Australian IT industry has published a white paper on ICT as a low carbon enabler

The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has produced a white paper (actually more of a report, given it’s 69 pages) to put the message across that ICT innovations will deliver significant CO2 reductions for Australia.

The AIIA has identified five major priority areas that focus on the delivery of a high technology, low carbon future for Australia:

1) The Australian Government should work with the technology industry to identify and resource key programs that will encourage the rapid take-up of smart ICT-based technologies.

2) Australian state governments should make adoption of the digital economy a key priority in their development programs and embrace CO2 reduction strategies in their policies.

3) The Australian business sector should demonstrate global leadership in its adoption of ICT for the reduction of carbon emissions.

4) The local ICT industry should promote products and services for the reduction of energy across the economy.

5) All sectors and government agencies should develop specific agreed action plans through a national ICT Sustainability Summit event early in 2011.

This report, which looks at the best ICT enablement opportunities, is based on a number of other reports and papers on the subject. The AIIA identified over 30 such sources and has referenced six key reports in the white paper, including the Smart 2020 report from The Climate Group and GeSI and the Ten Point Checklist ICT and Environment published by the OECD.

The conclusion from the analysis is that there are seven main areas where ICT can make a significant contribution to reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions:

• Green ICT. The ICT industry itself is a significant consumer of energy and generator of e-waste. Products need to be sustainably designed and managed to impact less on the environment. The implementation of a National Broadband Network (NBN) is seen as a means to improved efficiencies.

• Energy Production and Distribution. Smart grids and smart metering will become increasingly important, offering the ability to use and distribute electricity more intelligently and cost-effectively.

• Transport and Logistics.  Much more can be done around Supply Chain Management (SCM), particularly in facilitating open communication channels between transportation networks.

• Building Management Systems. The inefficient heating and cooling systems of commercial, industrial and domestic buildings is one of the key areas of potential improvement.

• Industrial Processes. Additional efficiency gains are now available through advanced process control initiatives, using intelligent ICT analytics to provide real-time feedback to maximise equipment effectiveness and overall efficiencies.

• Health. ICT-enabled improvements through the use of such technologies as remote diagnostics and electronic patient records.

• Education. By offering the ability to deliver, assess
and monitor educational training in a more efficient and effective manner, ICT provides a more sustainable model for the industry.

There’s a lot more detail on each of these areas in the report, which is available here.

 

I like this research partly because it doesn’t re-invent the wheel. Much of the basis for the analysis is well known – the Smart 2020 report, for example, was published over two years ago. What this paper does is focus on the known areas where ICT can enable a greener economy and puts them in the Australian context, both in terms of potential impact and the relevance to current and future legislation. Let’s hope the new government will pay attention.

Capgemini and Yahoo! announce the world’s greenest data centres (or not)

News of a couple of very green data centres:
• Capgemini has launched a new data centre in Swindon, UK, which it claims will be one of the world’s greenest. According to eweek, the new facility, known as Merlin, comprises 30,000m² of technical floor space and relies on a combination of fresh air and evaporative cooling to reduce cooling energy use by over 92%, compared with a conventional data centres using chilled water.  The data centre will be certified Tier 3 by the Uptime Institute.

Appropriately, the data centre will host the UK's Environment Agency as its first tenant. The Environment Agency will take two of the 12 2,500 square metre modules.

According to Computing, Capgemini claims the best power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of any data centre globally, with a PUE of 1.08, against an industry standard of a little more than 2.5 PUE. However, that was just a few days before:

• Yahoo! has unveiled what it claims is one of the world's most energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and cost-effective data centre buildings in Lockport, Niagara County, New York. The facility uses a combination of design and the naturally cool climate to decrease its electricity use.

The data centre uses Yahoo!'s green data centre design, called the Yahoo! Computing Coop (YCC), also known as the ‘Yahoo! Chicken Coop’. It uses a combination of the cool climate, prevailing winds and hydropower to keep the 120x60-foot server buildings cool. The design mimics the long, narrow design of a chicken coop to encourage natural air flow, resulting in an annualised average of less than 1% of the buildings' total energy consumption being required to cool the facility. In addition, hydropower for the data centre will be supplied by the New York Power Authority (NYPA).

