The Green IT Review – last orders

For more than five years The Green IT Review has been keeping readers up to date with green ICT and cleantech market trends while demonstrating the opportunities for CSR operations to make their organisations more sustainable. During that time 1,375 posts have been published generating almost half a million page views (according to Google’s blog statistics).

Direct page views are currently running at around 15,000 a month, with blog posts also regularly republished on other sites. As well as online readers there are 800 subscribers receiving the daily emails. The associated Twitter feed (@GreenITReview) has over 550 followers and items are frequently re-tweeted.

There is significant potential to grow the blog either as a broader, stand-alone information service or in support of an existing sustainable ICT/cleantech business. If you are interested in acquiring The Green IT Review, email me at info@thegreenitreport.com.

Hopefully The Green IT Review will return and continue to help push the ICT and sustainability agenda, but meanwhile there may be a slight pause ….. 

Pete Foster

The carbon emissions to manufacture an iPad can be the equivalent of 128 years of use

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has published a study on the power consumption of the latest iPad models. Using this data, plus its own estimates of the energy used to manufacture electronic devices, GreenIT.fr has estimated that making an iPad emits 77 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a year of use in France.

The EPRI study estimates that the new iPad takes 11.9 kWh per year to use (assuming that the iPad is charged every other day on average). According to GreenIT.fr, manufacturing the tablet emits 83 kg CO₂e, but the EPRI data means that use for a year in France would requires ‘just’ 1.1 kg CO₂e.

By comparison, the first iPad models consumed only 7.2 kWh per year, emitting 0.65 kg CO₂e, so for these devices manufacturing time represented an even greater 128 years of use in France.

GreenIT.fr has come up with similar figures for other devices:

- IPhone 5S 190 times more emissions during manufacturing that when using in France,

- MacBook Pro 15-inch: 90 times more emissions during manufacturing that when using in France,

 

Review:  A reminder that the carbon emissions of computer devices, or any electronic device, is not just dependent on the energy when it’s being used. The use phase can be virtually insignificant compared to manufacture and even the process of recycling at the end of life needs to be considered in lifetime emissions.

In choosing products it’s essential to consider the full lifecycle implications. It’s not easy to do, but, for example, EPEAT assessments of IT products can provide a better indication of all-round sustainability than simple measures of energy efficiency, such as Energy Star. In any case, EPEAT includes an Energy Star assessment.

The main problem is that it’s still difficult to make the best choices, with a multitude of national and international energy assessments for products, some backed by legislation and some not. But if the iPad figures are anything to go by, it seems daft to go on usage energy consumption alone.  

Thanks to GreenIT.fr

Data centre energy efficiency – are smaller companies giving up?

Last week the Uptime Institute presented the results of its 2013 Data Center Industry Survey at the Institute’s annual Symposium in California. Among the findings were the fact that only 56% of data centre operators reported that data centre efficiency is very important and it’s much more significant outside the US.

The email survey received more than 1000 responses, although with a heavy North American bias – 56% were from North America, with 18% from Europe and 13% from APAC. The majority (80%+) of respondents managed more than one site. The preliminary results are on the Uptime Institute website and there was more coverage of the presentation at the Symposium in Computerworld.

According to the Computerworld article, only half of the data centre managers in North America that responded thought energy efficiency is very important to their companies, a figure that has fallen each year for the last three years. The numbers were lower for smaller data centres and Matt Stansberry, Uptime Institute's director of content and publications, suggested a couple of reasons. One practical reason is that smaller companies do not have the engineers on hand to handle changes, but Stansberry also suggested that the managers of smaller data centres are frustrated at not being able to keep up with the standards that companies like Google are setting.

Among the more depressing findings of the survey were that:

• In 80% of cases facilities management paid the data centre power bill. IT paid in only 16% of cases and 4% of respondents didn’t know who paid.

• Only 21% reported carbon emissions from the data centre, with Europe leading the way on 30%. Organisations managing over 5,000 servers are twice as likely to report their data centre carbon footprint.

• 33% of respondents do not measure their data centre Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE). A total of 90% of large organisations make the calculation, but only half of smaller companies. Europe has the strongest adoption – 76% – and nearly all data centre service providers worldwide know their PUE.

 

Review: 

There is a tendency to take a global view the efforts of the IT industry to be more energy efficient, but the results of this survey are a reminder that efforts vary. There are two main reasons for geographical differences – energy costs and legislation. The fact that European data centres tend to be greener than their North American counterparts can be put down to higher energy costs and the impact of increasing carbon emissions legislation across the continent.

What’s less obvious is the difference between large and small companies. Clearly its easier for large companies to benefit from economies of scale and available investment to make data centres more energy efficient. And the potential payback in energy costs can be reinvested in even greater savings. Smaller companies don’t have this luxury – the case for making changes is harder to make – so they may just choose to pass some of the increasing workload on to service providers or hosting companies.

It’s the service providers/internet companies who are investing most in going green. They tend to have the largest economies of scale to leverage, as well as the incentive to maximise energy savings and save costs. Other companies have more pressing priorities.

