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Tesco aims to cut data-centre carbon footprint
Turning down the air con... it's getting hot in here

By Andy McCue

Published: Tuesday 25 September 2007

Tesco is reducing air conditioning in data centres and checking the energy consumption of new equipment as part of the supermarket giant's plans to reduce its carbon footprint.

Tesco has pledged to halve carbon emissions from existing stores by 2020 and encourage customers to buy more energy-efficient goods.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Colin Cobain, group IT director at Tesco, said the IT department is already looking at ways to reduce energy consumption and is in the process of developing a green strategy to help meet these goals.

He said: "We are trying to do the right things and we're developing our plans at the moment."

This includes reducing energy consumption at Tesco's data centres.

Cobain said: "We are looking at various things to do with how is IT actually affecting the environment so we've done things in the past few months like increasing the average ambient temperature in the data centres to try and reduce the amount of air-conditioning."

Another plan is to vet the energy requirements of all new IT equipment bought by Tesco.

Cobain said: "One of the considerations in our next-generation till will be what's the energy consumption, which is not the sort of question if you go back two years ago we'd have been particularly asking."

In the interview Cobain, who was this week named CIO of the year at the CNET Networks UK Business Technology Awards, also revealed Tesco is now trialling RFID technology in Northern Ireland to track goods through the supply chain on their journey from distribution centres to the supermarkets.

He said the radio barcode tracking tags will help maintain accurate stock levels: "That's what the trial is all about, making sure we track product from the distribution centre through the network to the correct shop."

But the business case for extending the use of RFID to individual items such as CDs, clothing and mobile phones is still under scrutiny by Tesco.

Cobain said: "It's really going to come down to what the business case shows. We do things to make things better for our customers, simpler for staff and cheaper for Tesco."

One of the biggest barriers to a larger rollout of RFID technology has been the European wireless frequency standards used by the tags and readers, which meant RFID tag readers in a dense environment such as a warehouse would often interfere with each other.

He said: "The biggest challenge has been the telecoms legislation, I suppose, whereby the European legislation is quite different to that in the US. That really prevented us doing anything on a large scale because you couldn't get it to work effectively with lots of readers close to one location such as a distribution centre. I'm pleased to say that has now changed."

These problems, combined with tag quality issues and slow scanning speeds, have delayed Tesco's RFID plans but the supermarket is still aiming to roll out the technology across 1,400 stores and 30 distribution centres nationwide.

Click here to watch the full interview with Cobain.