Save energy, learn from leeches

Here’s an interesting and obvious idea (obvious in the sense that once you’ve seen it you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it yourself).

Leaving electronic gadgets on charge wastes energy and is harmful to the environment, so we’re all encouraged to disconnect them when charged.  In fact it’s hard to tell when electronics are or are not taking energy and many never stop if they’re plugged in (e.g. cellphone chargers).  

But this device is inspired by the behaviour of a leech, which once full of blood will simply fall off its host.  In the same way, the charger physically disconnects consumer electronics from the outlet.  It uses a timer circuit and electromechanics to eject its plug which disconnects the device.

The pictures below show the before and after – there’s even a video, but I think you can use your imagination

 

           

 

Called the Outlet Regulator, you might think this is a new product on the market, but in fact it’s on the web site of Conor Klein, who’s studying furniture design at the Rhode Island school of design.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that he came up with the idea last autumn and it’s not yet on the market.  Where are all those entrepreneurs looking for good ideas to invest in?  I’d buy (at least) one, if there was a UK version.

BT offers NHS network videoconferencing service

BT has announced that it is to offer NHS Trusts a national videoconferencing service over N3, the secure national broadband network it has built and is managing for the NHS.  The network connects hospitals, medical centres and GPs in England and Scotland.

The new service will be managed by the company’s conferencing unit, BT Conferencing, with the aim of making it easier for Trusts.  Up to now services have tended to be set up and managed on a local basis.  The new service is expected to be more cost effective – the complexity of running a service has apparently been a barrier in some Trusts.

There’s clearly lots of opportunities to save travel costs and associated CO2 emissions in the NHS, for instance where multi-disciplinary teams of experts need to consult on a diagnosis.  In fact the N3 web site says that the NHS Sustainable Development Unit has reported that NHS staff, patients and visitors travel 10.4 billion Km per year.  If video conferencing was used for just 30 hours per week in each large trust it could deliver travel savings of £57m (additionally this could also save up to 2.3m working hours) per year and 7,200 tonnes of CO2.

The NHS has a carbon footprint of 18 million tonnes CO2 per year, up 40% since 1990, so it has a significant challenge ahead to comply with government carbon reduction targets and legislation (which includes the CRC).  Green IT is clearly a way of doing that and the N3 web site points out that the network can help the NHS reduce its footprint in other ways, including:

• Reducing the N3 core Points of Presence from 57 to 10 and refreshing routers.

• If 25% of the staff that could access the network from home did so one day a week it would save 138,812 days of staff commuting travel per year, saving 5.4m Km of staff travel and 773  tonnes of CO2.

• Replacing all paper prescriptions with Electronic Transmission Prescriptions could save 4,197 tonnes of paper (equivalent to around 100,000 trees) and 14,100 tonnes of CO2 per year.

ICT for Energy Efficiency Forum launched

We reported almost a year ago on the EU’s developing Green ICT plan, inspired by the Smart 2020 report.  It resulted in a paper entitled ‘Commission Recommendations on mobilising Information and Communications Technologies to facilitate the transition
to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy’ (not quite as catchy as Smart 2020, but still).  The recommendations were published last October (see here).

Anyway, along the way there have been a couple of events under the banner of ICT for Energy Efficiency (ICT4EE).  At the last of these, which was in Brussels earlier this week, the ICT4EE Forum was launched.

The main aim of the ICT4EE Forum is to link digital technology more closely to EU climate and energy policy and economic development. The stated objectives are:

• To demonstrate the commitment and leadership of the ICT sector to work in partnership to deliver energy efficient ICT solutions in other sectors of the European economy and to manage the energy efficiency of its own processes through delivery of its Roadmap.

• To help ensure a coordinated approach from the ICT sector in Europe to EU policy recommendations on ICT4EE and climate and energy efficiency policies more broadly

• To help ensure informed and coordinated policy making in the European Commission, European Parliament and Member States on the ICT for energy efficiency agenda.

The founding members of the forum, which will be officially endorsed by the European Commission, are four industry bodies; DigitalEurope, Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), Japan Business Council Europe (JBCE) and TechAmerica Europe, but a range of other companies and organisations will be invited to join.

It may sound like just another gathering of ICT interest to promote green action, but if it fulfils its demanding remit the forum could have a decisive role in Europe.  Reflecting its Smart 2020 roots, it’s looking at the wider opportunities for ICT to help reduce emissions.  But it also anticipates ensuring that it has input to green policy making where ICT can make a difference, both at the EU and country levels.  Ambitious, but needed.

