GHG Protocol completes testing of new standards

More than 60 companies have completed the road testing of two new GHG Protocol standards. The GHG Protocol is a standard methodology for measuring greenhouse gas emissions developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) based on input from businesses, governments and NGOs. It’s the de-facto standard for emissions measurement and is the basis for most emissions legislation.

• Since the launch of the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard in 2001 companies have become proficient at calculating emissions from GHG sources that they own or control (scope 1) and emissions from grid-sourced electricity and the other utility services (scope 2).  Scope 3 – other indirect emissions – covers a variety of activities in the corporate value chain but has often only been reported as business travel.

In the light of increasing interest by reporting companies and increasing demand from stakeholders for scope 3 emissions to be accounted and reported, the new Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard methodology has been developed and tested.

• The Product Lifecycle Accounting and Reporting Standard provides a method to account for emissions associated with individual products across their life-cycles. Since for many products, particularly in the IT sector, more energy is used, and emissions generated, in product manufacture than in use, this is of particular interest to potential purchasers.

In all 62 companies from various industry sectors and 17 countries have tested the two standards - ICT companies that participated included Autodesk, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Lenovo, SAP and Siemens. In June, the testers submitted written feedback on their usability along with final GHG inventory reports. (A summary of the feedback is posted on the GHG Protocol website).

The companies that road tested the new Scope 3 standard found it ‘achievable’ to complete an inventory and many companies believe it practical to complete one on an annual basis.

The companies that road tested the Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard similarly reported that they had little difficulty completing an inventory and found the guidance provided in the draft helpful.

The next steps will be to revise the standards based on the feedback received, as well as from the Steering Committee and Technical Working Groups. The revised standards will be released at the end of September for a 30 day public comment period. The text will be finalised at the end of 2010 and the final versions will be published by March 2011.

 

This is useful stuff.  There’s a great need for more comprehensive methodologies for emissions accounting in both these areas and it looks like they’re well on the way now. It will both expand the usability of the GHG protocol as well as helping to standardise reporting. It’s also another factor that will help drive the carbon management software market, as well as adding another challenge to solutions providers to include these new methodologies.

Interestingly, the new standards also seem to have a broader emissions management value. Most of the road testers agreed that the standards help in identifying GHG reduction opportunities and prioritising efforts, allowed better supply chain GHG management, improved understanding of the risks and opportunities associated with emissions in the supply chain and were a factor in creating competitive advantage and product differentiation. So implementing the new methodologies could also lead to more active GHG management across the organisation.

Wipro announces Fluid State modular data centres

Wipro has joined the modular data centre market with the launch of its FluidState data centre from Wipro Infotech.

Targeted at small, medium and enterprise businesses (isn’t that everyone?), the FluidState data centre is a predesigned, prefabricated facility that can be setup in less than a week, ‘almost 10 times faster than a conventional data centre’.

‘FluidState’ stands for flexible, lean, upgradable, intelligent data centre, standardised for accelerated deployment. The data centre incorporates technology from Cisco, HP, Hitachi and EMC, among others and the modular design means that it can be upgraded (or downgraded) without any downtime.

Apart from the advantages of modularity and the fact that it is optimised for efficiency, cooling, power and space, the data centres have other green advantages in terms of a unified computing environment with 24x7 lights out operation, capacity on demand, four times higher density per rack, up to 40% lower cooling cost and reduced carbon footprint. The data centre uses virtualisation and highest density in its building blocks.

It’s certainly the data centre market to be in these days, combining both low initial cost and low carbon footprint with flexibility. Just being modular means that customers are not powering and cooling large unused server halls from the start. They can also use the latest technology as they expand, getting greener as they go along.

Kyocera UK survey shows there’s still much to do in green printing

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the fact that printing doesn’t seem to be getting the green IT focus it deserves. Well research from Kyocera seems to back up the need for more effort in the area. 

The research was conducted by Loudhouse on behalf of Kyocera UK and comprised 1,000 online interviews with UK office workers and another 200 with IT managers. The interviews were with companies of 500 or more people. The full report is here.

