Green outsourcing charter

Paris-based consulting and systems integration company Business & Decisions has launched what it calls Greenethiquette “a mandate for a clear cloud”. The idea is to encourage IT users to take some eco-responsibility when IT is outsourced.

Basically it’s a charter that commits both sides in an outsourcing/hosting/cloud agreement to a code of conduct. Greenethiquette provides the framework for the arrangement and helps users set it up.

It covers five areas:

• Optimise energy efficiency - The service provider shares PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) information with its customers and undertake to take improvement measures such as following the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres or Energy Star rating for data centre infrastructure.

• Server resourcers’ fair consumption – Primarily measured by the level of server activity. The provider of the hosted service provides its customer with detailed activity levels of physical and virtual services related to each hosted application. It enables follow-ups and monitoring of progress over time.

• Recycling policies - The host must provide documentation of data centre policies for recycling IT equipment and consumables (paper, printer cartridges, etc). The host will be required to make all certificates and traceability available.

• Equipment selection - The host participates in a programme such as Climate Savers Computing, which has guidelines over choice of equipment. As and when Energy Star and EPEAT cover servers, then their suggestions will be included.

• Fair resilience principle – This relates to the need to have a realistic level of resilience, rather than over-providing with, for example, continuously running systems that may not be required.

For each of the above areas Greenethiquette provides facts and figures, suggested measures that can be taken and codes of conduct to monitor and benchmark the level of service. Transparency and co-creation are seen as the key.

According to greenIT.fr, Intel, Climate Savers Computing, Bouygues Immobilier and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Grenoble have already joined up.

This is an interesting initiative and one to watch. Outsourcing (of any sort) is certainly a huge grey area for the industry in terms of green responsibility. (Although in the UK legislation – in terms of the Carbon Reduction commitment – actually puts virtually all of the responsibility on the service provider). Anything that can help formalise and codify the customer/service provider relationship could be a big help. At the moment most user/supplier discussions seems to be on an individual, ad-hoc contract basis. Providing guidelines for the arrangement would be a real step forward.

And apparently Business & Decisions wants to hand control of Greenethiquette over to some other organisation in the future to ensure its neutrality is assured and it continues to evolve. (Although whether the current name can survive international adoption remains to be seen).

© The Green IT Review (www.thegreenitreport.com)

Energ-IT project examines data centre energy use

A project called Energ-IT has been set up in Italy to develop solutions to reduce power consumption in data centres.  The project is financed by the regional government of Lombardy and the project members are Milan’s Technical University, systems integrator Beta 80 Group, Enter (I don’t know who they are), and IT performance company Neptuny.

The project has three goals:

• To identify ways to reengineer legacy systems to make them more green, rather than replace them.

• To measure the energy savings made.

• To compare those savings with the main market solutions using a test data centre with state-of-the-art energy saving technology.

Apparently, the initial findings were discussed in a workshop in Milan in early December organised by the University and the European Commission.  It covered the intermediate results and discussed paths and tools to develop future Green IT strategies.  It seems that Gianluigi Castelli, chief information officer at ENI S.p.A, André Richier, principal administrators of the European Commission, Pierre Chastanet, officer of the European Commission, and Roger Johnson, past president of the British Computer Society.

It all sounds very interesting, but the only information I can find doesn’t give any details of the findings.  It only seems to be Neptuny that has published any information about the project and a big chunk of that is a plug for the company’s tools for predicting data centre power consumption.

Hopefully more information will emerge - but it’s a bit odd for a Italian university project funded by local government money and with the EC involved in a workshop on the findings not to publish something somewhere.  As I’ve said before, in the realm of green IT (indeed all things green) sharing information is important, more so if it’s publicly funded.

Data centre as heat source

Helsinki’s public energy company, Helsingin Energia's, has built a new eco-friendly data centre in a cave under Uspenski Cathedral.  The data centre is cooled by district cooling and the heat generated is piped out as district heating.  The capacity of the data centre is two megawatts, with an extended capacity of five megawatts. When the hall is full of computers, the heat it produces is enough to heat up to 500 family homes.

The aim of the joint project between Academica and Helsingin Energia is to produce the world’s most eco-efficient data centre.  The district cooling is produced from the thermal energy from heat pumps, cold seawater or energy generation that would otherwise be wasted.  The heat produced is piped via a heat pump into the district heating network to heat Helsinki buildings and the residents' domestic hot water.

 

In its press release the company points out that the efficiency factor (which I assume means PUE) of ordinary data centres is between 1.5 and 2.  The efficiency factor of Academica's and Helsingin Energia's hall is around one, and ‘it is possible to get even below this figure’.  (I’m not sure how that’s done).

But it’s a reminder that taking individual facilities in isolation, particularly data centres) may well not be the best way to demonstrate energy efficiency.  It’s possible to use the heat generated within a data centre for another use, saving energy elsewhere.

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Happy Holidays and great New Year

I’d just like to take the opportunity to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Thanks for tuning in to the blog, which has now completed it’s second year.  In 2010 The Green IT Report will be expanding, offering more information and services with a new web site, so watch this space.

But it all starts with the readership.  Let us know what you think – news and comment are always welcome.  And if you enjoy reading the blog, tell a friend.  The more the merrier and the better the blog will be.

Smart grid news - Australia

• Australian Power company Western Power has chosen IBM as its partner for its SmartGrid - Advanced Meter Infrastructure pilot program.  IBM will build a roadmap for the design and implementation of an intelligent network using smart meters and a communications backbone for the pilot.  The idea is to develop a platform for a range of energy efficiency and demand management initiatives.