The company claims the Lockport data centre is among the most efficient in the world, with a PUE of 1.08, compared with the industry average of 1.92.

Congratulations to both companies for the level of efficiency they have managed to achieve through careful design of these two state-of-the-art facilities.
It’s not really important, but did either of them set a world first in PUE with 1.08? The Capgemini data centre was due to go into operation in the second half of September, while Yahoo! unveiled its own facility on September 20th, but only claiming it to be ‘among the most efficient data centres in the world’. A close call.

What also intrigues me is that Yahoo! quotes an EPA figure of industry average PUE of 1.92, whilst Capgemini cites 2.5. That’s a big difference – Capgemini’s figure indicates 30% more data centre energy use to run the same IT infrastructure (according to my estimation). Not sure where that comes from. I find it hard to believe that’s a US/Europe difference, but it’s very disappointing if it is.

Redemtech becomes the first company in Europe to achieve e-Stewards Electronic Recycling Certification

We reported back in April that the Basel Action Network (BAN), the group that told the world about the dumping of toxic electronic waste in China and Africa, had launched the world’s first global e-waste recycler certification.  It’s backed by both environmental organisations and major corporations.  The certification is built round the e-Stewards Standard, created by BAN with input from industry leaders and health and environmental specialists.

At the time of the launch of the programme there were several companies expected to be certified about now. I expressed a certain disappointment at the time that all the companies mentioned at the launch as already working on certification were US-based. Well now at least a European facility has achieved the standard. The Redemtech TCM Centre in Surrey, UK is the first e-Stewards-Certified facility in Europe and the first outside the United States (although it is the European arm of US company Redemtech, the privately-held subsidiary of Microelectronics, Inc).

The lack of enforcement of the WEEE regulations has allowed toxic electronic waste to slip out of Europe’s ports and make its way to Asia and Africa where it is often recycled in primitive and environmentally damaging conditions or simply dumped or burned. Recent hardware obsolescence such as the switch from analogue to digital TVs and flat screen technology has exacerbated the situation.

E-Stewards is the first certification standard available in Europe that ensures that recyclers do not deposit toxic e-waste in landfills or export it to the developing world.  It also enforces compliance with European waste from electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) regulations through its accountability and audit control requirements.

The e-Stewards certification tries to ensure the integrity of recycling operations through an independent audit process by accredited bodies. It provides a detailed 67-page guidance document for auditors and recyclers to ensure consistent application of the standard. E-Stewards Certification is currently available in all 41 OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation), EU (European Union) and EFTA (European Free Trade Association) countries. Three more European facilities are expected to be certified in the next months.

In addition, companies and institutions that agree to make best efforts to always use e-Stewards recyclers, can be designated as e-Stewards Enterprises. Currently Samsung, Capital One, Premier Farnell, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Banks are among the already designated e-Stewards Enterprises.

 

It’s obviously a good thing and I hope the certification spreads, as well as the number of companies designated as e-Stewards Enterprises.

What’s disappointing is that the WEEE regulations in Europe, which led the world at the time the scheme was agreed back in 2003, has fallen into disrepute because of lack of enforcement. A study was published by the EU early this year that recommended the creation of a body to manage implementation and enforcement of the laws, along with other tightening up of the regulations to make Member States more accountable. It was partly because another report revealed that enforcement action had found that 20% of waste shipments were illegal.

Nothing has happened yet, but a new version of WEEE is expected, possibly by the end of 2010.

Dell is using bamboo packaging from sustainable sources

Apparently as the result of customer requests for more sustainable packaging, Dell is now using bamboo. Oliver Campbell, senior manager for Global Packaging at Dell explains:

 

SAP enhances its Carbon Impact OnDemand solution

SAP last week introduced an enhanced version of its Carbon Impact OnDemand solution. The software is designed to help companies report, analyse and reduce their worldwide energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The company points out that it’s also possible to adapt carbon reduction strategies to changing global market environments, including volatile energy prices and tightening regulations, such as the introduction of the US EPA Mandatory Reporting Rule, which requires the reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from large sources and suppliers in the US.

