PUE Marketing Hype

It does seem to me that greenwashing has died down somewhat in recent months, at least in the IT sector. I suspect it mainly emerged because companies that had been slow off the mark with their environmental and climate change strategies felt they had to make some claim so as not to be left behind by competitors.

But as Kenneth Brill, Executive Director of the US Uptime Institute points out in an article in Forbes magazine this week, that doesn't mean there isn't still some marketing hype going on.

One measure that services companies have been using to demonstrate the energy efficiency of their data centres is the Power Utilisation Effectiveness (PUE) ratio - you'll see figures quoted in all new data centre descriptions. By way of example, see my previous blog - Fujitsu Services' New UK Data Centre - which claimed a PUE of 1.6.

PUE is a measure promoted by The Green Grid that compares total data centre energy with the energy used by the IT equipment. So, for example, a PUE of 2.0 means that total data centre power (including cooling, etc) is twice that used by the IT equipment alone. Typical measures for existing data centres are from around 2.0-3.0.

Brill quotes instances of PUE measures of 1.6, 1.2 and even 0.9. (Note that 0.9 is impossible - it means that the IT equipment is using less power than is actually available in the data centre!). The point is, Brill says, that there are some issues that need to be considered when looking at these figures, for example:

- Have the numbers been independently verified?
- Currently PUE only covers electricity, but there may be a variety of energy sources used.
- The figures need to be averaged over a period to ensure they don't just represent a favourable instant in time.
- Finally, whilst a lower number is better, the PUE can only really be used as a benchmark if comparing like for like, i.e. with similar equipment, load utilisation, etc.

The lesson is, be wary of the numbers and ask questions.

As for Fjitsu's new data centre, it looked pretty good to me and I know it's resilience was certified, so maybe its PUE was as well. I'm sure they'll let me know one way or the other.

Fuel Price Impact on Logistics

In another interesting survey, Eyefortransport has investigated the impact of increasing fuel prices on the logistics industry in the US. What's interesting is that with coming climate change legislation imposing additional carbon taxes, the survey results can be seen as an indication of things to come. The full report can be obtained here.

There were a number of changes to logistics systems that were envisaged as a result of higher fuel prices and the chart below shows the responses to each. They range from almost 60% who see inventory costs being pushed closer to the final destination, rather than minimising costs by moving goods through the supply chain as quickly as possible, to 11% who are exchanging commodity products with competitors in order to reduce transport costs.


Clearly this has huge implications for logistics solutions, which will need to be expanded, extended and re-configured. Indeed, 45% of respondents cited information systems as a key function to counteract volatile oil prices. IT was in fourth place after transport, inventory management and fleet management.

There are great opportunities here for IT companies with logistics solutions. According to PAC the largest companies in the transport/logistics sector worldwide are EDS and IBM, with T-Systems in a distant third place. HP's acquisition of EDS, which was finalised yesterday, puts them in a great position to benefit from this Green IT sector.

Australia's Hot Rocks

Continuing the theme of geothermal energy (and in the light of the dearth of Green IT news during the holiday season) Reuters recently put out an interesting item about the amount of energy stored under Australia.

Apparently Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal, which is also currently the means to generate over three quarters of the countries electricity. As a consequence it has a higher per-person pollution level than any other country (five times that of China).

However, Geoscience Australia has now mapped the country's geothermal energy through a large number of boreholes and concluded that just 1% of the available reserves could produce enough energy for 26,000 years. The government is testing out different technologies to find the best way to generate electricity from the resource.

Google Invests in Geothermal Technology

Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, has announced that it is investing $10m in a technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS). Whilst the traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water, the EGS process takes it one step further by fracturing hot rock to replicate the natural conditions. By circulating water through the system the resulting steam can be used to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.

"EGS could be the 'killer app' of the energy world. It has the potential to deliver vast quantities of power 24/7 and be captured nearly anywhere on the planet. And it would be a perfect complement to intermittent sources like solar and wind," said Dan Reicher, Director of Climate and Energy Initiatives for Google.org.

Interestingly, whilst the Google corporation is investing in Green technology, a survey by the AB32 Implementation Group found that individual Californians were less supportive of action against global warming, particularly when it brought with it the possibility of higher energy costs.