UN reports on ‘rocketing’ e-waste problem

A report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), co-authored by several other organisations and funded by the EU, has predicted a surge in e-waste in developing countries as sales of cell phones and other electronic gadgets rocket.

In China, India and across Africa and Latin America sales of electronic products are set to rise sharply in the next 10 years.  The report, ‘Recycling - from E-Waste to Resources’, says that unless action is stepped up to properly collect and recycle materials, many developing countries face the spectre of hazardous e-waste mountains with serious consequences for the environment and public health.

The report predicts that:

• In South Africa and China, by 2020 e-waste from old computers will have jumped by 200% to 400% from 2007 levels, and by 500% in India

• By that same year, in China e-waste from discarded mobile phones will be about seven times higher than 2007 levels and in India 18 times higher.

• By 2020 e-waste from televisions will be 1.5 to 2 times higher in China and India, while in India e-waste from discarded refrigerators will double or triple.

The report points out that most e-waste in China is improperly handled, much of it incinerated by backyard recyclers to recover valuable metals like gold - practices that release toxic pollution and yield very low metal recovery rates compared to state-of-the-art industrial facilities.

"This report gives new urgency to establishing ambitious, formal and regulated processes for collecting and managing e-waste via the setting up of large, efficient facilities in China," said UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP. "China is not alone in facing a serious challenge. India, Brazil, Mexico and others may also face rising environmental damage and health problems if e-waste recycling is left to the vagaries of the informal sector.

It’s not just developing countries that have to address the problem, though, as the report also points out:

• Global e-waste generation is growing by about 40 million tons a year.

• Manufacturing mobile phones and personal computers consumes 3% of the gold and silver mined worldwide each year; 13% of the palladium and 15% of cobalt.

• Modern electronics contain up to 60 different elements - many valuable, some hazardous and some both.

• In the US, more than 150 million mobiles and pagers were sold in 2008, up from 90 million five years before.

• Globally, more than 1 billion mobile phones were sold in 2007, up from 896 million in 2006.

The report does review some of the efforts in various countries and points out that, for example, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Morocco and South Africa have a great potential to introduce state of the art e-waste recycling technologies because their informal e-waste sector is relatively small.  So there are clear opportunities to do things better and reap the rewards.

E-waste is certainly a growing problem, though.  The use of mobile phones and other gadgets and devices continues to expand and is unlikely to slow down in the near future – we saw a new format with the recently announced Apple i-Pad, for example. So it’s a problem that needs to be managed and the increasingly strict regulations in the developed world is pushing the focus on to developing countries.

CSCI releases power management design guide

The Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI) has produced a reference document on how to build energy‐efficient,
power‐managed client platforms.  The guide particularly addresses Standby mode, known as S3 under the computer industry standard Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI).  S3 is seen as the best trade‐off between power savings and the ability to wake quickly and begin doing work.

Anyway, power management depends on interactions between operating system, microprocessor, chipsets, BIOS, devices, PC cards, monitors and software and the guide looks at aspects of the computer components, as well as platform
design, operating systems and software to achieve reliable Standby operations across platforms.  The guide is available here.

The guide was put together by the CSCI’s Power Management Workgroup members, including Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, LSI, Lenovo and Microsoft.

Pat Tiernan, executive director of CSCI pointed out that "Currently, 90% percent of desktops do not use power management, even though today's computers support this feature in their operating systems, power management software and platform components and design.  Users prefer to have instant access to their network. Our challenge is to lower an idle, unused computer's energy consumption without sacrificing system productivity or performance."

So whilst this is a good initiative – advice and guidance towards building power-managed client platforms has to be beneficial – it ultimately boils down to the people using the machines. Just as important is behavioural change, which can be helped by manufacturers providing nudges, for instance by making a quick move to standby the default option.

Google becomes an energy player

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has passed an order granting Google Energy market-based rate authorisation, i.e. the ability to buy and sell energy.  We reported on the application back in January.

The order says that; “Google Energy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google, Inc. (Google), a technology company focused on web-based services. Google Energy states that it was formed to identify and develop opportunities to contain and manage the cost of energy for Google. Google Energy states that it intends to act as a power marketer, purchasing electricity and reselling it to wholesale customers”.

So this is not a move into the energy market, but a route to allow the company to better manage its energy costs, which are clearly significant, given the data centres it runs.

The idea is that as a wholesale player it can buy energy more cheaply, but the move is also seen as a route to buying more energy from renewable sources than would otherwise be possible.  Google plans to make it’s data centres carbon neutral and using renewable energy will be a significant factor.

Greenstone adds CDP reporting

Greenstone Carbon Management, which provides Carbon Emissions Management System (CEMS) solutions, announced on Monday that it has added Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reporting capabilities to its software.