It will be part of the government sponsored Perth Solar City project.  Western Power will lead the $73.5m initiative in which residents will be offered free energy advisory services and price reductions on solar systems. One of the objectives of the program is to encourage behaviour change in energy consumption through energy assessments and education.

IBM has already begun work with Western Power to identify solution requirements, design network architecture, and develop implementation plans.

• Logica has published a report looking at the attitudes to, and progress of, smart grids in Australia, based on the result of an in-depth survey of 35 executives from the largest energy companies. 

The report identified three key areas of focus (which could probably be applied to any smart grid proposals anywhere):

- A new regulatory framework is seen as key to give some direction to energy generators, distributors and retailers, as well as providing some flexibility.

- Getting the right strategy in place is important - 25% of the industry reported that they have already developed their corporate smart grid strategy or were in the process of refining it. The rest are working on discreet projects that fit under a smart grid umbrella with plans to develop an overall strategy.

- Respondents saw investment as a crucial component in moving forward, but with some understandable reluctance to invest in solutions without knowing the challenges they address.  There was also concern that the benefits would be spread amongst generators, distributors, and retailers, so who makes the investment?

One interesting chart in the report shows the views on smart grid drivers now and in the longer term.  It confirms the view that cost issues and performance are generally the short term drivers, with quality of supply and changing consumer behaviour growing in significance in the longer term.

Cisco releases CSR report

Cisco released its CSR report a couple of weeks ago, which included an analysis of progress against its environmental targets.  As far as greenhouse gas emissions are concerned, the company has two main goals:

• In September 2006, the company committed to reducing GHG emissions from air travel worldwide by 10% compared with 2006 as part of the Clinton Global Initiative.

• Cisco has also signed up to the EPA Climate Leaders programme and in June 2008 committed to reduce Scope 1, 2 and business-air-travel Scope 3 emissions worldwide by 25% by calendar year 2012, compared with 2007.

Both these goals have been easily surpassed.  In financial year 2009, air travel emissions were down 39% and the Scope 1, 2 and air travel emissions are down 40%.  There are a couple of points worth making, though.

Firstly, energy usage is actually up 18% and electricity usage is up 21% compared with 2007 (the first year of complete data).  However, as the chart below shows, the proportion of electricity from renewable sources has increased significantly, accounting for much of the emissions savings.  In fact if the impact of the renewable energy use is not included, emissions would actually be up 13%.  It is increased efficiency we should really be aiming for – there’s not enough renewable energy available to satisfy all emissions reduction requirements.

The other area of savings, and with a target of its own, is air travel.  Given that in 2007 emissions from air travel were up 8% on the previous year and in 2008 up 4% again, one could conclude that the 39% drop in 2009 was down to the impact of the recession.  Undoubtedly some was.

However, Cisco’s online conferencing tools -  TelePresence, WebEx and MeetingPlace – have clearly had an impact.  The number of Telepresence rooms more than doubled in 2009, for example, to almost 550, and time spent web conferencing with WebEx and MeetingPlace almost doubled.

It’s hard to be sure how much this prevents air travel, but Cisco has made an interesting attempt at it.  The company has compared changes to air travel emissions with changes in revenue and headcount, seen as the main drivers of air travel.  The chart below is from the report - actual emissions are plotted against headcount (green line, right axis) and revenue (orange line, left axis).

Copenhagen synopsis

Well, it’s clear that Copenhagen didn’t achieve what was hoped.  It probably never could, given the lack of any emissions legislation in the US and the game-playing between developed and developing nations (for which read US and China).

So, setting aside the recriminations, what did happen?  Here’s the potted explanation of what was/wasn’t achieved:

• There is now pretty much a worldwide agreement that global warming should be kept to no more than 2^oC.  (You may wonder why 192 nations had to get together to agree that).  Even at the 2^oC level, global warming will have a significant impact around the world.

• There is, though, no agreement on what emissions cuts are required to achieve this objective, i.e. no 2020 or 2050 emissions reductions targets were agreed.

• What was agreed was that within six weeks the rich, developed countries will register the emissions cuts they intend to make by 2020. However, with no agreed targets this leaves it up to the individual countries to make their own decisions.

• Developed countries will provide poorer countries with ‘approaching’ $30bn of funding in 2010-2012 to help address the impact of climate change.

• Developed countries have also committed to a ‘goal of mobilizing’ $100bn a year by 2020 to support developing countries.  So it’s not guaranteed and is intended to come from a variety of public and private sources.

• It was agreed that funding would be made available to help prevent deforestation, but the details are yet to be agreed.

• No deadline was set to achieve a legally binding emissions reduction agreement in the foreseeable future, although there is hope that something might be achieved in Mexico in a year’s time.

Depending on who you listen to this is either an unmitigated disaster or a necessary stepping stone to a legally binding global emissions agreement.

What does it mean for the ICT sector?  Well, the theory was that a global agreement would result in a rush of national legislation which, in turn, would inevitably drive the need for the technology to meet targets.  Now that immediate impetus is not there.  Perhaps worse, the lack of agreement will lead to protectionism – no country wants to undermine its own industry with more emissions cuts than its neighbour.  For example, the EU had said it would increase its 2020 emissions reduction to 30% if other countries agreed to a deal, but they didn’t.

Of course technology will still be a major plank of emissions reductions, keeping global warming to 2^oC can’t be done without it, but it may be a longer, slower process.

From another perspective, you could argue that with politics failing to deliver, it’s technology, including ICT, that’s the main hope in getting us through.