The survey initially asked about attitudes towards environmental issues amongst UK businesses and found that the percentage of UK employees stating that they were concerned about environmental issues fell from 77% in 2008 to 63% in 2010. When asked specifically about climate change, the figures were even starker, with concern down to 50% from 65% in 2008.

When it comes to printing, the survey found that there had been a net increase over the last year.

The chart below shows the extent to which various green policies and practices are in place around printing. While more than three quarters of the IT Managers interviewed said that they had paper recycling facilities available, there is little being done to limit printing in the first place. The only other action taken by the majority of IT managers was to put a ‘green’ printing message on the bottom of emails.

The office workers reported the major reasons for ‘wasted’ printing were printing the wrong document, leaving printouts behind on the printer, printing too many copies and preferring to read on paper.  But they also freely admitted that it was their own efforts that would have most positive impact, rather than being forced to by company policy.

There is also some clear resistance from office workers to some aspects of reducing printing. For instance, there are significant concerns about confidentiality and convenience in sharing printers, although those that already shared were less concerned than those that had their own printers.

 

There’s clearly much to be done to reduce wasted printing, but simply introducing policies and procedures is not enough. Printers need to be set up to make it as easy as possible for users to avoid wastage, but beyond that a great deal of education seems to be in order. But apart from the green benefits there’s much cost to be saved for the effort.

O2 introduces an eco phone rating system in the UK

Mobile phone service supplier O2 has today introduced an eco rating system for all the phones that it supplies and claims to be the first UK company to do so.

The company has been working with Forum for the Future, a UK environmental sustainability NGO, on the tool, which is specific to O2 in the UK. Apparently it’s been around for a while but only used internally. Now it’s become part of the description and labelling of products.

There’s good reason to include the rating, since the company’s research has shown that sustainability credentials have some influence on the purchasing decisions of 44% of consumers, with 12% stating that it would have a strong influence on them deciding to buy a phone from O2.

The tool assesses suppliers and products against a range of sustainability criteria including energy consumption, substances used, packaging and the way the company operates in its local community. The various factors and weightings are shown in the chart below.

 

 

It’s all part of O2’s aim to be recognised as a UK leader on sustainability by 2012. The company has introduced a range of community and environmental initiatives under the broad areas of People and Planet. There’s more information here.

 

This looks like a good idea and it seems that a lot of effort has been put into it – the company has been working on it for a year. But it does require manufacturers’ cooperation and some of the vendors don’t seem to want to play ball. For example, all the BlackBerry and Apple phone Eco ratings say ‘Not Participating’ and there’s no mention of the rating for Dell phones.

CRC registration continues at a crawl

I reported back in July that the registration for the UK’s CRC Energy Efficiency (cap-and-trade) legislation was progressing very slowly – see here for the background and its implications for the ICT industry. The Environment Agency, which is running the scheme, had forecast that around 20,000 companies would need to disclose their energy use and 5,000 would need to join the scheme.

The registration process runs to the end of September, but at the end of June just 2,983 companies had made an information declaration and 522 companies had registered as CRC participants.  Since then I’ve been tracking the numbers – the list of registrations is updated each week on the Environment Agency web site – and it hasn’t got much better.

The number of declarers seems to be accelerating, but there’s still a long way to go to reach the predicted 20,000 mark. The process is quite quick, so it may well speed up further after the holiday season. But the more complex procedure of registering as a participant is very unlikely to reach the predicted 5,000 figure in time. (At the current rate participants and declarers won’t all be on the register before January and March 2011 respectively).

In fact Henry Le Fleming, carbon reporting specialist at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) has warned that the deadline is actually closer than that. "The final deadline for registration (as a participant) is September 30th but the process needs to start much earlier. Companies need to allow between two and four weeks for the Environment Agency to run checks, including anti-money laundering for company’s senior officers referred to in the process.  In reality the deadline is September 2nd for most companies”.