A total of 78% said they had not heard of AB32 (California's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020) and 56% said that emissions reductions need to be 'without reducing jobs, increasing my family's energy costs or hurting the state's economy'.

The Majority of US Companies are Going Green

I sometimes wonder whether if all the effort put into surveying attitudes to environmental questions were put into actually solving them the world would already be a better place. Still, I suppose it helps convince the sceptics and also demonstrates the benefits to business of following the trend.

Anyway, the 14th annual 'Attitudes to the American Workplace' poll conducted by Zogby International for The Marlin Company has found that the majority of employees report 'significant Green initiatives' at their company. There were two other interesting responses, though.

Firstly, when asked 'Who is Greener, you or your company?', 63% said that they were and only 26% said their company was. Then when asked how important it is that their employer is going Green, 78% said that it is somewhat or very important. So there is pressure on employers to live up to employee expectations. We have made it clear in our own research that employees are a particularly important company stakeholder when it comes to going Green. Companies that do not live up to employee expectations face potential impact on the recruitment and retention of staff.

The second point of note was that when asked why they think companies go Green the highest response was 'to save money', but it was from only 24%. A further 22% said it was because they want positive publicity and 17% said it was because they have a true social responsibility. Now some of that might be good PR from employers, but it does back up the manufacturing sector research I reported the other day, which put cost benefit as the fourth-ranked benefit of Green manufacturing. Even in these tightened economic times, cost reduction is not the runaway reason for going Green.

EPA to Launch Retailers Web Portal

The EPA in the US is to launch a web portal to provide information on sustainability and compliance for the retail sector. The US Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) is working with the IPA on the portal, which will provide access to all retail-related environment compliance, sustainability and pollution prevention information within the EPA's web site.

Expect to see more of this. Government web sites in the US, UK and Europe have extensive information on environmental legislation, etc, but there will be an increasing need to pull this information together and direct it at particular sections of the business community. Particularly as climate change legislation kicks in, with emissions reductions targets, the information will need to expand beyond compliance to advice, contact information, etc. Information portals are a vital part of the public sector armoury.

The Benefits of Green Manufacturing

Eyefortransport has released the findings of a survey on the subject of Green manufacturing. Respondents were 300 senior manufacturing and supply chain executives from companies of all sectors and sizes in the US. The full report is here and it's worth a look.

The chart that stood out for me is the views on the benefits of Green manufacturing. A total of 95% of respondents believed that Green manufacturing would increase and expand, but despite these times of economic slowdown, cost reduction was the fourth-placed benefit - corporate strategy, customer demands and public reputation were seen as more important. In addition, 71% said the cost of going Green is getting lower and the potential profits increasing.


Clearly a very positive movement to Green manufacturing in the US and plenty of opportunity for those software and IT services players that specialise in the market.

Wipro Gets Greener

Wipro has signed an agreement with WWF India for them to work together to explore the use of IT to drive sustainable development. It will directly deal with issues of climate change, water and waste management and biodiversity conservation.

The sorts of areas of joint work would be where IT solutions can act as a driver for a low carbon economy, such as virtual meeting enablers, environment friendly ICT products and advocacy for ecologically sustainable standard practices in the IT industry. The collaboration will also cover optimising the ecological footprint of Wipro’s own operations and biodiversity conservation through pilots on Wipro’s campuses and WWF priority sites.

This is the second Green announcement from Wipro in recent months. In June it announced it had joined the Green Grid.

It's good to see the offshore companies getting more active and open around environmental issues, not that they're particularly lagging behind. For the last Carbon Disclosure Project survey, TCS and Satyam did not respond, Wipro did respond but asked that the information was not published and Infosys provided information that was published. Doesn't sound great, but it was pretty representative of the industry as a whole.

Fujitsu Siemens - Zero-Watt Standby Monitors

Fujitsu Siemens has started to ship the world's first monitors that automatically switch off completely in power-save mode. (Actually the press release is headed 'World's first zero watt monitors', which really would be an achievement!)

Anyway, the DC power converter shuts down completely when it's not in use (as opposed to the usual 1-6 watts in standby). It's done through a switching element in the power supply that's controlled by the PC. When the PC next sends output to the monitor an electrical pulse restores display power.