UK government sustainability achievements

The UK government has released the latest data on how it’s performing against the goals laid out in its Delivery Plan – Sustainable Procurement and Operations on the Government Estate - which has now been updated.  Details of the achievements and plans are here.

It’s interesting because the targets and plans cover all government offices, which includes IT operations.  The implications are (although never very clearly stated) that ICT is aiming for the same target.  It’s unfortunate since we know that ICT can help the rest of the organisation reduce emissions, which doesn’t seem to be taken into consideration.

Anyway, looking at the CO2 emissions from offices, the targets were to reduce emissions by 12.5% by 2010/11 and 30% by 2020 relative to 1999/2000 levels.  The government says it has achieved a 10% reduction against the 1999/2000 baseline this year and is on target to meet the 2010/11 target.  Of the 22 central government departments reporting, half have already reached the target, one is on track, four have made progress but are not on track and six have made no reductions (or emissions have gone up).  However, those government departments not on target represent less than a quarter of total government CO2 emissions.

So far so good.  I’ve no doubt that the 12.5% can be achieved next year, but that’s the easy bit – the low-hanging fruit.  Things are going to get tougher.  Apart from the fact that its always going to be harder as you progress, there are a couple of other issues that departments (and IT operations) have to face:

• The original plan included a target of being carbon neutral by 2012.  (I can’t find any reference to this in the updated plan, so maybe it’s been quietly dropped).  Assuming it’s still in place, a huge amount of offsetting will be needed in 2012, which is going to cost a lot of money and hit budgets, ICT included.

• The conservative party has said that if it comes to power in the General Election (which will be in May at the latest) it will make government reduce emissions by 10% in the following year.  This means that just after having achieved a 12.5% reduction another 10% may be required.  Or will government departments slow down on emissions reduction actions pending a general election?

IBM – Smart cities and five in five

I was at IBM’s software development lab at Hursley, in the UK, on Monday, for a roundup of the company’s Smarter Planet initiative.  Interesting stuff.  Hursley’s always a good place to get into deep conversations about the future of IT – and the world. 

IBM’s green IT strategy has evolved somewhat over the last year or two.  I blogged on the company’s ‘House of Carbon’ green IT approach almost two years ago now, but, as with the rest of the industry, the focus has turned more towards efficiencies.  In IBM’s case it’s intelligent systems, such as smart grids and intelligent transport systems, under the collective name of a Smarter Planet.  The focus for much of the discussion on Monday was Smart Cities.

IBM emphasises three aspects to the Smarter Planet; instrumentation, interconnection and intelligence.  All three are growing rapidly, providing the building blocks for intelligent systems in general, and smarter cities in particular. 

A trivial example is the fact that 45% of cars driving in Manhattan are (according to IBM) looking for a parking space.  The technology is already available to monitor spaces, identify unused ones and pass the information on to drivers, as well as guiding them to the right place.  It’s just a case of pulling together the technology, but the net result is increases parking revenue, reduced traffic on the roads and cuts in emissions (and happy drivers).

You can find a lot more background on IBM’s intelligent systems activity if you click on the IBM link in the ‘Green IT Portals’ panel on the right.

IBM also announced its fourth set of ‘5 in 5’ predictions, which this year are also focused on cities.  The annual list details five innovations that the company believes will change the way we live.  It’s based on market and societal trends as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s labs that can make it happen.  The five innovations are:

• Cars and city buses will begin to run on new battery technology that won’t need to be recharged for days or months at a time. IBM is working to design new batteries that will make it possible for electric vehicles to travel 300 to 500 miles on a single charge, compared with 50 to 100 miles currently.

• In the future, public health officials will know precisely when, where and how diseases are spreading, through tools that better detect, track, prepare for, and prevent infections, such as the H1N1 virus that has caused scares in cities around the world this year.

• With water demand expected to increase six-fold in the next 50 years, cities will install smarter water systems to reduce water waste by up to 50%.  Cities also will install smart sewer systems that don’t pollute rivers and lakes, and purify water to make it drinkable.

• In exchange for reducing their carbon footprint, citizens will receive gift-card credits, with the ability to buy and trade credits in Internet auction marketplaces to offset their daily carbon footprint.  This is effectively individual carbon allowances, which I can’t really see being implemented within five years, but maybe 10.

• Cities will respond to emergencies before they happen by analysing available information.  IBM cites the New York Fire Department, which is developing- a state-of-the-art system for collecting and sharing data in real-time that potentially can prevent fires and protect rescuers.

There’s a lot for IBM to get its teeth into in its Smart Cities initiative, it’s already helping Berlin, Dublin, Malta, New York City and others.  Much of it is going above and beyond the company’s traditional markets and the 5 in 5 predictions imply even more involvement.  The ex-PWC consulting arm is going to be heavily used. 

The largest impact green IT can have is as an enabler, to help the economy as a whole become more environmentally friendly, and that’s what the Smart Planet initiative is about.  IBM is certainly a major player, but I suspect a lot of the innovation that will help us get to a low carbon economy will come from unexpected sources.

France’s ‘Grand Loan’ leaves out Green IT

France has announced the plans for the "grand emprunt" or ‘large loan’, the debt funded public investment aimed at increasing growth after the economic crisis.

According to GreenIT.fr, of the €35bn loan, more than 10% (€4.5bn) will go to the digital economy.  The largest part, €2bn will be aimed at infrastructure, including fibre optics, €750m is going to digitisation projects in museums, libraries and French cinema, with the remaining €1.7bn allocated to projects in cloud computing, the use of new technologies in schools and telecommuting.