The Environment Agency seems to be trying to avoid embarrassment over the issue. According to BusinessGreen reported a couple of weeks ago, The Environment Agency has written to organisations urging them to register even if their data is incomplete or inaccurate data; "We will work with you to resolve any errors in the information you supply. This will not affect your compliance."

The bottom line is, though, that those organisations that don’t declare their electricity use in time face a fine of £500 for each half-hourly electricity meter they fail to declare. For prospective scheme participants the penalties are a lot higher - £5,000 plus £500 a day until they do register (up to a maximum of £45,000).

But that’s not all. There’s also potential reputational damage from a company being listed as non-compliant and included at the bottom of the CRC scheme annual league table.

 

It’s going to be interesting to see how this pans out, but there’s clearly been a significant underestimation of the need for information and education to get the CRC message across. I was predicting a rush in the take-up of carbon management software in the run up to the start of the scheme in September, but it looks like it’s going to be a longer, slower process as companies belatedly wake up to the requirement.

Investors pile in to Smooth-Stone’s green semiconductor innovation

Start-up semiconductor company Smooth-Stone has raised $48m from an impressive syndicate of investors including ARM, Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Texas Instruments Inc. The money will go towards the development of high performance, low power chips that the company believes will change the server and data centre markets.

Founded in 2008, Smooth‐Stone’s aim is to bring better performance density to the data centre. At the heart of the development is the use of ultra-low power processors, as used on mobile phones, but the company is bringing together experience in a range of technologies and hardware and software design and development to deliver a complete low power solution. 

The idea is that Smooth-Stone will make it possible for data centre managers to increase the density of their computer resources while conserving energy, cooling and space. At the same time, the technology will contribute to the reduction of the CO2 footprint of the data centre.

“Our goal is to completely remove power consumption as an issue for the data centre. Imagine that change for companies with a large presence on the Internet,” said Smooth-Stone CEO Barry Evans, “They all deal with the reality that as the mass of information grows daily, so does their power consumption. Every day these companies are thinking about managing their data centre sprawl. We want to make sure that space and power are not constraining their potential.”

 

Chip power consumption (and the heat it creates) is an issue in the PC and server market and one reason for the growth of multicore architectures, which in turn has fuelled the explosive growth of virtualisation. But Smooth-Stone’s approach is a concerted effort to find a more comprehensive solution.  With the experience of the investor syndicate it has, who have a strong collection of previous successes between them (ARM continues its seat on the Smooth-Stone board of directors) this could be a company to watch.

Virtualisation – going green and staying green?

Virtualisation has become a green IT favourite with good reason, but it can be a blunt tool, with much of the benefit lost over time. The problem is with virtual server sprawl. It’s becoming a big issue - according to a survey for power management company 1E, 84% of IT professionals are concerned about virtual server sprawl. 

More at InfoBoom

Capgemini acquires Swedish smart meter BPO company

One item that slipped by in the holiday season is that Capgemini announced its acquisition of Skvader Systems AB at the end of July, giving a boost to its Smart Energy Services Practice and outsourcing business in the Nordic region.

Skvader is a Swedish IT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service provider specialising in smart meter deployment and managed business services. It’s a delivery partner of Landis+Gyr in the contract to install and manage 400,000 meters in Sweden for E.ON, so this business will now be folded into the Capgemini practice.

Capgemini is becoming a force in the Nordic smart meter market. As we reported back in February, the company’s Swedish operation has also taken over a contract worth at least €94m to manage the existing smart meter portfolio of Fortum Distribution AB. The company estimates that over €300m of smart energy service contracts will come to the Nordics over the next three years, which explains its push.

As a part of the deal Capgemini will acquire a Skvader’s software solution to support its managed business services contracts. The software is sold to other Utilities through software-as-a-service (SaaS) contracts and supports one million smart meter deployments.

Skvader is owned by five shareholders, all currently working in the business, with 40 employees overall. The company has been profitable and successful since its inception in 2000 and has committed smart metering contracts for the next three years.

 

Sounds like a good move and the strategy of focus on a specific geographic market to gain business and experience has a lot going for it. The danger in the rapidly growing and increasingly competitive smart meter market is to spread yourself too thin.