This is most apparent when it comes to PUEs. As I reported a couple of weeks ago, it seems that data centre PUEs are not as good as headlines suggest. With the largest service providers and IT companies boasting PUEs down around 1.1, for smaller companies those levels are unrealistic and they may just have given up trying. To make the data centre industry greener perhaps we need to focus less on best practice and more on what even the smallest facility can achieve.

Electricity Demand Response programmes are growing, but still mostly in the US

According to a report from Navigant Research, there are at least 1,342 Demand Response (DR) programmes underway worldwide. These are programmes aimed at achieving stability on the electricity grid by ensuring that demand does not exceed supply. While in the last ten years, utilities and grid operators have adopted new technologies and practices for DR schemes, the vast majority - 95% - are in North America.

“Demand response continues to exhibit strong growth in North America, but it is also showing increasing adoption in other regions, particularly in Europe and Asia Pacific,” said senior research analyst Marianne Hedin. “A growing number of utilities and grid operators, in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, Japan and South Korea, have actively taken steps to implement or expand their DR offerings.”

The Navigant report - Demand Response Tracker 2Q13 - looks at four different market models of demand response, each addressing different objectives: capacity, economic programmes, ancillary services, and energy trading. The report provides data on the different types of DR programmes, such as direct load control, interruptible load, critical peak pricing, real-time pricing, time-of-us and demand bidding or day-ahead bidding schemes.

 

Review:  The Navigant report goes into detail about the various DR methods and programmes, but it’s worth noting that much of it relies on ICT, which will have an increasingly important role. Smart grids, combined with technology in the home that manages electrical devices automatically and/or under direct user control, can make a huge difference to electricity generation requirements.

Electricity demand can fluctuate significantly within a very short time. In the UK, for example, peaks have been measured at the end of particularly popular televisions shows as viewers switch the kettle on for a cup of tea. Suppliers have been forced to cope with these peaks by keeping power stations running on standby, ready to generate at short notice.

To date, most demand management (at least in the UK) has relied on moving device usage to pre-set low-peak times, specifically overnight. But using technology the reductions in power use can be a lot more subtle and flexible. For example, fridge temperatures could be allowed to increase slightly for a time, or tumble dryers switched turned to lower temperatures.

With smart grids, DR programmes are likely to be far more complex, with differential tariffs, and quickly respond to changes in generation levels, a must if a significant part of the power mix comes from renewable energy that relies on sun, wind, waves, etc. With the help of ICT, consumer devices – connected via home energy management systems (HEMS) over home area networks (HANs) – can be pre-programmed to respond to short-term increases in electricity costs, or consumers could manage devices remotely via smart phones.

It’s still some way off yet, though (at least in the UK). Much of the impetus behind smart meters is that the information on usage will help consumers to reduce their consumption of electricity. But it seems to me that not until we get smart grids with differential energy tariffs and consumers have the means to quickly and easily adjust their usage will we really see household consumption drop, and that’s very much down to ICT.

Kyocera uses ‘Green Curtains’ to make buildings more energy efficient

As part of its long term sustainability activities, every spring Japanese electronics company Kyocera plants what it calls ‘Green Curtains’ at its sites in Japan and some other parts of the world. These provide shade the buildings, lowering inside room temperatures by around 2^oC, which helps reduce energy consumption from air conditioners.

The curtains are made of foliage grown on trellises in front of office windows and walls. In Japan, plants grown include morning glory vines, cucumbers, peas and goya, a traditional summer vegetable known, as bitter gourd, which helps prevent fatigue in the hot summers. These vegetables end up in special dishes served in employee cafeterias.

The green curtains also absorb CO₂ emissions - one square metre of foliage takes in approximately 3.5kg of CO₂ per year. In 2012, the 830 metres of Green Curtains grown by Kyocera, covering an area equivalent to 13 tennis courts, helped to meet regional energy saving targets in Japan.

There are now 28 sites growing Green Curtains, including Kyocera facilities in Japan, China, Thailand and Brazil. On its Website about Green Curtain activities, Kyocera encourages individuals and businesses to adopt the practice by providing photos and illustrations that show the materials used, as well as instructions for making Green Curtains at work or home.

Review:  One of the interesting things about the whole subject of sustainability is that there is never just one answer on how to achieve it. For example, looking inside buildings can reveal many ways to make them more energy efficient, which was what my last post, on simulating energy use in new buildings, was all about. But Kyocera shows what can also be done outside.

Not only do the curtains reduce energy use, they also absorb CO₂, produce food for the company cafaterias and make the buildings look nicer, with a lush green and flowery decor. It somehow seems a more holistic and sustainable solution than many approaches. And its from a technology company, although Kyocera’s Japanese heritage gives it a head start in sustainability.  

Microsoft helps develop a cloud-based energy efficiency simulation for new buildings

Microsoft Research Connections and the Royal Danish Academy, one of the world’s oldest schools of architecture, are working with an Italian start-up company called Green Prefab to develop a set of cloud-based architectural design tools that will simulate a future building’s energy consumption.