So while the digital economy and sustainable development are two pillars of the recovery plan in France, there’s no money going directly to Green IT projects.

Smart 2020: Pathways to scale

You may recall that the oft-quoted Smart 2020 report from The Climate Group identified a number of areas where ICT could help reduce emissions.  The report concluded that through its contribution to dematerialisation, smart buildings, smart power, smart industry and smart transport, ICT could facilitate emissions reductions of five times the ICT sector's own emissions, or 15% of total BAU (business as usual) emissions by 2020.  We reported on the findings here.

Well The Climate Group has followed up, in a programme called Pathways to Scale, in an effort to help achieve these targets.  The organisation is tracking the actions being implemented, in the form of case studies, in the areas of energy and carbon efficiency in buildings and offices, transport and logistics, and in the electricity network.  You can browse the database of case studies (and add your own example) here.

The Climate Group is also analysing the actions as the programme progresses.  For example, in terms of challenges to the development and implementation phase for a smart 2020 project, lack of awareness of the technology was often cited.  The biggest response was that there were no challenges, but the expectation is that problems are likely to be encountered when the initial implementation is scaled up.

Another interesting example of the analysis was the issue as to whether the projects relied on behaviour change.  It concluded that there is still a large untapped opportunity in enabling behaviour change, in terms of optimisation and automation (although there must also be a significant aspect of non-ICT related education in there).

Computation gets greener?

I’ve just come across a paper from Intel published earlier this year that looks at the electrical efficiency of computation over time. 

The paper explores the relationship between the performance of computers and the electricity needed to deliver that performance and comes to the conclusion that computations per kWh have been growing about as fast as performance.  Growth was even more rapid during the vacuum tube computing era, but slowed as discrete transistors were introduced.  However, since desktop computers made an entrance in 1981, computations per kWh have been doubling every 1.5 years, which is the average from 1946 to now. 

What’s driving the improvement is the fact that smaller transistor sizes also tend to reduce power use, hence efficiency has increased with performance.  If the trend continues, then the paper believes that there will be continuing rapid reductions in the size and power use of mobile computing devices.

Lets hope so.  The proliferation of devices is likely to outstrip increased efficiency for a while yet and there’s not much we can do about that (except discourage people from using multiple devices, particularly in the workplace) but at least increased efficiency will help.

AICPA calls for climate change reporting standards

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and 12 other accounting institutes have sent an open letter to political leaders at the Copenhagen conference calling for universal accounting standards for relevant financial reporting on climate change.

The 15 organisations come from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Honk Kong, Japan and South Africa.  Among the signatories are the UK’s Accounting for Sustainability project, which has been pushing for standards for several years.

The open letter is a call for a single set of universally accepted standards for climate change disclosure in mainstream financial reports.  The letter maintains that an independent, stakeholder-led body with appropriate links to public authorities should be established to develop and adopt the accounting standards.

There are de-facto standards out there, including the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) surveys and in 2007 the World Economic Forum created the Climate Disclosure Standards Board which proposed a framework for climate risk-related reporting by corporations in May 2009.

It’s clear that some sort of minimum standard is required, as any sift through the annual reports from corporations shows.  There are too many ways that information can be interpreted and comparisons can be well-nigh impossible.

As far as the IT implications go, most carbon management and reporting solutions offer a number of ways to slice and dice the data and even more formats for reporting, so it’s probably not going to have much of an impact on the market (except, perhaps, to lower the market entry barrier for new suppliers).

The need for Copenhagen

As a reminder of why Copenhagen is important, some bad news from the last couple of weeks:

- According to a report called ‘The Federal Energy Domain’ from FedSources, US federal government energy consumption is set to rise from $21.2bn in fiscal 2009 to $28.8bn in 2010, a 36% increase.  A major driver is war spending, with the Department of Defense the highest spender, followed by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the US Postal Service.

- According to an interesting short report from Carbon Retirement breaking down the money spent on offsets via the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), typically just 27.6% is actually used for capital expenditure and project
maintenance.

 

- A Harris Poll in November revealed that the proportion of people in the US that believe that the release of carbon dioxide and other gases will lead to global warming has dropped from 71% two years ago to only 51% now.

Actually I’m not really surprised by the last statistic given the level of disinformation ranged against them.  I’ve had several invitations in the last week to avail myself of ‘Internationally Known Climate Change Speakers/Expert Commentators Available For Interviews’ – all climate change deniers.

There was a great article on the subject in The Guardian in the UK on Saturday – take a look.      

Sustainability performance management from SAP

Another announcement from SAP, this time the BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application.  It’s designed to help companies deal with the information they need to manage their sustainability strategy and also integrates with existing applications (SAP and non-SAP) for a common reporting platform.  It’s the first application to be certified by the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) Certified Software and Tools program - ‘GRI aims to promote the transparent and reliable exchange of sustainability information’.

The software takes a broad view of sustainability and uses a variety of indicators, manages the data and has a user-friendly interface to make reporting easier.  This broad approach was emphasised by Peter Graf, SAP’s chief sustainability officer and executive vice president of Sustainability Solutions; “To truly be seen as sustainability leaders, businesses need to look beyond carbon foot printing and start proactively managing the full spectrum of sustainability opportunities, including economic, social and environmental obligations.  … Until now, it’s been extremely difficult to get the complete, actionable information needed to operationalise sustainability goals and strategies”.