Nokia introduces pedal-powered charging kit

Thanks to greenIT.fr for highlighting the availability of the ‘Bicycle Charger Kit’ from Nokia (which charges your phone, not the bike’!). It’s a sign of the times that you can now charge your (Nokia) mobile phone while taking the most environmentally-friendly mode of transport.

There seems to have been some thought put into it. The phone mount is rubberised to minimise vibrations and the holder comes with a transparent bag to protect it from the elements. It’s compatible with all Nokia phones that have a 2mm charging interface and Nokia points out that the kit pays for itself through savings on charging costs (although I don’t know what the cost is).

The charger kicks in when the bicycle reaches 6 km/h and stops when (if?) your speed reaches 50 km/h. The total charging time varies, but Nokia gives the example that with 20 minutes of cycling at 10 km/h you can power up a Nokia 1202 for 1 hour of talk time or 74 hours of standby time.

 

It would be even better if you could carry it with you and easily clip it on to any bike, so for example, you could use it with the recently introduced free bike scheme in London. But the installation sounds too much for that. Maybe one day.

The IT sector has reduced equipment emissions by 32m tonnes worldwide since 2007

A recent study has concluded that the IT sector has reduced annual CO₂ emissions associated with IT equipment by more than 32 million metric tons worldwide since 2007.

The report, which is here, was conducted by Natural Logic to assess the progress of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative’s (CSCI). The organisation was set up in 2007 and is led by CSC, Dell, Google Inc., HP, Intel, Microsoft and the World Wildlife Fund, but now has a total of 645 members. It’s aim is to reduce the environmental impact of IT equipment through energy efficiency, with a goal of reducing annual CO₂ emissions from the IT sector by 54 million metric tons by June 2011.

The research shows that annual CO₂ emissions from IT equipment have decreased by 32 million to 36 million metric tons worldwide since 2007 and is on target to achieve the CSCI’s reduction goal by the end of its 2010 fiscal year in June 2011. The report puts the success down to the CSCI’s efforts to promote the adoption of power management, new IT efficiency standards and the use of higher-efficiency computing equipment.

The CSCI has said that in the future it will expand its focus to include commercial and home networking equipment, helped by new board members Cisco, Emerson Network Power and Juniper Networks. The organisation will set new energy efficiency criteria for networking technologies and network devices will be included in the organisation’s environmental targets, with the goal of reducing annual CO2 emissions by an additional 38 million metric tons by 2015.

 

Great stuff. There’s an interesting comment in the conclusion that in fact the use of PC power management has been much lower than the organisation estimated when it set its goals; “CSCI’s original estimate was based on an assumption that the use of power management features on desktops and notebooks would be in the range of 90% by the end of the 2010
program year, but the latest research shows it is only around 10% (22% at the most)”. So it looks like there will be a particular effort by these companies to push power management in the coming months.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if there was a similar organisation dedicated to achieving emissions reductions in the economy as a whole, not just IT equipment. Green ICT is much more than the IT department and data centre.

CDP publishes a transport industry report – plenty of scope for green IT

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) has published a report on the transport industry. It’s based on information received from the world’s 291 largest publicly traded transportation companies as part of the CDP’s annual climate change information-gathering exercise. The CDP survey is fairly broad, covering emissions counting and management, corporate governance around climate change and also the risks and opportunities that climate change presents.

The full report is here, but among the findings were:

• The vast majority of transport sector emissions comes from road transport - 80%. Air transport represents 13%, with rail just 0.5%.

• South American and European companies lead in putting emission reduction plans in place. Of the CDP transportation sector responses, 60% of companies in South America and 52% in Europe have set an emissions reduction plan, compared with 47% in the US and Canada and just 18% in Asia.

• Transportation companies are lagging behind Global 500 corporations in setting emissions reduction targets. Only 36% of the largest 291 transportation companies have set targets, compared with 51% of the largest global companies as a whole.