SAP Carbon Impact OnDemand is the first SAP solution developed to run natively in the cloud as well as providing integration with existing SAP on-premise software. Given that sustainability efforts need to be adopted across corporations, this new version also allows companies to add language support, via an upcoming service pack, for more than 50 countries. Social collaboration technology also helps companies engage with employees and suppliers in becoming more sustainable.

Among the companies already using the software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution are Autodesk, Arch Chemicals and Fisker Automotive. SAP itself is setting an example by running the software internally to analyse its own energy use and carbon footprint. The solution apparently helped the company identify key areas for implementing carbon-efficient operations, including travel, data centres, buildings and commitment to renewable energy.

 

SAP seems to be really pushing out with Carbon Impact on Demand, which now seems to tick a lot of boxes. It’s bad news for many of the small, specialist carbon management software companies – this is the sort of company and product that will ‘eat their lunch’.

EPEAT helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over two million tonnes

EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) is the green electronics rating system from The Green Electronics Council in the US and is the clear leader in assessing how green IT products are. 

The program evaluates computer desktops, laptops and monitors on 51 environmental criteria.  Thin client devices and workstations were added in 2009 and new standards for printers are being developed.  EPEAT now covers 41 countries and includes nearly 50 manufacturers and more than 2,000 unique products (10,000 product registrations in all since the same product can be registered in various countries - 3,700 have been registered at the Gold level).

Anyway, the organisation has published a report of its success in 2009 and what it means in terms of environmental benefits. The headline achievements are that unit sales of EPEAT registered products in the US grew by 10%, to a total of 44.5 million products. Overall, combined unit sales of EPEAT registered notebooks and desktops constituted close to 17% of sales of these products worldwide and 42% of combined product sales in the US.

The full report is here, but among the highlights are that, compared to non-EPEAT products, these purchases will:

• Reduce use of toxic materials, including mercury,
by 1537 metric tons, equivalent to the weight of
768,000 bricks.

• Eliminate the use of enough mercury to fill 372,000
household thermometers.

• Avoid the disposal of 72,000 metric tons of
hazardous waste, equivalent to the weight of 35
million bricks.

• Eliminate the equivalent of more than 14,500 US
households’ annual solid waste — over 29,000
metric tons.

And since EPEAT registered products meet the latest Energy Star efficiency specifications, these products will also:

• Save over 10 billion kWh of electricity —
enough to power 900,000 US homes for a year.

• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 2 million metric tons — equivalent to taking nearly 1.4 million US cars off the road for a year.

 

So there you have it. Buy EPEAT-registered products and help save the world - a growing number of organisations are and it’s spreading worldwide. Achieving 42% of the US market is certainly impressive.

New @UK PLC ecommerce marketplace will launch with environmental impact data

@UK PLC is, according to its Directors, one of the largest e-Procurement marketplaces in the world with over one million users to date. On October 7th the company is launching a new site which will also show users the environmental impact of their purchase and provide the ability to offset the impact.

The new site reflects a change in the company’s business model, with its new market place promoting suppliers to the wider internet. There are already over 5,000 public sector organisations purchasing through the platform and, since over 80% of public sector organisations in the UK have apparently not yet implemented their own e-procurement solution, the company is hoping for a significant increase in spend.

The environmental aspect entails the use of the company’s recently launched e2class Ethical and Environmental Classification system, along with GreenInsight, its ethical and environmental analysis system.

 

 

e2class will be the core classification system for the marketplace, allowing all items to have associated environmental information. It builds on NSV (National Supplies Vocabulary), the item level product classification used by the UK Government for over 30 years, with over 500,000 products that have standard descriptions and are mapped onto individual supplier products.

With classification for over three million commonly purchased products (and calculated carbon footprints for those products for which data is not available) the company uses GreenInsight to build a picture of an organisations carbon footprint from the bottom up based on every product purchased.

 

@UK PLC looks to be on to a winner here. Green procurement is going to be a big issue, particularly in the public sector where there will also be little government money to invest in any new e-procurement solutions. Not sure of the value of GreenInsight as described, but then one area where the company could make improvements is in clearer explanations of its offering on its web site.

Bournemouth improves water pipe repairs with risk modelling software

It seems that Bournemouth & West Hampshire Water (BWHW), a UK water company that supplies around half a million people, has been using @Risk software from Palisade to prioritise repairs to its pipe network.