Since much of the data required – energy consumption, emission factors, financial data - will already be included or accessible via the company’s Acco2unt software, it’s primarily a question of presenting the data in a CDP-compatible form.  But that makes it no less a useful tool in reducing the administrative burden.

There are now more than 2,500 organisations in 60 countries participating in the annual CDP process, chosen for their prominence in local markets, so this is an important target sector for CEMS suppliers.

It does demonstrate the point that carbon emissions reporting is not just determined by legislation.  There is no legal requirement to report to CDP but a great deal of pressure from stakeholders – in the CDP’s case primarily investors – but also customers and even employees.

New green Intel developments

• NetworkWorld has reported that Intel’s research labs have developed a microprocessor that produces up to 41% more throughput using the same amount of energy as a comparable conventional core.

The advantage comes from the fact that the core includes distributed sensors and error detectors that enable the automatic reissue of instructions or automatic adaptation of the operating conditions to achieve error-free performance.

The microprocessor outperforms conventional processors that are designed to perform at guaranteed levels despite fluctuations in temperature and voltage and the impact of material degradation over time.  These processors have built-in reserve cycles to ensure the performance is delivered, hence the use of more power for lower throughput.

Intel researchers are apparently investigating how far they can go with the error detection and correction and what kind of impact these adaptive cores would have on commercial processors, so it’s still a long way from inclusion in commercial products.

• Thanks to greenIT.fr for highlighting Intel’s Energy Checker Software Development Kit (SDK) which aims to correlate business productivity and energy consumption. 

The development kit helps developers analyse the energy efficiency of an application.  ISVs can instrument their applications’ source code to export and import counters to enable energy efficiency analysis (although it can also be used for any meaningful counter).

Intel points out that the amount of useful work done by a payroll application is different from the amount performed by a video, database or mail server application.  But activity is often measured by how busy a server is while running an application rather than by how much work that application actually completes.  The Energy Checker SDK provides a way for the software developer to determine their own measure of "useful work" for that application and expose those metrics through a simple API.

The Intel® Energy Checker is free to download from Intel.  Full details are here.

Both are good examples of how green IT is looking more and more at the detail of hardware and applications to see where savings can be made.  Most coverage of reducing power in IT operations focuses in on the easy wins – turn it off, virtualise, etc - but much of that has already been done (see Is virtualisation running out of steam?).  To continue to make savings in energy and emissions there will need to be much more focus on the nuts and bolts of IT, i.e. the processors and the applications.  Clearly it’s a fact that Intel has taken on board.

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

Free e-waste regulation database from Redemtech

Following on from my last post, the second useful green IT tool I noticed is an e-waste regulation database from Redemtech.  It’s designed to help companies navigate the growing (and ever-changing) maze of e-waste and data security regulations around the world (for which read North America and EMEA).

The data, which is available here, provides an overview of both current and pending regulations that could have an impact on managing and disposing of electronic equipment.  It doesn’t give comprehensive compliance details, but does give a good indication of which legislation needs to be complied with .

The E-Waste and Data Security categories are broken down into geographic regions, including US Federal and State, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  The data can also be downloaded as PDF files, although you need to go through a registration process to get them.  Since this sort of data goes out of date pretty quickly it might be best to use the online version (assuming it’s going to be updated).  In fact Redemtech also has a free news service covering various compliance, e-waste and CSR-related topics, so maybe any updates will be there.

Looks like a good initial starting point if you want to know what e-waste compliance issues you might encounter.

CO2 Benchmarking adds business intelligence

A couple of interesting online resources became available this week.  One was a green IT tool from CO2 Benchmark, a company I met at the Carbon Show last year.  It sells a database of information on corporate emissions, including emissions management projects and achievements, which can be used to benchmark companies and projects. 

Last week the company went live with Carbon Screener, a business intelligence platform for the extraction of data from its 3,000-company emissions data set.  It allows users to slice and dice the knowledge base to create dashboards, generate sector benchmarks and produce custom reports.

This looks like a comprehensive tool accessing a database that the company said, when I met them last year, held more information than the CDP.  It certainly now seems to be more useable than the CDP data.

I can’t help wondering, though, where the market is.  This sort of benchmarking would be great if tacked on to the end of a Carbon Emissions Management Solution (CEMS) product.  Indeed, many CEMS suppliers talk of the ability to benchmark, using the generic data from their existing online users, which may be all that’s really needed.  CO2 Benchmark’s best opportunity might be to join forces with a CEMS player.