• Nearly half of the world’s largest transportation companies
have not yet recognised the risks and opportunities from climate change. While 53% cite regulatory risks and 59% cite regulatory opportunities, this is lower than for the global 500 companies – 64% and 69% respectively. It does seem, though, that for those that do recognise the risks it’s not just regulatory - increased operating costs, extreme weather and associated disruption were also cited.

• Some companies report a competitive advantage from carbon efficient products and cost savings from increased fuel efficiency, while others are developing opportunities in new low carbon fuels and advanced technology vehicles.

• A small minority are reporting significant investments in carbon reductions and low carbon technologies. Significant capital is flowing into the development of low carbon solutions in the sector. New technologies include installation of renewable energy systems; developing more efficient transport routes, low
carbon fuels, and innovative vehicle design; or product innovation into hybrids or electric powered vehicles.

 

It does seem odd that transportation companies are lagging behind in setting emissions targets, but then I guess the industry doesn’t get some of the direct feedback, such as brand pressure, that retail companies, for example, may feel. On the other hand, retail suppliers are increasingly looking at their supply chain to reduce emissions, so it will come.

More surprising is the lack of acknowledgement of the risks and opportunities. Transport may very well be in the front line of regulatory action in the future through things like road usage pricing, etc. It is also the most vulnerable to disruption through extreme weather events.

There’s lots of green IT available to help make road transport more efficient, plan routes better, enable real-time reaction to disruption, etc. Early adopters are likely to have a clear competitive advantage, but few seem to have realised the fact.

Excel is not good enough for sustainability reporting – US survey

Sustainability consulting company iReuse recently carried out a US survey to find out which sustainability metrics were being tracked, which were most important and how data was being managed. Responses came from a variety of job titles, including facilities managers, sustainability directors, administrators and marketing professionals.

The short report is here, but one of the conclusions is that while managing electricity use and data tracking is seen as critical, a significant number still do not track any other utility or sustainability data. For those that do track the data, Excel‐based systems are most often used but many are looking for solutions that are easier to use and more sophisticated in the interpretation of the data.

Among the key findings were:

• In only two areas were more than half the respondents tracking utility data - electricity (72%) and water (51%).

• The facilities department is most often tracking the data - 44% of respondents. The sustainability department was responsible in 24% of cases followed by accounts (16%).

 

• 46% do not track any other sustainability metrics such as green
purchasing, business travel or a carbon footprint.

• Excel is most often used (86%) to track utility data, but two thirds are not satisfied with its capabilities.

 

Once again a report that highlights the huge potential for sustainability reporting solutions, because of their still limited use and the dissatisfaction with the tools that are being used.

The main reasons given for tracking data were to increase efficiency and decrease environmental impact - carbon reporting was among the least important reasons. As yet the reporting aspects of carbon legislation are not an issue in the US, as they are becoming in the UK and Europe. Indeed, while the European market is being pushed towards carbon management it may well be that the US market has a broader sustainability profile.

Printing – the Green IT Cinderella

Printing is often the Cinderella of green IT in the corporate environment. Everyone knows it’s wasteful, but short of trying to educate users to only print when they really need to, use both sides of the paper and recycle the waste, there’s not a lot of effort that goes into making printing more sustainable.

But educating people to take the right actions doesn’t always work, particularly in the business environment. Defra (the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) recently released a survey as part of a campaign to urge small businesses to cut down on waste and reduce energy and water use. It found that whilst the British follow good environmental practices at home, they don’t always take their concerns or actions to work with them. Among the findings was that 21% print out emails when they don’t need to. To be fair, 18% didn’t know what their organisation’s green policy was, so clearly the message isn’t always getting through anyway.

Often the corporate user simply needs a nudge in the right direction. Asking people to print on both sides of the paper needs them to take specific actions, whereas if duplex printing is the default then action has to be taken to stop it.

But there are other solutions that act as a reminder to individual users to reduce their printing. For example, software such as Fineprint and GreenPrint, that sit between the user and the printer. They can act as the default print option and make it easy for users to take the greener option of removing whole pages or pieces of text or images from the final print job. They can also enable multiple pages per sheet, duplex printing, etc.