A major problem for the water industry in the UK is that  pipes laid in the Victorian era are still in service and a wide variety of materials — including cast iron, ductile iron, cement, PVC and plastic have been used over the years. On top of that there are now stringent requirements set out by OFWAT (the regulator for England and Wales) to provide good quality service and reduce water leaks. For BWHW, managing an area spanning over 1000 square kilometres with nearly 3000 kilometres of water mains, it’s a challenge.

Pipes need to be replaced, so there is a need to identify which sections should be a priority for renewal. Infrastructure company Halcrow was commissioned to develop a risk-based model to improve the efficiency of the pipe replacement program. The company used the @Risk risk analysis software in conjunction with its own cluster analysis tool to assess the probability of pipe failures across the region, enabling BWHW to make more informed decisions.

 

An interesting story which highlights an area of green ICT that will grow in the long-term. There are a range of environmental issues, including extreme weather conditions as the result of climate change, that companies will need to factor into their business plans. It will ultimately come down to quantifying the risk with real numbers to justify corporate investment.

The story also helps clarify some aspects of the ‘green ICT’ market. Firstly, BWHW is not using the software because it’s an environmentally-concerned company (although it may be), but rather because it needs to be more efficient in meeting its regulatory obligations and customer expectations. It didn’t buy a green solution to save water, but that’s what happened.

It’s often said that there’s no such thing as green IT, and it’s (almost) true. There are lots of solutions bought for a variety of reasons that either directly or indirectly address environmental concerns. Some, such as carbon management software, would not exist but for climate change, but many only have a small ‘green’ element which, nevertheless, is coming increasingly into focus and expanding the product or service demand.

We use the term ‘green ICT’ because it’s a convenient catch-all that covers all those solutions. It’s not always a separate market, but an added reason why IT departments need specific products and services (and why vendors are using the label).

US EPA cancels its Climate Leaders program

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced that it is winding up its Climate Leaders program over the next year.

Climate Leaders is an EPA industry-government partnership, started in 2002, in which participating companies voluntarily assess their greenhouse gas emissions, set reduction goals and report their progress to the EPA every year. It has enabled companies to create a credible record of their achievements and receive EPA recognition as corporate environmental leaders.

Close to 200 companies were partners, with a not inconsiderable ICT contingent, including Alcatel-Lucent, AMD, Autodesk, CA, Cisco, Dell, EMC, IBM, Intel, LSI, NCR, Oracle, SAP, Sprint-Nextel, Sun, Symantec, Teradata and Yahoo!

The EPA is encouraging the participants to move to other state or non-governmental programs. The organisations points out that there is now a mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule that took effect on January 1 and several states and NGOs now offer climate programs.

 

There has been some criticism of the move from those that see it as the EPA moving from an encouraging and supporting role to one of regulatory authority. But their are a lot of other organisations, sometimes industry-based, that bring together companies to share experiences in becoming greener. In the IT industry, for example, there is the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which looks beyond internal emissions to encourage ICT vendors to produce products that lead to reductions in emissions in the economy as a whole.

In any case, for many companies counting and reducing emissions will soon cease to be a voluntarily action but something mandated by legislation or required by customer and shareholder pressure. The world is changing.

EcoSnoop – highlighting opportunities to be more green

Thanks to greenIT.fr for pointing it out this web site aimed at helping communities heighten awareness of opportunities to be more green.

EcoSnoop has an iPhone app designed to help capture clear pictures of a eco problems and post these pictures on a community website so that those responsible can take action.  The sort of thing they have in mind is lights left on in a building, late at night for no reason, wasting heat or air conditioning, a truck unnecessarily idling at a loading dock, etc.

EcoSnoop describes itself as a photo driven "Trouble Ticket" system, identifying problems while leveraging the community to find a fix.

 

 

Clearly it’s a bit controversial and has the opportunity for misuse, but the company says it will remove any content that appears to be personally motivated or focuses explicitly on a residence.

EcoSnoop also says it is not about picking sides in the environmental or climate change debate, but simply helping identify opportunities for making improvements that help companies and communities reduce cost, waste and inefficiency. (But then why is it called EcoSnoop?).