Capgemini takes over smart meter management contract

Capgemini Sverige AB, a Capgemini subsidiary, has announced that it will be taking over a contract worth at least €94m to manage the existing smart meter portfolio of Fortum Distribution AB in Sweden.  Fortum is a €5.4bn company that operates power plants and the distribution and sale of electricity and heat in the Nordic countries, Russia and the Baltic Rim area.

Under the contract Capgemini will manage Fortum’s portfolio of 860,000 smart meters in Sweden, including meter reading, field services, service desk, management reporting, data centre hosting and application management.  Capgemini will also manage subcontractors, including as telecommunications companies, software providers, meter manufacturers and field service providers.

The ten year contract will be delivered through Capgemini’s proprietary Managed Business Services usage-based pricing model, “a part of the company’s new Smart Energy Services offering to be announced soon”.  (So new in fact that web link in the press release couldn’t find the page).

Interestingly, the company says that the contract will be supported through a global delivery model based on Capgemini’s Rightshore approach, with services provided from countries including Sweden, Poland, India and Finland.  Smart meter management is certainly an area that could be effectively handled offshore.

This is a good win for Capgemini.  It ties the company in with a significant utilities company around smart meters in a mature European market - smart meters are already deployed in every household in Sweden, and Finland and Norway are close behind.  It will be invaluable experience and a great reference for the company in the smart meter/smart grid markets.

The company has been active in the smart meter market in Canada, but this is the first big breakthrough in Europe.  It expands the company’s green IT opportunities, which are detailed in the Capgemini profile available from The Green IT Report web site.

Logica publishes a full CSR report

Logica has published its first separate CSR report.  For the last couple of years the company has covered corporate responsibility in two or three pages at the end of the annual report.  Now, though, a full CSR report has been published conforming to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards.  GRI is the organisation dedicated to developing global guidelines for reporting on economic, environmental and social performance.

The full 94-page report is here.  There’s lots of detailed information on various environmental actions and it spells out the plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6% in 2009, towards a 50% reduction by 2020, based on a 2008 baseline. 

The report also points out Logica’s involvement in several greenhouse gas registration, monitoring and management initiatives.  The company maintains the global CO2 emissions transaction registry for the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC), it implemented and runs the UK Environmental Emissions Monitoring System (EEMS) for the UK Department for Business Enterprise Regulatory Reform (formerly DTI) across the oil and gas industries and developed the air pollutant and GHG inventory system for EDF France.

It’s all good stuff, but the report, which seems to have just come out, covers 2008 when the company’s preliminary financial results for 2009 are just 10 days away.

Government environmental initiatives

Whilst Copenhagen may not have produced the global agreement and framework to stimulate national legislation on climate change, recent weeks have seen continued emphasis on environmental issues in government in the US and Europe:

• The US government has announced the formation of an office to address climate information needs.  It’s part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and will be known as the NOAA Climate Service.

The service is positioned as a response to requests for information on climate change from businesses and individuals looking for help in the decision-making process of planning and adapting to climate change.

The NOAA claims that it already has global leadership in climate research and observation and the idea is to build on the science to create a useable climate service.  The press release says that the “NOAA is committed to scientific integrity and transparency; we seek to advance science and strengthen product development and delivery through user engagement.”  It’s a comment clearly aimed at the recent revelations about the IPCC’s research errors and the cover-up of data at the Climate Research Unit in the UK. Certainly authoritative research and comment coming from the US must be a good thing.  If only it had been sooner.

• The NOAA has also launched a new web portal to give single point of access to its climate information, data, products and services.  It’s known as the NOAA Climate Portal and a there’s a prototype here. 

The site aims to address the needs of five user groups: decision makers and policy leaders, scientists and applications-oriented data users, educators, business users and the public.

Among the highlights of the site are a ‘climate dashboard’ that shows a range of constantly updating climate datasets (e.g., temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and sea level) over adjustable time scales – see below.

 

• EurActiv reports that a study on behalf of the European Commission has concluded that it should set up a dedicated agency to oversee and enforce EU waste laws.

Part of the problem is that EU waste legislation consists of some 60 regulations, directives and decisions but many member states are not enforcing them as they should. There are also different interpretations of EU waste requirements.

According to EurActiv, in 2008 there were 141 waste-related infringement procedures pending against member states, representing 19% of all environmental infringement cases.

The report suggest that a new agency should carry out reviews of member states’ enforcement systems, conduct coordinated checks and inspections, and train national officials, the report suggests.

 

So it’s not the direct environmental compliance legislation that will drive businesses and stimulate green ICT requirements, but it’s all part of the growing focus and awareness on environmental issues and helps bring a consensus for action.  (Note that the NOAA says that one of its target audiences for its Climate Portal is ‘applications-oriented data users’).