It’s been clear that SAP has started to align itself with the sustainability market in a big way in 2009, after a slow start in addressing emissions issues in 2008.  Managing CO2 is itself an important new ICT market, but it’s a short step to incorporating a wider range of ‘green’ indicators (environmental, social, etc) which companies will increasingly have to take on board.  SAP’s role at the heart of many global corporations gives it huge opportunities in this space, but then a lot of specialist suppliers are fighting for a slice of the action as well.

SAP brings CDP data to the iPhone

It’s now possible to see how companies in different geographies and industry sectors are tackling climate change while you’re on the move, thanks to SAP bringing CDP data to the iPhone.

 

Roambi provides the platform for displaying the data and on its web site it shows several samples.  One data set shows the levels of CDP disclosure of FTSE 350 companies by various industry sectors and another by countries.

What I found most interesting, though, was the data set showing company emissions by activity and region, with SAP being the sample data, and also the monthly energy use for specific locations around the world.

So my first impression was, why on earth would you want this on an iPhone?  (I haven’t got one so I’m not really qualified to comment). My second impression was that this is interesting data and well presented - good to browse.  But finally it comes down to what you want to use the data for.  The CDP is an invaluable source of benchmarking and comparable data on CO2 emissions, but it’s useless just having the raw numbers without some background information.  Just looking at the SAP data by facility raises more questions than it answers.  Why is there so much month-by-month variation in energy use?  Why is more energy used in summer than in winter in London.  I can think of possible reasons, but this app doesn’t tell you.

Looks good, though, and isn’t that what the iPhone’s mainly about?

Europe’s offshore wind grid

Nine countries – UK, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland – on Monday signed an agreement to develop an integrated offshore wind grid in the North and Irish Seas.

The idea is to make supplies of electricity more secure for the participating countries by making it easier to optimise offshore wind electricity production.  It will also help the EU as a whole to meet its renewable energy target for 2020.

Another reason for smart grids.

Ecosia – green search engine

Ecosia is a search engine, backed by Yahoo!, Bing and WWF, that’s using all its sponsored advertising revenue to help save the planet.
Full details are in the video below, but the basic idea is that rather than the revenue from the sponsored links in search results going into the coffers of the search companies, it’s used to help protect the rainforest.  Ecosia is a private company, with Yahoo! and Bing providing the search capability and WWF uses the income for its rainforest protection programme.

Rainforest protection is an important ecological issue, with deforestation causing around 20% of all global CO2 emissions (according to the company).  Ecosia estimates that the revenue from each search can help save two square metres of rainforest and with the average internet user making 1,000 searches a year (I must be doing a lot of other people’s), then each Ecosia user can save 2,000 square metres of rainforest a year.
The chart below shows how usage has been growing since its very recent launch.  It obviously has huge potential.  You can help.

BT’s videoconferencing savings tool

BT Conferencing has announced a product called Engage Tracker, a tool to help companies document monetary savings resulting from the use of video conferencing.  The tool is available as an add-on module to BT’s online scheduling and call launch tool - Engage Meeting Manager.

Engage Tracker calculates how much air travel, and hence cost and emissions, has been saved through the use of videoconferencing.  It uses the customer’s data to make the estimates and can include both the travelling itself and the associated subsistence costs of being away from the office.

Initially this sounds fairly interesting, but realistically, is it much help?  It sounds more like a tool for justifying videoconferencing investment after the event, so the supplier has most to gain.  It’s only available if you’re already a BT Engage customer, so not much help elsewhere

There are also mixed messages here.  Is it for tracking savings in cost or emissions?  The two are, of course, connected, but the inclusion of other subsistence costs associated with travel suggests that its more to do with costs, despite carbon savings being a headline.

Apart from that, why only air travel?  Videoconferencing can be just as effective in reducing car and train travel.  In any case, the problem with assessing the savings from using videoconferencing is that it has the potential to become an additional facility, i.e. to become widely adopted within a company without a commensurate reduction in travel.

Klimakost product emissions calculator

Four students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have developed software called Klimakost (Climate Cost) which calculates both the direct and indirect emissions in various products and services.  Klimakost considers emissions from the entire value chain, from cradle to grave.

The tool is based on a combination of emission statistics and national economic transactions and enables people to determine which activities in both the public and private sector have the greatest environmental costs.

Users can choose from 56 types of businesses and industries.  For example, in the insurance industry, 20% of the greenhouse ‘costs’ come from heating, electricity and transport, but 40% occur abroad in producing the metals that are used to make computers or components of office furniture.

The idea is to make it easier to make informed decisions.  One driver has been the increasing use of ‘green’ branding and carbon footprint accounting for common consumer products. For example, in 2010 France will require companies to inform consumers of the amount of emissions that new products, such as TVs, have generated in manufacture, wherever that was.

An interesting addition to the tools required to calculate where emissions are really being made over a products life cycle, which will become an increasing focus in the years to come.

EPA rules on greenhouse gases

In an announcement yesterday that at least gave some support to the US delegation in Copenhagen, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), formally declared that “The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆)--in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations”.

The organisation reached preliminary findings back in March, but has since been through a consultation period and review before reaching its formal conclusion.

“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change.”  Notice that politicians are not in the list.

The declaration doesn’t mean much in itself, but it does open the door for the EPA to impose standards around, for instance, vehicle emissions.

Fujitsu expands green initiatives

Fujitsu has announced that it’s expanding its Green Policy Innovation program globally, with the aim of achieving a reduction in worldwide CO2 emissions of more than 15 million tons over the four-year period from 2009 to 2012.