It all very new and the company is hoping for some venture funding in the future. The iPhone app is the first focus, so the web site still needs some work.  EcoSnoop says that as it grows the site will let users make recommendations to those responsible for the waste and become a ‘polite but empowered social networking experience’. Blackberry, Palm and other devices will be added over time.

 

Potentially a bit controversial, as the company acknowledges, but it makes sense in theory and you could envisage it becoming a very useful tool in a green-aware business environment. It need’s to establish some clear benefits fairly early on, though, if it’s going to be taken seriously and not just become a finger-pointing exercise.

CRC registration is still behind target

Regular readers will know that I’ve been tracking the progress of registration for the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. This is the cap-and-trade legislation already in force in the UK (see more details here) which requires registration by the end of September. Companies either need to lodge figures for their electricity use or register as full participants in the scheme.

Initially The Environment Agency said that 20,000 companies would simply need to supply details of their electricity use with 5,000 required to join the scheme. But registration has been slow. The chart below shows the situation, with just two weeks left.

The Environment Agency has revised its estimates, though. Seven weeks before the deadline it estimated that in fact just 3-4,000 companies would be actively involved in the scheme ‘as many businesses that qualify for the CRC are owned by larger conglomerates, that incorporate multiple businesses’. It also said that the organisations already registered had reported over half the electricity consumption expected to be included within the scheme. Oddly, two weeks later the Agency reported an increase in registration of scheme participants (from 1200 to 1700) but the total electricity they represented stayed at ‘over half’.

Anyway, by my calculations – based on current registration rates – by the end of September only around 9,000 companies will have declared their energy use and 2,700 will have registered as participants. Given the swingeing penalties for not registering there may well be a lot of companies in for a nasty surprise. 

 

The ICT interest here is that companies taking part in the scheme will need to have the capability to accurately monitor and manage their electricity use in order to minimise the financial (and reputational) impact of the scheme. Those that simply had to register their electricity figures might also have seen the benefit of having a clear process for measuring energy use. It represents a significant opportunity for carbon management solutions and services. It does seem, though, that 20% of the originally expected market is simply not there and a significant proportion don’t realise their obligations.

If the government doesn’t know the potential size and take-up of green legislation it makes it difficult for green ICT suppliers to play their part.

Milton Keynes – a possible world-class low-carbon city?

GE smart grid technology could transform Milton Keynes (UK) into a world-class, low-carbon city. GE and electricity distributor Central Networks have submitted a proposal to UK energy regulator Ofgem in an effort to secure a slice of its £500m Low Carbon Networks Fund.

The MKSmart2020 Project is aimed at demonstrating how a low carbon energy network might operate, as well as gather operational data. GE would focus on the smart grid initiatives within the project that would improve the efficiency, reliability and understanding of energy supply — from generation to consumption. If successful, Milton Keynes could become a world-class example of what a low carbon energy infrastructure can achieve.

“There is no single solution that transforms a city from today’s carbon-heavy energy model to a clean smart city model,” said Keith Redfearn, general manager—digital energy, Northern Europe for GE Energy Services. “Using what we’ve learned from deploying smart grid solutions around the world, we’re proposing a holistic transformation that upgrades basic infrastructure to state-of-the-art energy management systems. The citizens of Milton Keynes could have capabilities and opportunities they never had before.”

Winning project proposals will be announced in December 2010. If the Milton Keynes proposal is successful, the project could begin in early 2011.

 

Milton Keynes is a town that gets regularly pilloried for its endless roundabouts and generally soulless feel – at first sight it seems to be a shopping centre and not much else. It’s partly due to the fact that it’s one of the UK ‘new towns’, built from scratch from the late 1960s, which also means that it’s one of the very few UK towns built in a grid layout.

Anyway, given its history it seems quite appropriate that it should be the focus for the implementation on new technology which will be essential for the future. It would also give the residents the last laugh.

CBI calls for clearer data to help businesses prepare for climate change

The CBI (Confederation of British Industry) has released a report - Whatever the weather: managing the risks from a changing climate – calling on the Government to make its environmental data more easily available to help businesses prepare for the risks of climate change, including rising temperatures and extreme weather.  It also called for the creation of a new public information bank showing the risk to critical infrastructure.