The products were already announced and apparently there are advanced orders 'running into thousands'.

Large Companies Unprepared for Climate Change Risks

FM Global, one of the world’s largest business property insurers, recently conducted a survey among 100 of the largest US businesses. It revealed that many of those firms are not well-prepared for natural disasters and are not overly concerned about the potential business impact. While 96% of financial executives said their companies have operations exposed to natural catastrophes, such as hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, less than 20 percent indicated that their firms were “very concerned” about such natural disasters negatively affecting their bottom line.

To quote the press release; “The findings reveal a surprising and concerning gap between the levels of natural catastrophe exposure among North America’s largest companies and their level of preparedness,” said Ruud Bosman, executive vice president, FM Global, “especially given that, in the first half of 2008, there were about 400 natural catastrophes worldwide with overall losses expected to top US$50 billion".

This fits with my own impression gained from the last set of responses by IT companies to the Carbon Disclosure Project and spelled out in a recent report (Playing the Green IT Card). There seemed to be a degree of complacency that existing disaster recovery systems were adequate, when we can expect to see much more (and more widespread) disruption in the future. Indeed the more astute responses pointed to the possibility of multiple disasters at the same time and also that whilst the companies themselves might not be impacted there would be knock-on effects such as power shortages and blackouts, telecoms failures, medical epidemics leading to resource shortages, inability to get to work or travel on business, and the impact on suppliers, distributors and resellers.

Of course whilst this is a risk to IT suppliers it is also an opportunity. The disaster recovery market will inevitably expand significantly in the coming years as climate change starts to have a real impact on global weather patterns.

HP extends Smartway Certification

HP has announced that it has qualified all business PC, printing and server products shipped throughout the United States and Canada for the U.S. EPA SmartWay logo labeling program.

The EPA launched SmartWay in 2004 as a brand to identify products and services that reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. SmartWay Transport Partners must measure their current environmental performance using the SmartWay performance model, commit to improvements within three years and sign the SmartWay Transport Partnership Agreement.

There are around 950 SmartWay Transport Partners, but in April HP became the first company to qualify to have the SmartWay logo placed on its product packaging after it certified that its entire surface transportation carrier network for consumer accessories, desktop and monitor products was composed of SmartWay-compliant carriers. The company has now qualified the complete surface transportation carrier networks for its business desktops, monitors, notebooks, servers, storage, thin clients and workstations, as well as all imaging and printing devices.

Lets hope some similar initiatives emerge outside the US. I'm not aware of any but would be interested to hear what IT suppliers in Europe and elsewhere are doing in this area.

Dell Becomes Carbon Neutral

Less than a year ago Dell announced a plan to be carbon neutral by the end of 2008 and last Wednesday it announced that it had reached that goal, five months ahead of schedule. It's part of the company's commitment to be the greenest technology company on the planet.

Apparently Dell met its goal early by 'implementing an aggressive global energy-efficiency campaign and increasing purchases of green power, verified emission reductions and renewable energy certificates'. The company's annual investment in green electricity from utility providers, including wind, solar and methane-gas capture is now 116 million kWh. It has also announced that it's making additional investments in wind power in the U.S., China and India. Combined with green electricity purchases from utility providers, this equates to 645 million kWh and the avoidance of more than 400,000 metric tons of CO2.

This is quite an achievement and, as far as I am aware, ahead of any other ICT company. The nearest contenders that I know of are Deutsche Telekom (including IT services supplier T-Systems), with a plan to be carbon neutral by 2010 and BT with a target of 80% reduction in emissions by 2016, although published targets are constantly changing across the industry.

It would be great, though, if Dell could provide a detailed breakdown of how it was achieved, i.e. the extent of operations that were included, what the starting point was, how much was a reduction in energy use and how much was through 'green' power (and how much of that was generated in-house), how much was offset, etc. A breakdown would be good as a means to assess what exactly was achieved, but also as an example to others on how to do it, cost implications, etc. The more those that can achieve these targets share the experience with others the better.

Fastest Green Supercomputers are Blue

IBM has put out a press release pointing out that it dominates the rankings for Green supercomputers.