Fujitsu launched the program at the end of 2007.  The initial intent was to develop energy-efficient IT and introduce green IT solutions throughout Japan, with the aim of reducing CO2 emissions by more than seven million tons between 2007 and 2010.  In the first two years a reduction of around 2.23 million tons of CO2 emissions was achieved.

Since then the company has leveraged its international operations to expand the program in various other markets and has now set the new global target.

Among the green offerings the the company hopes will achieve the target are:

• Energy-efficient IT infrastructure – there have been several announcements of more energy-efficient hardware from the company recently.

• Outsourcing services delivered from greener data centres.  Fujitsu implemented a new green data centre in the UK, as we reported last year, and has now also begun trial implementation of the energy-consumption simulation technology designed to optimise data centre operations.

• Fujitsu Group companies in Japan, Australia and elsewhere are already providing consulting services and these will be expanded.  The services in in Australia have apparently delivered more than 20% savings on emissions from IT for customers.

• Fujitsu also has a range of green IT services and solutions for manufacturing, transport and other industries as well as for back-office administrative operations.  Examples include SAP AMO (Application Management Outsourcing), which, in Japan, has led to reductions of 68% in CO2 emissions, compared with doing it in-house.  Also in Japan, Fujitsu provides a traffic control system which uses GPS and traffic data to improve the efficiency of vehicle allocation and delivery routes.

For me, though, it’s not really what Fujitsu is doing – other companies have similar green capabilities - but the approach.  The company has a long history of environmental concern in Japan and it’s that experience that it’s taking overseas.  The experience translates into the efforts the company goes to to show the real gains that can be made from green IT, for instance by packaging green services where emissions gains are well understood and demonstrable.  Secondly, Fujitsu focuses on the emissions reductions it can help achieve in society as a whole.  This attitude means there is a lot of focus on the broader savings that can be made by greener IT services, not just in reducing direct ICT emissions.  That’s a more holistic view and it’s what’s needed to achieve a low-carbon economy (and hopefully is being discussed in Copenhagen).

IBM builds green data centre

Syracuse University (SU) has built, with the help of IBM, what is described as ‘a showcase of world-class innovations in advanced energy-efficient information technology and building systems’.  The construction was announced earlier this year and it’s taken just over six months to build the 12,000-square-foot, $12.4m facility. 

What’s different about this data centre is that rather than just addressing energy efficiency it has also included an on-site power generation system for electricity, heating and cooling.  The system uses natural gas-fuelled micro-turbines to generate all the electricity, such that the centre will be completely off-grid.  The facility also incorporates a direct current (DC) power distribution system, which means that no power is lost in the conversion from AC to DC.

Other features include a liquid cooling system that converts the exhaust heat from the micro-turbines into chilled water to cool the data centre’s servers.  Server racks have ‘cooling doors’ that use chilled water to remove heat from each rack.   And sensors will monitor server temperatures and usage to tailor the amount of cooling delivered to each server. 

IBM estimates that when it becomes fully operational in January, the data centre will, in IBM’s words ‘use about 50 percent less energy than a typical data centre in operation today’.

This is all good stuff and it sounds like a very innovative project that IBM can justly be proud of.

However, the ‘about 50% less energy’ is the only figure that was released that gives any indication of emissions reductions and increased efficiency.  I queried IBM about this, asking for a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) figure, for example, and received the following response:

“About 50% of the energy consumed by a typical data centre is used to cool the servers in the data centre.  So only half  the energy consumed by a data centre is being used for actual processing.  The half being used for cooling is often referred to as the inefficient portion or ‘wasted’ energy consumption in a data centre.

When estimating about 50 percent savings for the Syracuse Green Data Centre, it includes the savings of not having the transmission losses of getting electricity off  the grid and our recovery of exhaust heat to make hot and cold water. So, we are talking about a 50 percent savings of ‘primary energy’ - the full spectrum of energy created, moved, converted, conditioned, transformed, etc.

The approach being used with this data centre does not fit easily into conventional comparisons. For example, PUE assumes power coming to the data centre from the grid, and doesn't recognize the thermal and electrical efficiencies of on-site tri-generation. We are not providing a PUE, but it will be significantly lower than the data centre average of 2.0”

I take the point.  But nevertheless, if you reduce a PUE from a ‘typical’ 2.0 down to 1.15, which other companies are achieving for new builds, then you have already reduced energy use by 42.5% (if my calculations are correct), so on the face of it this doesn’t seem a huge step forward.  The 50% saving on ‘primary energy’ is no doubt more significant, but it’s difficult to judge from what’s been provided.  And if you used renewable energy then emissions would be zero, and it is, after all, emissions that are the issue.

My point is that for reasons of transparency and to help the global IT community build better data centres it would be great if more data were available from developments like this.  What is the gain prevented power loss from on-site DC supply?  How much is the efficiency gain?  What is the benefit from re-using waste heat?

The target for the ICT industry is not to build the greenest data centre, but to develop good practice to help reduce emissions in all data centres.  Information on what can be achieved and how would be best served by publishing more data.

Copenhagen and green ICT

The meeting

The 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) starts today and runs until December 18th.  Around 10,000 people representing almost 200 countries will descend on Copenhagen with the intention of thrashing out an agreement that will take over when the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012.

Kyoto, you may recall, set binding GHG reduction targets for 37 countries (and the European Community) equivalent to an average of a 5% cut on 1990 levels.  The protocol came into force in February 2005 and has been ratified by 184 countries.  Some countries, including the USA, signed the treaty but refused to ratify it, i.e. never adopted it as a national policy.