Greenpeace looks to ICT companies to push the smart grid agenda

Greenpeace has published a report on renewable energy in Europe, with the title of Renewables 24/7 – Infrastructure needed to save the climate.  It’s a vision of how mini-grids and smart-grids could be connected intelligently with a super grid to provide reliable around-the-clock supply without the need for coal fired or nuclear power plants. The full report is here.  It’s part of Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution scenario, a vision for a climate friendly global energy supply.

The report compares 30 years of weather data with European annual demand curves and concluded that with the existing grid there is only a 0.4% - or 12 hours a year - chance that high demand correlates with low solar and wind generation. The proposed grid reinforcement would remove this small uncertainty and guarantee reliable power.

What caught my eye was Greenpeace’s emphasis on IT’s role.  "With smart grids we basically merge the internet with the electricity grid", Greenpeace International senior energy expert, Sven Teske said at the launch of the report. "Building up smart grids is a huge business opportunity, especially for IT companies”.

The report points out that power in a smart grid comes from a diverse range of sources so it relies on an IT infrastructure to deliver, analyse and respond to supplier data.  It cites a number of companies that could potentially be involved with smart grids, from telecommunications companies, such as Deutsche Telecom or AT&T; software providers such as Cisco or Google, and hardware providers such as Fujitsu and IBM.

In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, the list of potential suppliers is long and comes from a variety of sectors; IT infrastructure, specialist solutions providers, fixed and mobile telecoms, utility equipment manufacturers, etc.  It’s the mix of expertise required across the smart grid/smart meter spectrum that makes the market interesting.  Lots of partnerships will be forming, particularly around specific opportunities, with large infrastructure companies joining up with much smaller, specialist companies with particular smart grid expertise.

Greenpeace also highlights the the requirement for smart metering and information systems on the consumer side of the equation.  It includes energy management information to monitor local resource, such as a private solar arrays, and also to ensure any excess power is accurately measured and sold to the grid. 

A bigger opportunity (in my view) is the need to provide energy users with real-time information on their energy consumption patterns and the power use of appliances, so they can improve their own energy efficiency and use power more cost-effectively. 

Perhaps the biggest IT opportunity of all will be when the communications infrastructure between grid and meter are in place and open up lots of other application opportunities in businesses and homes.

As the report points out, there are many IT companies offering products and services to manage and monitor energy – a whole new IT market application sector is springing up.  As with all new markets it has been led by small, innovative start-ups but the large IT players are also now moving strongly into the market.  The report highlights a few companies in this sector, including IBM and Fujitsu, with hardware solutions, Google and Microsoft with smart meter applications software and Cisco, looking to duplicate its role in the development of smart grids as it did in building the internet.  But it seems unfair to single out a few in a wide open sector with many small, innovative start-ups that will challenge existing players.

To conclude, I hope Greenpeace will not mind me quoting one paragraph of the report in full:

“Technology companies need to be pushing for the development of decentralised smart grids. These companies should be leading the way to a clean technology revolution over vested interests of some energy utilities that use smart grids to refer only to improving the efficiency of centralised fossil fuel based generation. Smart grids have the potential to transform the way that people use energy, and drive the massive global shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy that is required to prevent the worst ravages of climate change. The onus is on leading technology companies to take the bold steps needed to realise this potential”.

Nicely put and it fits with my own views on the value of smart grids, the ICT opportunities they represent and also the need for ICT companies to be actively involved in lobbying for environmental initiatives.  In this case they’ve nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

IBM develops more efficient solar cell from readily-available elements

IBM researchers have created a high-efficiency solar cell from ‘earth-abundant’ materials with the potential to produce more energy at a lower cost than previous technology.  (Details are in IBM’s ‘Building a Smarter Planet’ blog).

The solar cell performs at 9.6% efficiency, which sounds low but is apparently 40% higher than any previous natural solar cell.  Cells with comparable efficiency rates use materials that are too costly or contain elements that could limit production. 

IBM points out that it will license any intellectual property resulting from its on-going solar research and has no plans to manufacture solar technologies.  Certainly my experience as an IT company watcher suggests that this ‘stick to the knitting’ approach by IBM is the right way to go.

Energy Star comes to data centres

On the subject of standards (see the last post), PC World in the US has reported that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is nearing completion of the work on an Energy Star program for data centres.

When it’s done, data centres will be able to use an online tool that ranks their efficiency on a scale of 1 to 100. Those that score 75 or higher can request an audit from the EPA, which can then award the Energy Star certification.