The report’s key recommendations include:

For the Government:

• The UK Climate Projections (UKCP) should be extended and made clearer for non-climate-specialists.

• An information bank detailing the climate risk to public infrastructure should be developed to support businesses in their planning.

• The forthcoming national Climate Change Risk Assessment should develop a coherent approach to climate adaptation in regulation, planning and infrastructure procurement.

• A consistent approach should be taken to support firms to adapt public infrastructure to long-term climate risk.

For businesses:

• Companies should include an evaluation of climate risk in their assessment of business risks.

• Climate adaptation strategies should focus on actions that fit within broader sustainability strategies and which deliver savings in their own right.

• Climate risk evaluation should cover supply chains, assets, operations, markets, regulatory compliance and business reputation.

• Climate exposure should be clearly identified and included in corporate reporting.

• Non-commercially sensitive climate adaptation information should be shared by companies to avoid an inconsistent approach between different sectors.

Dr Neil Bentley, CBI Director of Business Environment, said:

“Many businesses aren’t ready for the changes that could be ahead. The impact of climate change needs to be made part of on-going risk management and we must also ensure that what we build today is resilient enough to withstand changes to the climate over the next century.

“The Government must help ensure that businesses have the information needed to take action. Most of this data is already in the public domain, but needs to be made available in an easy-to-use format.”

 

It’s certainly needed. Businesses must build resilience to the impact of inevitable climate change and will need the data to do it. In fact as extreme weather events are likely to increase, the need for more data, and more frequently updated, will grow.   

The ICT sector will be an essential part of providing that resilience – it’s part of green IT - but it’s disappointing to see that the sector is also one that has been identified as least prepared, at least outside the major corporations. The CBI report includes a chart produced by climate risk consultancy Acclimatise, working with the CDP which shows an ‘acclimatisation index’, analysing the resilience of FTSE-350 companies. The average is a low ‘acclimatisation’
score of 38%, with the IT sector showing the greatest lack of knowledge of the risks and opportunities of a changing climate.

ARM announces a 5x performance chip with a ‘comparable’ energy footprint

ARM has introduced the Cortex™-A15 MPCore processor, which apparently delivers a 5x performance improvement over existing smartphone processors, within a comparable energy footprint.

ARM maintains that it is the ‘highest-performance licensable processor the industry has ever seen’. The company believes that it will enable a wide range of products ranging from next-generation smartphones, tablets, large-screen mobile computing and high-end digital home entertainment devices through to wireless base stations and enterprise infrastructure products such as low-power servers.

Mike Inglis, EVP and GM, Processor Division, ARM said that “The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will become the next major step along the industry’s energy efficient computing roadmap and open up a wide range of new application possibilities for our Partners.”

 

It’s an interesting point that the growth of cloud computing, often seen as the green ICT holy grail, will result in more mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets accessing the cloud. To do so they will need more processing capability which tends to go hand-in-hand with more power requirements (and the problems and restrictions that brings). The ‘greenness’ of cloud computing continues to be debated, but this is an aspect that’s often not taken into the equation.

Fortunately, it’s this that the new ARM chip is addressing. Five times more performance within a ‘comparable’ energy footprint is a significant advance. Of course ‘comparable’ may mean more and the chip’s use may mean the spread of devices. But at least in the corporate environment their use may be part of solutions that significantly reduce emissions elsewhere in the organisation.

Oracle comes out against a Board Committee on Sustainability

Computerworld has reported that the Oracle board has come out  against a proposal to establish a Board Committee on Sustainability. The proposal is to be put to the annual meeting by John Harrington, president and CEO of Harrington Investments, a firm that promotes socially responsible investing.

Harrington Investments has made similar requests to other tech companies with some success, including Intel, which we reported on back in April. Intel initially opposed the resolution but ultimately agreed to change their corporate charter to require the Governance and Nominating Committee to report to the Board on corporate responsibility and sustainability performance.

The proposal for the Oracle meeting reads: “There is established a Board Committee on Sustainability. The purpose of the committee is to review the company’s corporate policies, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, in order to assess, and make recommendations to enhance, the company’s policy responses to changing conditions and knowledge of the natural environment, including but not limited to, natural resource limitations, energy use, waste disposal, and climate change.”