The issues

The fundamental issues being addressed at Copenhagen are:

• the extent to which the developed/industrialised world will reduce emissions, bearing in mind that these are the countries that created the problem

• the extent to which the developing world will reduce emissions, given that these countries understandably want to get to where the developed countries are now

• the extent to which the developed world will give financial support to the developing world to achieve their emissions reduction targets.

The driving force is the urgent need to reach agreement now so that national targets, and consequent legislation to enact them, can be in place as soon as possible.  International agreement is also an essential factor in managing such things as carbon trading and carbon offsets on a global scale. 

The relationship between the developed and developing world, primarily in the form of the US and China, is at the heart of the discussions.  However, expectations have been given a boost in recent weeks, with China making its first public announcement of a carbon reduction target, whilst President Obama has also promised to attend the conference to help bring an agreement.  However, the US has failed to enact any national climate legislation to bring to the conference, so the President has limited room to manoeuvre.

There is a lot of ground to cover in Copenhagen, but many believe that the situation is now so urgent that an agreement is essential.  The counter view is that the rush to get an agreement may result in so much compromise as to do more harm than good.

Why is it important?

Setting aside, for the moment, the view that we’re running out of time to save the planet, the uncertainty factor about what we are trying to achieve and when is holding back much of the effort to go green.  Businesses need to know what is expected of them, green technology vendors need to know how their markets will develop and investors need to see a more certain future.

A comprehensive international agreement will facilitate moves already underway to address climate change.  Companies around the world will have some confidence that becoming more environmentally friendly will not give away a competitive advantage, businesses will have a clearer view of the targets they will have to achieve and more investment will go into clean technologies and renewable energy if the potential market is more certain.  Failure at Copenhagen will not stop the move to a greener economy, but agreement should speed things up significantly.

What does it mean for ICT?

Well anyone who reads The Green IT Review regularly will know that ICT has a huge part to play in helping achieve a low-carbon economy.  Whilst ICT is a significant source of emissions, and much needs to be done to manage its inevitable growth, ICT also has a very significant part to play in reducing the 98% of emissions that it does not cause.  A number of studies, including the Smart 2020 report have made the point.

The ICT sector has done a lot to get its own house in order, but inroads into the market have been limited.  In a world where businesses are uncertain about future legislation they are reluctant to invest in green solutions.  With limited customer interest, ICT companies have also been slow in investing in the sorts of solutions that a green economy needs.  The situation is compounded for international businesses and their suppliers.

However, the importance of ICT has not gone unnoticed by the powers that be.  We reported back in October that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN agency for information and communications technology, will be at Copenhagen pressing for the greater recognition of ICT as a cross-sectoral tool to combat climate change. 

ICT companies have also been lobbying, including the 700 members of The Copenhagen Communiqué on Climate Change, which, when we reported on it in September, already included  the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, BT, Cable and Wireless, Cisco, CSC, eBay, HP, Infosys, Ricoh, RM, SAP, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, SunGard, Symantec, Telefonica and Yahoo!

The reason for this effort is clearly not entirely altruistic.  A concrete agreement in Copenhagen will give direction and reassurance to businesses around the world to start investing in the ICT products and solutions required to reach the targets that the international agreement sets.  It will generate considerable ICT business opportunities for those companies that are in the right place with the right solutions.  Those opportunities include carbon counting, management and trading solutions, new infrastructure/transport projects such as road charging systems, enterprise solutions around facilities management, logistics/transport, etc. and renewable energy generation and distribution requirements, including smart grids.

The ICT sector is in the enviable position of being able to generate significant business in helping the transition to a low-carbon economy.  A successful conference in Copenhagen can only speed up the process.

UK smart grid plans

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has released its plans for the implementation of smart meters in the UK.  Highlights are:

• All homes will have smart gas and electricity meters, supplied by their energy suppliers, by the end of 2020.  That’s apparently 47 million meters in 26 million properties.  The cost is put at £8.6bn, but the move is expected to deliver total benefits of £14.6bn over the next 20 years.

• DECC is providing a new UK Smart Grid Demonstration Fund of up to £6m to accelerate the development of smart technology such as electricity storage.  Ofgem will make £500 million available over five years from April 2010 for larger scale trials.

• The government has also publishing a paper setting out the case for developing smart grids.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Lord Hunt said: “Smart meters will put the power in people’s hands, enabling us all to control how much energy we use, cut emissions and cut bills. Smart grids will help manage the massive shift to low carbon electricity such as wind, nuclear and clean fossil fuels.  Globally the business of developing smart grids has been estimated at £27bn over the next 5 years and the UK has the know-how to be part of that.”

After a consultation around smart meter provision, the governments plan entails:

• Making energy suppliers responsible for installing smart meters in their customers’ homes

• Providing a stand-alone display device with meters so that consumers to see their energy use and carbon emissions in real time

• Central coordination of the communications between meters and the utility suppliers, so that consumers can easily switch suppliers, but also to provide a platform for the development of smarter grids in the future.

The associated published paper “Smarter Grids: The Opportunity” lays out the case for smart grids in the UK in detail.  The main points it makes are that smart grids provide:

• Greater efficiency in deliver, reducing electricity generation and transmission costs and emissions

• Easier accommodation of low carbon electricity sources such as wind and solar

• More control to consumers through the use of smart meters and much more effective interaction between suppliers and customers to enable better management of supplies.

The Electricity Network Strategy Group (ENSG) is developing a more detailed roadmap of how smart grids can be implemented as part of a wider DECC 2050 Roadmap that will underpin the move towards a low carbon economy.