This is not an entirely new process for the EPA, which already rates the energy efficiency of 18 types of buildings, including offices and hospitals.  Data centres are somewhat different, though, and the certification process is seen as more incentive-based, i.e. the EPA hopes companies will see an Energy Star rating as a potential marketing tool.

Measurement will be based largely on the widely used PUE (power unit efficiency) from the Green Grid, which measures the total power supplied to a data centre divided by the amount that actually reaches IT equipment.  There are, apparently, some issues about other factors that are not included, but the EPA seems to be open to amendments to the assessment, if required.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.  As I said in the previous post, green IT standards that are widely accepted and applied are a good thing, particularly if there is no legislation in place.  Energy Star is quite late to the table in this case, though, with the Green Grid already offering lots of advice around data centres and there is also an EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres.  It really depends on whether other organisations defer to the EPA certification.  Given that Energy Star has been widely adopted both in the US and Europe, it has a good chance of broad acceptance as a data centre assessment.

Andrew Fanara, who leads the program at the EPA, is quoted in the PCWorld article as saying that avoiding a patchwork of regional programs is important, especially for multinational companies.  I couldn’t agree more.

The EPA hopes to launch the Energy Star certification for data centres in June.

EPEAT takes Singapore

Singapore has become the 41st country to join the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) scheme and the first since the major geographic expansion last year. 

In December EPEAT approved a process whereby purchasers, manufacturers or other stakeholders can nominate countries for addition to the registry.  Approval for inclusion in the scheme depends on purchaser and supplier interest, government support or other factors, but there’s a bias in favour of additions. 

This was apparently the first time the process was used for adding a country.  “Growing interest in environmental issues and greener products among end users made Singapore a strong candidate for addition to the EPEAT system’s country coverage,” said Jeff Omelchuck, Executive Director of EPEAT.

Toshiba has been quick off the mark in registering the first EPEAT Gold-rated products in Singapore. In fact the company has apparently registered 23 Gold-rated notebooks.

It’s reassuring to see the continued geographic expansion of EPEAT.  The industry needs these sorts of de-facto green standards and the growing global acceptance provides increasing legitimacy.  Mind you, it’s also good to have some other views, such as the Greenpeace Electronics Guide, to help push the boundaries in particular areas and prevent any complacency.

Carbon Emissions Management – IT solution vs management consultants

Ernst & Young has published a report entitled ‘Carbon Market Readiness’ looking at the implications for accounting, compliance, reporting and tax considerations of US state and national carbon
emissions programs.  The report is here – it’s US-focussed but applicable pretty much world wide.

One point to note is that whilst there is no national legislation in the US, the report shows the extent of local (although often voluntary) programs that include some emissions counting and reporting requirement, as the map below shows. 

 

 

Anyway, the report concludes that US lawmakers are focused on carbon emissions management - new mandatory GHG reporting requirements from the EPA took effect on 1 January 2010 and further legislation is expected.  “To stay ahead of the curve, companies need to make sure they have fully embedded carbon considerations in their business strategy to ensure that climate change issues are properly addressed. This includes their risk management operations, day-to-day business, accounting and tax planning.”  It goes further: “It is also important to incorporate public perception of GHG emissions into the overall business plan and properly report emissions from a tax and financial disclosure perspective”.

The report points out that these changes should be looked at not just as a cost but also a potential opportunity.  Carbon reduction projects can generate a positive return on investment and new product or service lines can create new sources of revenue, for instance in capturing, storing, and selling of emissions themselves and/or trading emissions credits.

Ernst & Young is clearly keen to work with its clients in taking the appropriate action, but in terms of ‘straightforward’ carbon accounting much, probably most, will be done through online solutions.  Carbon Emissions Management Software (CEMS) can be very sophisticated and by keeping the ability in-house provides significant flexibility, as well as, in most cases, a lower cost.  Nevertheless, legislation, accounting and other issues, will become increasingly complex, particularly for international companies – fertile ground for management and tax consultants.

Copenhagen update

Well it seems that 55 developed countries have now registered their planned emissions cuts by 2020, as agreed at Copenhagen, although it’s not always clear cut.  The deadline was the end of January, but the UN says the deadline is ‘flexible’.

Here’s some of the country targets (as compiled by Reuters based on the available information at the time of the original deadline):

• US – aims to cut emissions by 17% on 2005 levels by 2050, equivalent to 4% below 1990 levels. The reduction will be helped by President Obama’s promise that the US government would cut its own emissions by 28% by 2020 (compared with 2008).  On the other hand, the US budget, released on Monday, apparently no longer mentions any revenue from the proposed cap and trade scheme, part of the US climate change legislation proposals.