The energy efficiency of buildings is coming under increasing focus, both for private housing and businesses. Around the world – including the EU, Australia, China and US cities and states – there are various regulations making it mandatory to assess and disclose the energy performance of homes or commercial buildings. Even when not mandated, rating systems, such as LEED in the US, BREEAM in the UK and Nabers in Australia are widely used to demonstrate a building’s energy efficiency.

In order to construct buildings that reach the targeted levels of energy efficiency, it’s important to be able to predict how a building design will perform. That level of simulation is a tall order for most architecture firms at the moment, but that’s the challenge that Microsoft’s working on.

Green Prefab already has a library of pre-assembled green building components that will be at the heart of the cloud-based service. Architects will be able to access services to produce energy efficiency reports, conduct in-depth structural analysis and produce photo-realistic images of the building. The start-up is working with Microsoft to develop some of its first cloud computing tools, using Windows Azure.

The Institute of Architectural Technology of the Royal Danish Academy has been testing a prototype of the system. The institute found that the cloud-based solution achieved about twice the potential energy savings of a traditional PC-based approach (33% compared to 17%). Using the cloud also reduced the computing time. The architect was able to run 220,185 energy consumption simulations in the cloud in only three days – it would have taken an unrealistic 122 days with a PC.

 

Review:  This is a good example of greening by IT. The ability to simulate the energy efficiency of buildings can help produce long-lasting savings in carbon emissions that are likely to be many times greater than the emissions used by the IT systems in doing the work. Also, by using the cloud, greater computing power can be brought to bear to achieve results that are not feasible using in-house resources, and, everything else being equal, the IT running the cloud-based systems can be expected to be more energy efficient.

None of this is certain, of course. There is always the danger that architects might run the system trying to achieve impossible results with bad designs. If simulations are that fast, it doesn’t matter if you do more than you really need. And a cloud-based solution may not necessarily be a greener option. But with sensible architects using a reasonably green IT services company (such as IBM) the environment will gain.

GreenTouch consortium shows how communications networks could reduce energy consumption by 90% by 2020

GreenTouch, the global consortium dedicated to improving the energy efficiency of data and communications networks, has announced the findings of new research that shows the net energy consumption in overall networks could be reduced up to 90% by 2020.

GreenTouch was launched in early 2010 with the aim of delivering, by 2015, the architecture, specifications and roadmap — and demonstrate key components — needed to reduce communications energy consumption per user by a factor of 1000 from current levels. The consortium now comprises a group of 53 telecommunications vendors, service providers, universities and research organisations.

This latest research applied advanced modelling to better understand potential network operations in 2020, given the dramatic increases anticipated in communications traffic over the next decade. The research evaluated energy efficiencies in different types of networks, comparing those in 2010 with those incorporating the technologies and architectures the consortium has identified that could be in use by 2020.

Key findings include:

• Mobile networks are the most inefficient but also the fastest growing, in terms of data volume, so would gain the most from energy efficiency efforts.

• Mobile networks could potentially realise energy efficiency improvements of up to 1043 times.

• Fixed line networks are relatively energy-efficient, so improvements will be less significant and much harder to achieve. Nonetheless, energy efficiencies could create potential improvements in fixed access networks of 449 times and improvements in the core network of 95 times.

Some of the new technologies, architectures and protocols included in the 2020 modelling are small cells-deployment in dense urban environments, infrastructure-sharing across operators, discontinuous transmissions during periods without traffic, dynamic allocation of resources and the GreenTouch-developed Bit Interleaved Passive Optical Network (Bi-PON) protocol

The study was conducted as part of GreenTouch’s Green Meter analysis, undertaken by the consortium to assess progress towards its goal. The findings will be made available to service providers for identifying technologies, architectures and protocols to improve network energy efficiency. There’s a web cast of the findings presentation here.

GreenTouch sees itself as a unique model for industry and academic collaboration. “It would be difficult—if not downright impossible—for this type of industry research and technology development to have been conducted by any single vendor or research entity,” said Thierry Van Landegem, chairman of GreenTouch. “We are proving that industry collaboration among all the stakeholders of the ICT value chain can and should drive understanding and innovation.”

 

Review:  Well it’s very interesting and further establishes that GreenTouch’s targets can be met, but this is all about research, not about putting it into practice. It’s down to the consortium members to implement (or not) the research findings.

To be fair, GreenTouch has clearly demonstrated technologies that work. I’ve reported on a couple – see GreenTouch makes fibre-to-the-home 30 times more energy efficient and the demonstration that the radiated power consumption of a mobile mast could be significantly reduced as the number of antenna elements is increased. 

But the real challenge is getting the results of all its research into use, not helped by the fact that not all of the industry is involved in GreenTouch. Noticeable by their absence from the consortium are Ericsson, Cisco Systems and Nokia Siemens Networks.

There is also my oft-quoted objection to several organisations developing standards and/or conducting research into similar aspects of ICT energy efficiency/reduction, in this case the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is working in similar areas. For example, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development was set up in 2010 by the ITU and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organisation (UNESCO) to look at ICT’s emissions, but is also putting its weight behind the view that ICT, supported by broadband communications, is an essential part of moving to a low-carbon economy. That might be a more practical approach until GreenTouch’s research finds it’s way to implementation.