So the process has started.  The UK smart meter plan is now in place with a 2020 deadline, but, clearly, smart grids are a bigger challenge, with lots of technical issues along the way.  But it is seen as a fundamental plank of a low carbon economy and ENSG seems to be the body that will co-ordinate the interested parties, help develop the technology direction and generally keep the ball rolling.

Legislation or explanation?

eWeek Europe recently held a webinar - Green Wash or Green Backs – in which attendees were asked what would drive them to adopt a more environmentally-friendly approach to managing their data centres.  More than 60% said that regulation was the key, with smaller numbers indicating cash savings or the environmental benefits.  The eWeek panel agreed.  Making the EU Code of Conduct for data centres into legislation was seen as one move in that direction.

But it’s much more complicated than that.

Firstly, enforcing such a code is going to be a difficult job.  The code is effective as a set of guidelines to which companies can voluntarily sign up, but if it’s mandatory who’s going to police it?

Arguably, there would be no need in the long term anyway.  As climate change legislation, such as the CRC in the UK, comes in, so carbon will acquire an escalating price.  Budgets will be a more effective driver towards a more efficient (and hence greener) data centre.

There are also other growing pressures on companies, from customers, shareholders and employees, for example.  These pressures are only going to increase, with the threat of losing business, share value and staff by not address the climate issue.

But these external pressure may well take a while to make themselves felt and companies need to act quickly or risk losing out to competitors.  Often senior management understands the issues, the difficulty is in encouraging the rest of the organisation to adopt good practice.  As we reported last week, a recent survey from Defra showed that people tend not to bring their green practices to work with them.

What’s needed is better internal education to change behaviour within organisations.  The emphasis needs to shift to demonstrating to individuals the direct benefits they will gain from a greener company. 

In the case of the data centre, it means pointing out to managers that, for example, buying greener is not more expensive, that virtualisation can provide a much more flexible data centre with less dependency on physical assets, and that it’s safe to allow machines to run hotter.  Re-assurance that it is cheap, easy and safe to adopt a greener approach can go a long way. 

In any case, the last figures I saw were that no more than half of a company’s ICT emissions are from the data centre, so much of the rest is down to the behaviour of individuals.  Putting machines into sleep mode, turning them off at night, using fewer printers, printing less, etc. relies on individuals appreciating the benefits to them of taking actions.

It’s not easy to achieve a positive, green culture throughout an organisation.  One area that might help towards greener ICT is the growing study of behavioural economics and the results that can be achieved through social marketing techniques.  In the long run it’s likely to be more effective to change the organisational culture than to rely on legislation, which is bound to face some reluctance, if not resistance.

Green ICT in France

The GreenIT.fr blog has reported on what it describes as the first professional conference on the topic of Green IT and sustainable ICT in France a couple of weeks ago.  Comments on the discussions and presentations included the following:

• There seems to be quite a difference between the levels of understanding of the problem between telecoms companies in France, with Orange, Vodafone and Ericsson much more aware than others (Deutsche Telekom and Bouygues Telecom were mentioned).

• Telecom players are mostly interested in energy savings whilst phones are in use, which directly impacts running costs.  Ericsson France has apparently estimated that the carbon footprint of a subscriber to a mobile service is 48 kg of CO2 per year for GSM and 28 kg of CO2 per year for 3G, but much depends on how the electricity is generated. Consequently there is a lot of interest in base stations powered by solar energy.

• According to Pierre Etienne Roinat, President of MonExTel, between three and eight percent of the 20 million mobile phones replaced each year in France are recycled.

• IDATE has carried out a green ICT research project commissioned by the French Federation of Telecoms, ICT Alliance and the Federation of Electrical, Electronics and Communication (FIEEC), due to be published in January.  One conclusion is that the power consumption of ICT has increased 19% in three years, from 6.2% of French electricity bills in 2005 to 7.3% in 2008.  However, other reports have put the figure at 13.5% and 15%.

• This increase in energy use is directly related to the ICT equipment used in households (Internet boxes, PCs, phones, etc.), with associated energy use rising 40% between 2005 and 2008.  Efforts to reduce energy consumption do not offset this increased usage. 

• Marc Fossier, Chief Corporate Social Responsibility Officer France Telecom pointed out that 35% of Orange’s carbon footprint is in Poland, so the carbon footprint is largely related to the primary source of production of electricity.

• But according to IDATE, ICT could help achieve a third of the reductions of greenhouse gas emissions the French government is planning to achieve by 2020.  Smart grids were seen as a major method of achieving the reductions.

Motorola e-waste programme

Motorola has announced a take-back recycling programme for its US Enterprise Mobility Solutions (EMS).  The products covered include all Motorola-branded enterprise mobility equipment, which means mobile and portable two-way radios; handheld mobile computers; barcode scanners; imagers; in-vehicle mobile workstations; accessories; network infrastructure equipment and computers, laptops and monitors. The service is mostly free, but customers may have to pay delivery costs.

Smaller, more portable items can be shipped to one of Motorola’s e-waste recycling partners.  Larger equipment can be picked up by one of the partners.  

Motorola already participates in such programmes in Europe under the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive.  Elsewhere, take-back bins are located at various collection points for returning equipment.

This is just business equipment – consumer devices already have programmes in place.  In the US, Motorola consumer customers can print a postage-paid label to return branded modems, routers and cordless phones, as well as mobile phones and mobile phone accessories from any manufacturer.  The company has some form of consumer take-back programme in 70 countries around the world.