• China – Will try to cut carbon per unit of economic output by 40-45% below projected levels by 2020 from 2005.  So this is not an absolute cut, but slower growth than the economy would dictate.

• India – 20-25% on 2005 by 2020.

• EU – Kept with the less ambitious figure of 20% below 1990 level by 2020.  Would go up to 30% if other countries promised stiffer targets, but there is also internal pressure not to promise targets that would make industry uncompetitive.

• Japan – 25% below 1990 by 2020, but conditional on other ambitious deals.

• Australia – 5-25% below 2000 levels by 2020.  5% is the starting point and any more is dependent on other countries’ targets.

 

Progress, but pretty depressing really.  It reflects the Copenhagen failing in that many countries are reluctant to set ambitious targets unless others do – Copenhagen was meant to set the global target level.

Supply chain emissions assessments – getting broader, but not very deep.

The CDP has released its Supply Chain Report for 2010 – the full report is here. 

The CDP Supply Chain Program involves a group of global corporations who have extended their climate change and carbon management strategies to their suppliers via the CDP’s annual information request.  This year, 44 companies (Members) asked 1402 of their suppliers for information and 710 (51%) responded, 95 (7%) declined and 597 (42%) did not respond.  The report is based on the key findings extracted from the information requests.

The information revealed that Member companies face significant challenges in addressing their supply chains.  Only a small number of companies have extensive knowledge of the availability of suitable green products and most Members don’t currently have the tools they need to track their suppliers’ climate change performance.

However, the report finds that 89% of Members already have a strategy in place to engage with Suppliers on GHG emissions and the importance of carbon versus classic procurement targets is expected to triple during the next five years.  It will become common for Members to adjust their supply base according to low carbon criteria - 56% of Members expect that in the future they will deselect suppliers for failing to meet formal carbon management criteria, compared to just 6% today.

It’s clear that suppliers will need to perform detailed carbon emissions assessments and will also need to set ambitious targets for reducing their emissions in order to remain competitive.

Suppliers were assessed across four dimensions of carbon management:

• Strategic risk awareness - A large part of the supply base (58%) feels exposed to regulatory developments, with general emissions regulations (57%) and cap-and-trade schemes (38%)most commonly identified.  Extreme weather events threaten almost 70% of suppliers, while changes in temperature and rainfall patterns threaten almost a half, with flooding and rising sea levels not far behind (46%).

• Carbon reduction ambition - Only 38% of suppliers have carbon reduction targets in place and their current commitment lasts an average of just five years.  In fact, 81% of suppliers do not set targets beyond 2012.

• Reporting capabilities - Suppliers do display an increased willingness to disclose emissions information; 62% currently report Scope 1 emissions and 63% report Scope 2.  But there is a lack of information around Scope 3 emissions - the percentage of suppliers who report supply chain emissions (i.e. suppliers’ suppliers’) drops to just 8%.

• Implementation practices - The most commonly used approaches for implementing emission reduction plans are energy efficiency increases, process improvements and renewable energy use.  It’s now also an important topic at board level - 60% of companies have elected a top-level executive with carbon reduction responsibilities.  Unfortunately, though, only a third have a strategy in place to engage with their own suppliers on this topic.

 

It’s an interesting report in that it highlights the progress being made in bringing the supply chain into the emissions calculations, but it also shows how far there is to go.  Once you get past immediate suppliers the effort disappears fast.  Only a third are looking at the performance of their own suppliers and less than 10% are reporting their supply chain emissions.

It’s an area that will become increasingly under focus, not least because of stakeholder pressure, which the CDP represents.  There will be an increasing need for information flow up and down the supply chain (good business for solutions providers), and pressure on all suppliers (including ICT) to perform.

Global e-waste expands but recycling/recovery improves

A market study by ABI Research, “e-Waste Recovery and Recycling,” points out the dichotomy that e-waste represents.  If handled badly it constitutes a threat to the world's ecosystem through contamination to the soil, air and water, while also exposing people to a multitude of health hazards.  If treated properly, much e-waste can be reclaimed or recycled for future use and converted into a significant new revenue stream.

ABI forecasts that the worldwide market for e-waste recovery, i.e. the money generated through reclamation of materials from e-scrap, will grow from $5.7bn in 2009 to nearly $14.7bn by the end of 2014, a CAGR of 20.8%.

Market drivers include the increasing collection and recycling rates, better/more cost-effective recycling technologies and improved recycling infrastructure and legal framework worldwide as well as significant growth in electronics markets globally, particularly in developing economies.