The GreenPrint offering can also show the accumulated cost saved and the consequent financial and environmental impact. GreenPrint claims printing savings of 17% or more, saving the average user over $90 and 1,400 wasted pages per year. The company offers enterprise and home solutions as well as a free, advertising-supported version.

But there is more to printing than just the paper. There’s also a great deal of ink that can be saved, and not just by printing less.

For example, the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, has changed its default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic. It seems that Century Gothic uses 30% less ink than Arial, the most commonly used default font. Ink costs the university around $10,000 a gallon, with toner cartridges and drums not far behind, and accounts for 60% of the cost of the printed page, so it’s potentially a significant saving across a university campus.

In this case changing the default option is an effective way of nudging people towards greener behaviour. There’s no force involved - the University made it clear that users can change back to a different default font if you wish. The university is also encourage everyone to switch to Century Gothic as their default font in Entourage for Macintosh, Word, and Excel.

If you want to go even further, there are specially designed green fonts. With Ecofont, for example, users can work with their usual font but for printing use its ink-saving variant. The green font has additional holes to reduce ink use with, apparently, no impact on legibility. Ecofont claims that its font is even more economical than Century Gothic. Preton has a solution that deletes unnecessary pixels from all aspects of a print job as well as providing the capability to eliminate unneeded text or graphics from print jobs and providing analysis of print usage and savings.

So there’s a lot that can be done to reduce the environmental impact, and cost, of printing – the above are just a few examples of what’s on the market. It’s a much easier and quicker option than many other aspects of green ICT, but not one that’s talked about much.

Integrated financial and sustainability reporting moves a step nearer

The vision of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is that the disclosure of economic, environmental and social performance becomes as commonplace and comparable as financial reporting. Last week it took a step nearer to making the vision a reality with the formation of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC).

The other party to the formation is The Prince’s Trust’s Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S). The A4S project was launched in 2004 by HRH The Prince of Wales to develop decision-making and reporting systems that take into account the sustainability challenges. It works with businesses, investors, governments, accounting bodies, civil society and academics to build a common view of an integrated reporting framework and to develop guidance and tools.

The remit of the new body formed by GRI and A4S is to create a globally accepted framework for accounting for sustainability, bringing together financial, environmental, social and governance information in an integrated format. In doing so, the IIRC is working with representatives from a variety of public and private sectors.

“To make our economy sustainable we have to relearn everything we have learnt from the past. That means making more from less and ensuring that governance, strategy and sustainability are inseparable" said Professor Mervyn King, Chairman of the GRI.  "Integrated Reporting builds on the practice of Financial Reporting, and Environmental, Social and Governance - or ESG - Reporting, and equips companies to strategically manage their operations, brand and reputation to stakeholders and be better prepared to manage any risk that may compromise the long-term sustainability of the business."

 

Jane Diplock, Chairperson, Executive Committee of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions, said, “I believe we will look back on the creation of this Committee as a turning point in the development of corporate reporting.” That may be a little over the top, but certainly momentum is building around sustainability reporting. For example it was only a few weeks ago we reported that the GRI and CDP agreed to collaborate on their reporting standards.

It’s good news for those companies providing carbon management and other sustainability solutions, which will be in increasing demand if these collaborations are fruitful. But the IIRC can only hasten the integration of sustainability and financial reporting, which is pretty much an inevitable long-term development as carbon emissions carry a financial implication. That may not be so good for niche carbon management players. The well-entrenched financial solutions providers will have the upper hand if the two are integrated, potentially another reason for a shake-out in this booming green ICT sector.

Ernst & Young sets its sites on the clean tech sector

Ernst & Young claims to be the first of the ‘Big Four’ consulting companies to establish a dedicated Global Cleantech practice at the centre of a worldwide network of consultants addressing Cleantech-specific issues. As part of this focus the firm has also launched a Global Cleantech Centre of Excellence and has established leaders and teams in over 40 countries around the world.

In the UK and Ireland Steven Lang will coordinate a team of more than 100 serving, clients in the Clean Energy and Clean Technology sectors across all four service lines of Advisory Services, Assurance, Tax and Transaction Advisory Services.