The Green 500 list (from Green500.org) ranks supercomputers on MFlops/W and in the last list (published in June) IBM occupied the top 15 positions in the rankings. The winner is at IBM Germany; a BladeCenter QS22 Cluster, PowerXCell 8i 3.2 Ghz, Infiniband and clocked in at 488.14 MFlops/W.

Since you ask, the 500th place is taken by The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with its Intel Itanium2 Tiger4 1.4GHz - Quadrics which came in at 4.06 MFlops/W

It doesn't mean much to me (and apologies if I have misrepresented the data), but it's nice to know someone is noting these things (but the top 500?!)

The Lieberman-Warner Impact

There was an interesting article in Carbon Finance recently about the impact of the Lieberman-Warner bill. This is the greenhouse gas emissions legislation that was in the US Senate in June but was defeated, as the article points out, by procedural actions with little real debate.

But it did set the tone for legislation which is expected to get through next year and highlights of the bill included:

- Targets would come into force in 2012, with an initial cap of 4% below 2005, going down to 19% below by 2020 and 71% below by 2050. This makes the short-term goals (2020) on par with the EU (but behind the UK) whilst the 2050 target is ahead of the EU.

- The individual states could also have their own programmes, which could mean conflicting (or duplicating) regulations

- International offsets would be a compliance option.

There have also apparently been new bills since Lieberman-Warner, including one calling for 80-85% reductions on 1990 levels by 2050.

The presidential candidates are expected to get increasingly involved, since one of them will have centre stage next year, and, with a larger Democratic majority expected, emissions targets are likely to be more ambitious as time passes, economy permitting.

The article was written by consultancy ICF International - read it here.

Avoid Flying

From the research that I've done there are still a lot of IT companies that feel they have very little impact on climate change, because there are few emissions associated with their business activities. However, there is one area that most will agree is a candidate for reducing a carbon footprint and that's business travel, particularly since travel and transport accounts for as much as 40% of greenhouse gases in developed economies.

It's particularly applicable to IT services companies since this is an increasingly globalised business world and the IT players seek out global companies as the best customers with the largest and most profitable business opportunities. Global sourcing, i.e. from India, China and elsewhere, and delivery around the world is an essential part of the industry.

This is an area that WWF is already targeting and in a report earlier this year (Travelling Light) revealed that:

- 62% of companies surveyed are already reducing their business travel footprint.
- A further 24% of companies are currently developing plans to do so.
- 89% of companies expect they will want to fly less over the next 10 years.
- 85% of companies say that videoconferencing can help them reduce their flying.
- 89% of companies believe that videoconferencing can improve their productivity.

The WWF is urging companies to cut flights by 20% and the Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supported the call at an event last week by asking companies to use more video conferencing. He made his appeal via a live video link, of course.

IT companies need to make sure that they are also moving in this direction and, indeed, have the means to measure and monitor the carbon footprint of their travel, not just as a company but also for individual projects. Customers will ask.

Supply Chain Execs Watch the Carbon

According to a survey from US organisation eyefortransport (which describes itself as the world's leading provider of logistics and transportation information and services), 60% of supply chain executives are measuring their transportation and logistics emissions.

The finding comes from a the 'Green Transportation and Logistics North American 2008 Report', which was the result of a survey of 500 North American supply chain executives. A total of 85% of respondents felt that green issues would become more important over the next three years, with 9% identifying green issues as their number one priority during that time frame.

But research from Transport Intelligence and Kewill seems to show that many companies are passing on the responsibility to suppliers. The Logistics and Transport Industry Environmental Survey, which had 450 respondents from around the world, found that 75% of those who awarded logistics contracts required some environmental compliance in their tender documents, although most didn't allow for any extra cost in the process. Of those that were awarded contracts, 70% said environmental compliance was important.

When asked about specific areas for Green initiatives, transportation was the main area, e.g. driver training, hybrid engines and better management of empty running. Not far behind (25% of responses) was more efficient planning though IT tools and increased administration efficiencies.

This does seem to be a Green market with huge IT potential. At the moment it seems to be mostly around ticking boxes for good practice, but there will be rapidly increasing pressure in the coming years and IT will be a central tool in meeting customer demands.