Whilst the economic downturn, which impacted commodity prices and demand for recycled materials, shook the market, economic recovery combined with strengthening e-waste recycling legislation is expected to drive improved recycling/recovery in the next five years.  The legal framework for e-waste recycling remains strongest in Europe, thanks to the WEEE directive, other non-profit groups such as the Basel Action Network (BAN) and e-Stewards Initiative are driving improvements in many other regions of the world, especially the US.

E-waste is an interesting case study on the pressures on all companies to become more environmentally friendly.  Pressure from lobby groups and stakeholders for better disposal initially raised awareness and created some action.  Better technology became focused on the reclamation part, meaning that there is money to be made from doing it properly, which helps tidy up the market.  But in the end it’s legislation that has to force the issue, particularly for the times when the economics simply don’t work.  It’s much the same path for reducing carbon emissions.

Is virtualisation running out of steam?

US technology provider CDW published a survey-based report earlier this month looking at the virtualisation market – maturity, differences by company size, value, barriers to implementation, etc.  The full report is here.

The first point to emerge is that server virtualisation is maturing – more than 90% of businesses that responded had implemented it at some level and more than half said they had completed their deployment.  But this seems to have been very much focused on the easy wins - even organisations reporting that they have ‘fully deployed’ server virtualisation said that just 37% of their industry-standard server infrastructure consists of virtual servers.

There were a number of reasons why they had stopped there.  The most-cited barriers were security concerns (17%) and the compatibility of current hardware (17%) or critical software applications (11%), as well as the uncertainty of a return on investment (12%).

On the other hand, only 11% of businesses that have fully implemented virtualisation voiced concern with security, although the figure was 22% for businesses that have not implemented it fully, suggesting that security was an issue in further deployment.  Overall, though, 95% of businesses that have implemented virtualisation believe they are saving significant money as a result, and almost as many (94%) are measuring their success in terms of IT productivity, business agility and reductions in IT energy consumption.

The main drivers to adopting virtualisation in the first place are shown in the chart below.  It’s not surprising that ‘Green IT initiatives’ is not top of the list, but nevertheless a mention by 57% of respondents is encouraging.

 

It will be interesting to see what happens next.  If this survey is correct then we’re nearing the end of this phase of the adoption of virtualisation in medium/large companies.  The easy stuff has been done and there are disincentives to taking it further at the moment.

But there will inevitably be further adoption over time as the barriers are pushed over.  If no security issues emerge then companies will take it further, for example.  Probably more likely, issues of cost, energy use, emissions management, legislation, etc. will put further pressure on data centres who will be obliged to take virtualisation further.

SAP’s green achievements

Last week SAP announced its preliminary report of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 2009, which showed a 16% decrease from 2008 to 425 kilotons, worth around €90m. This is well ahead of the company’s target for 2009, which it admitted was helped by the global economic slowdown. 

Last year SAP announced a commitment to reduce its total GHG emissions back to the levels of 2000 by 2020, effectively halving its year-2007 peak levels of 540,000t CO2.

SAP used its own carbon emissions software - Carbon Impact – to help it report its carbon footprint a lot earlier in the year than previously.  Full details of the reduction will be in the SAP 2009 Sustainability Report to be issued in the spring.  One thing the company did say, though, is that the emissions decrease was achieved without the using offsets, which is to be applauded.

SAP also put out a press release about the fact that it was named as one of the Top 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.  This is an annual list produced by Corporate Knights, ‘the magazine for clean capitalism’.  It’s a wide ranging assessment looking at energy, carbon, water, waste, leadership diversity, pay comparisons, tax paid, sustainable leadership, etc.  Full details of the list and how it’s produced are here.

Anyway, SAP comes in at number 79, but is beaten by quite a few other ICT players; Nokia (5), Siemens (6), Vodafone (8), BT (35), Agilent (36), Intel (37), Swisscom (43), Capita (54) and Trend Micro (75).

New data centre demonstrates the impact of climate change.

TelecityGroup has opened its new Paris data centre, Condorcet, designed to be one of the most technically advanced and energy efficient data centres in Europe.

The site will provide 3,400 square metres of customer space and 6.4MW of total customer power.  It includes various green aspects, including free cooling to reduce energy consumption (apparently for the first time in France) and a white roof to reduce solar gain.  Between them the various energy saving innovations are expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 2,500 tonnes a year. 

What’s particularly interesting is that waste energy from the facility will be used to heat a ‘Climate Change Arboretum’ built on-site, which will recreate the climatic conditions expected to prevail in France in 2050. The French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) will use the arboretum to grow and research plants from around the world with the aim of selecting those species most adaptable to changes in the global climate.

Seems somewhat ironic that you use the heat from a data centre to demonstrate the impact of heat from data centres.