Lang commented that “We expect to substantially increase our revenues from this rapid growth sector to more than £100m within the next three to five years. Cleantech is driving a global transformation in the way natural resources – including energy and water – are produced, distributed, stored, managed and consumed. This transformation presents enormous opportunities and challenges for global businesses large and small, as well as governments and entrepreneurs.”

 

It’s no surprise that the consultancy firms are gearing up to address the opportunities in the green market, but it can be seen as a bellwether for the state of the sector and for green ICT opportunities. Where management consultants lead IT services companies are not far behind. (Most IT companies would rather be leading themselves, but not many have the credibility).

The green data centre market - $40bn by 2015

If my comments on data centres yesterday were of interest then you might want to know that Pike Research has just released a report on green data centres.

The report points out that the evolution of the ‘green’ data centre is closely connected to other changes which all have an impact, including technical innovation, new design principles, operational improvement, changes to the relationship between IT and business and changes in the data centre supply chain.

In the past the main concerns in running a data centre were availability, performance, security and resilience and these still are important. Increasingly, though, these aspects need to be delivered within new constraints on resources and under new demands in terms of the services provided. Consequently data centres will become more energy-efficient, more dynamic - to have the flexibility to adapt to new business needs and technologies - and virtualised, to ensure optimal use of resources.

The report forecasts that the revenue from green data centres will exceed $40bn worldwide by 2015. North America and Europe will lead the way in the short term, but the Asian market will catch up quickly as its data centre capacity grows.


The report identifies a number of trends shaping the market, including:

• While the industry has, in the past, indiscriminately built out new capacity to meet requirements, it is now being forced to consider the physical environment and natural resources on which it depended and the costs they represent.
• The trend over the next five years will be a move toward a total virtualisation of the data centre to deliver computer services from both public and private cloud models.
• As IT provision becomes more dynamic under the influence of virtualisation and cloud computing, so a more dynamic view of data centre infrastructure is emerging – flexible and adaptable.
• This new infrastructure environment will require more sophisticated management tools and a holistic view of the entire
ecosystem.
• The green agenda means that the data centre is part of a broader sustainability program and true cost must be made more visible.
• The cost of the data centre can only be fully assessed if both the resources it uses and the work it does can be measured. Work is being done to define an acceptable measure for the productivity of the data centre.
• A more industrialised view of data centre design, including modularisation, is being adopted. The state-of-the-art data centre is evolving to be a green data factory. (See our report yesterday).

The report points out that the changes to data centres are inevitable, but the rate of change is hard to predict. In the case of data centres I believe that legislation will probably have the biggest impact.

There’s lots of activity to reduce energy use in business but in the case of data centres it tends to be one-off, quick wins. As IT use in business continues to expand (and is used to help reduce emissions elsewhere) there’s a need for longer-term measures that may only be dictated by legislation. For example the CRC cap-and-trade scheme in the UK is pulling in a lot of companies simply because of the energy used in their data centres. Companies stand to lose money and feel the impact on their reputation by such legislation.

Modular data centres – quicker and cleaner – plus a greener innovation in Canada

There are a lot of issues for companies looking to expand on their data centre capacity. Power supply can be limited and other aspects of the facility or location can threaten business continuity. New facilities are costly, whilst retrofits can be disruptive. Hence the increasing availability of modular designed, often off-the-shelf facilities. The modular design means that it doesn’t have to be built and run for maximum capacity, but scaled out as required, saving energy costs and emissions.

The latest of these is HP’s Flexible DC design, which it describes as offering a faster, less expensive, more flexible and safer way to scale data centre capacity. The facility is shaped like a butterfly, with a core building and four 800 kilowatt quadrants.  The design uses prefabricated, pre-specified modules for easy scaling.

 

The modular approach means significant construction cost savings and the design also improves cooling and energy efficiency, which means operational savings as well. The company claims a typical PUE of just 1.18.

