for particular criteria. Does the company use the carbon content of that electricity as a factor?
I mention this topic because my colleagues on a county council with which I am familiar, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, ensured that in tendering for its electricity the council awarded bonus points for lower carbon content as a result of which it switched electricity supplier to one that was 90% renewable. I am not sure whether the county council made a saving, but it was certainly a carbon saving.
Ms Carmel O’Connor
The contract with ESBI we mentioned is an all-island contract. It just so happened that we were already a bit down the road with our headquarters in Belfast than we were with some of the other sites across the island. It just happens to be the first building that is green energy supplied but it will not be the only such building. It is very much a factor in terms of our procurement. I took part in the discussions relating to whether we would renew the contract with ESBI. My role was to state that in the context of our being a green and sustainable company, this was one of the important factors. There is a person on our procurement team whose sole function is to consider the CR procurement processes and to ensure that we are applying them in respect of all of our contracts.
Does the ESBI contract relate specifically to renewable energy?
Ms Carmel O’Connor
Yes.
Mr. William McAuliffe
Ms O'Connor stated that we have, effectively, reached a plateau in respect of our carbon impact performance in recent years. However, our stretch target into the future is extremely optimistic. We are of the view that this will only be achieved through some radical innovation process relating to our entire supply chain. We will be expecting our suppliers — energy utilities among them — to come forward with some innovative and creative ideas as to how we can improve our overall performance. This can only be achieved through remaking and transforming our procurement processes and the evaluation criteria relating thereto. We are on the same page in the context of identifying opportunities for innovation in order that our entire supply chain can have the overall impact of these challenging carbon impact targets we have set for ourselves.
Is it the case that all of the energy purchased from the ESB is renewable?
Ms Carmel O’Connor
It is green energy.
It is all green energy.
Ms Carmel O’Connor
Yes. It is produced through a combination of different sources of renewable energy.
I know the ESB does not have a domestic consumer product available as yet. However, perhaps it has such a product for commercial customers.
ESBI is a separate company from the ESB. There is no product available to home owners or small businesses which requires the ESB to provide 100% renewable energy. That is why people switch to companies such as Airtricity, etc.
There is an information gap in this regard.
However, we are not trying to catch Ms O'Connor out.
Ms Carmel O’Connor
I will forward information on the matter to the committee.
I often make the point that we are living through a phony war in which carbon does not have a significant price. However, there is tremendous pressure within the corporate world to be seen to be green. It can be difficult to introduce methods of justifying opting for the lower carbon version. I am of the view that, from a corporate perspective, it will continue to be difficult to do so until there is real certainty with regard to the price of carbon.
I thank our guests for providing information on how British Telecom has engaged with this concept. We can all learn from what they have said. They provided a practical presentation which illustrates how companies can make a contribution in respect of reducing their carbon emissions. Many companies could learn from the way in which British Telecom does its business. The latter has been acknowledged in the form of the various awards the company has received.
It was stated that over 2% of global emissions are generated by the IT sector, which is the same amount as that produced by the aviation industry. I am not sure whether many people are aware of this fact. PCs, monitors and servers are responsible for 60% of the percentage of global emissions for which the IT sector is responsible. Our guests referred to centralising servers. Is British Telecom involved in encouraging local government interests or private companies to centralise their servers — under a system managed by the company — in order to try to create efficiencies? It would be useful if our guests could provide some practical examples in this regard.
British Telecom is now operating in the Republic of Ireland. Has put in place initiatives such as those to which I refer or other initiatives in this jurisdiction? Our guests indicated that the company has engaged with local government in Northern Ireland regarding consumption levels, etc. Would it be able to implement similar initiatives in the Republic, particularly in view of the fact that, to a large extent, it is leading the way in the North?
Many people are, due to time constraints, interested in the concept of working from home. That is, of course, if they still have jobs in the current climate. British Telecom has a high penetration level — somewhere in the region of 98% — in Northern Ireland in respect of its broadband capacity, quality and infrastructure. Unfortunately, the same level of penetration does not exist in the Republic. Is there a direct correlation between home networking and the availability and quality of broadband services? I am of the view that there is a major deficit in this regard in the Republic. Unless people can actually connect to and utilise the infrastructure, any strategies that are put in place will not work. British Telecom is a major player in the Republic. Is the lack of penetration a major barrier to home networking and the strategy the company is trying to develop?
Ms Carmel O’Connor
Although we might be further down the road in Northern Ireland, we are very much committed to this on an all-island basis. We tendered for partner-first status with Cisco, of which we are already a gold partner. This was based on our environmental credentials. Different companies were asked to be partner-first in respect of the launch of Cisco's EnergyWise product, which is fabulous and which we are currently trialling at present. We are working with Cisco to bring this product to our wider customer base. In a nutshell, the product unifies one's heating, ventilation and air conditioning usage, one's telecommunications and one's IT power needs. When one arrives at work in the morning and one swipes one's card through a machine, one's computer and the lights in the office will be switched on. However, if one is on leave, none of this will happen. EnergyWise is a wonderful product which allows one to manage ones needs and which gives one greater flexibility with regard to controlling the costs one incurs.
From a community point of view, we have a wonderful partnership with Community Network Ireland, which runs a conferencing network for the support groups — for example, the Post Polio Support Group in Limerick and the Saoirse Support Service in Sligo — of a number of charities. If a person is housebound or lives in an isolated rural area, he or she can still be part of a social network or support group in respect of the illness or disability by which he or she is affected. This is a wonderful way to introduce charities to the notion of conferencing. The partnership has been in place for approximately 16 months and there are 16 groups which dial in on a regular basis to avail of the services provided, which we fund.
Mr. William McAuliffe
The availability of broadband is the prerequisite for any professional home working type of situation. A strategy is already unfolding within the Republic of Ireland to make broadband available, even in rural locations. We will be obliged to wait to see how this will evolve to meet the needs of potential home workers in the various outlying areas. Once a minimum level of broadband capability is achieved in these areas, the nature of work and applications will move on and the next challenge will revolve around the amount of bandwidth available in each of these locations. We will never reach a point where we will be able to satisfy all the need. Work will evolve and the nature of the systems and tools to support work will evolve. We will do our bit from a technology and coverage point of view to meet the needs of our customers and the economy.
The data centre business has evolved over time. It started providing co-location, which was the warehousing or hosting of various machines and servers on behalf of customers. We are quickly evolving to the rationalisation and consolidation of servers. It is not sustainable to just move one customer's machines into a warehouse alongside everybody else's machines. Technology and infrastructure systems are available to consolidate many customers into fewer machines and that will mean a step change in the power consumption and resources necessary to support many customers with a much smaller footprint. Our company is to the fore in that respect.
I sincerely thank Mr. McAuliffe and Ms O'Connor. I have had the benefit of discussing many of these issues with Ms O'Connor privately but it is worthwhile that the contribution they are making, the example they are setting, the concept of setting targets and the manner in which they are achieving them is put on record. This will be of tremendous benefit to those who tune into our record. Their contributions will be on public record for others to learn from. We will shortly deal with the role business can play with our friends from Business in the Community Ireland not alone in reducing carbon emissions, but also in saving vast sums for those in business. The two work hand in hand.