 

 

Colt, the communications and IT managed services company, has also launched its own Modular Data Centre. Delivered by Colt Data Centre Services (Colt DCS), a newly formed division, it’s a pre-fabricated solution, including all power and cooling elements, which is constructed and tested before delivery. It’s available in units of 500m2, which can be joined together to match the overall requirement.

The company claims to be able to deliver highly power-efficient, turnkey data centre halls to customers in less than four months, about the third of the time for the delivery of a conventional data centre (according to Colt).

The design target PUE is 1.21 not quite as good as the HP offering but a great deal better than most current data centres.

On a much smaller scale but in a more interesting project, last week Canadian organisation Cybera, with partners CANARIE and the GreenStar Network (GSN) Project, connected a rooftop solar-powered ‘data centre’ to Canada’s first ‘green’ powered internet network.

That paragraph needs some explaining:

• Cybera is an Alberta-based not-for-profit organisation that supports innovation. Cybera operates CyberaNet, a high-speed high-bandwidth advanced network in Alberta.

• CANARIE Inc. is Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network, running hundreds of times faster than the internet, facilitating leading-edge research across Canada.

• The GreenStar Network (GSN) Project is aimed at creating a Canadian consortium of industry, universities and government agencies with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ICT services. The project will combine renewable energy with carbon accounting to provide ICT infrastructure on which certifiably low-carbon services can be delivered.

Anyway, over the next few months the GSN Project will connect five different nodes across Canada, each powered by renewable energy sources as they store and transfer research data for pilot user groups. The Calgary node, managed by Cybera, will draw more than 230 watts of power from eight solar panels installed on roof space donated by Calgary Technologies Inc. If one of the nodes uses up its power supply before it’s able able to recharge, the data will be seamlessly transferred along the network to another operational node.

This isn’t mainstream data centre innovation, but it’s interesting because of its focus on the relationship between networks and data centres to provide green ICT services. Data centres and network usage are becoming increasingly important as ICT is delivered as a service (think cloud, Software as a Service, etc.), so there’s a need to address the carbon emissions in innovative ways. Apart from anything else, emissions will cost money as legislation spreads (and also impact reputations, if the UK’s CRC cap-and-trade scheme is followed elsewhere). That’s what this is trying to address.

India homes in on solar-powered ICT

It may not be ideal for all countries (including the UK in July this year), but solar powered devices are starting to gain some serious momentum in India.

Vodafone Essar, the Vodafone subsidiary that’s a major mobile phone supplier in India, has launched its latest eco-friendly, solar charging handset. With an extended solar battery, the VF247 is aimed at users in rural communities where the electricity supply is unreliable.

In fact the phone, which will be available shortly, doesn’t need huge amounts of sunlight, it can apparently be charged in a room under normal daylight. It also comes with standard mobile phone features including an FM radio, colour screen and torch light.

It’s not the first or only solar charging phone. A number of other companies have offerings, notably Samsung, and others are looking at alternative and more flexible energy sources for mobiles. But Vodafone Essar has a presence across India, with almost 110 million customers in the country, so it’s certainly in a position to spread the use of the technology. (According to CleanTechnica.com there are more than 500 million mobile phone subscribers in India, a number which is expected to double by 2015).

As we reported earlier in the year, there is already a push under way from the Indian government to convert the country’s mobile phone towers from diesel generation to solar power. As solar towers spread into rural India, so will the demand for solar phones.

But it’s not just phones, the Indian Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, has announced plans for a touch-screen, iPad-type laptop device that can also run on solar power.

The device, with a £23 price tag, is planned for launch next year. It apparently runs Linux and uses a memory card, rather than a hard disk, and will support web browsing, video conferencing and word processing. It is expected to be initially introduced to higher education institutions.

There’s not much detail on the solar-powered aspect, though, which suggests there’s still work to be done. Much will depend on the manufacturer and apparently several global players are interested, at least one from Taiwan.

It remains to be seen whether this gets of the ground, though, an earlier plan to introduce a cheap laptop by the Indian government came to nothing. But if both solar phones and laptops do take off, India could well become a leading player in green ICT.