The Oracle Board response is:“Our management considers environmental matters and has developed and actively promotes practices that both minimise resource utilisation and emphasise sustainable resources. For example, management sponsors an executive-level Environmental Steering Committee, which oversees and guides our company-wide environmental sustainability efforts. The Environmental Steering Committee is comprised of senior employees from various business units, including supply chain management, information technology, marketing, public policy, product development, real estate and facilities. …. The Board believes that the Environmental Steering Committee is in the best position to manage these matters on a day-to-day basis with oversight by the Board.”

 

It’s true that Oracle’s may not be the greenest ICT company out there, but nor is it ignoring the issues. The company points out that:

Oracle was the first software company to participate in the Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Leader Partnership, which sets specific goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The company is a founding member of the Sustainable Silicon Valley Initiative, a program that follows the Kyoto Accord's goals.

As of June 2004, Oracle's office in Reading, UK was certified as an ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Standard) facility.

But it could do more and a Board committee would give  the additional focus. When it comes down to it, though, it seems pretty pointless to resist - the company just gets bad publicity for opposing environmental pressures. And you can be sure that sustainability will get greater Board focus in due course. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon ….

Green data centre software and services company investments

There have been a couple of announcements recently of green data centre solutions and services companies receiving additional funding to build their businesses.

• US-based Viridity Software announced that it had raised $8m from existing investors Battery Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners, following a previous $7m investment. The money will be used for the development of the company’s EnergyCenter data centre energy monitoring, measurement and management software platform, as well as to accelerate channel and marketing activities. At the same time the company has announced new customer accounts and a new CEO. 

“Viridity has tapped into what we believe is a large, growing and prime market opportunity,” said Jamie Goldstein, Northbridge Venture Partners.  “That is, the need for business organisations to take control of the uncontrollable time and expense associated with managing data centre power and cooling.”

• On a smaller scale, Wales-based data centre solutions provider Unite Technologies has received a further investment round from Finance Wales, the third since 2001. The £700,000 equity and debt investment will support the development of its power and environmental monitoring solutions and help expand its presence into North America.

Unite’s monitoring solutions enable companies to make decisions about reducing overall energy costs. The company says that its solutions can help companies reduce the annual energy consumption of their data centres and IT infrastructures by around 25%. 

James Henderson, Portfolio Development Executive at Finance Wales, said: “We are pleased to be able to provide the right level of additional investment at the right time to support a company with such a strong track record for innovation and the ability to break into global markets.”

 

These investments show the continuing market focus on reducing energy in the data centre. It makes the point that it’s an on-going activity, rather than an issue that’s addressed through a one-time server consolidation and virtualisation exercise. It has become one of the CIO/IT directors on-going responsibilities and can only become more important over time.

The issue is how the market develops. There are many different aspects to managing data centre power, from throwing out unused servers to tapping into renewable energy. Large IT services groups are likely to wrap it all up in a comprehensive monitoring and action plan service (maybe along the lines of Fujitsu’s Quick Start as I reported yesterday). But there’s going to be plenty of room for companies like Viridity and Unite to make a good living for a while yet. (And maybe Unite could spend some of the new money on their web site!)

Labor scrapes in in Australia on a green agenda – but can they deliver?

After 17 days the Australian Labor party finally emerged as the new government in Australia, but by a very narrow margin. The newly elected green MP was already on side and with two of the three independents also deciding to support Labor the party scraped in with a majority of just one MP.

The green aspect is significant because as well as the Green party support, the independent MPs cited the green agenda as a reason for supporting Labor. The Greens also had significant success in the upper house.  It all indicates a mandate for the new government to deliver some sort of carbon pricing mechanism.

As part of the deal to get the majority support, Labor has already agreed to form a Climate Change Committee to look at legislative options. New Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said she would prefer an alternative to the cap-and-trade scheme, the issue of which was a contributing factor to the need for the election in the first place. The Greens prefer a carbon tax.

So a climate change bill can be expected, but it won’t be plain sailing. The slim overall majority makes any legislation a minefield. It only needs a couple of ‘supporting’ MPs to object to the detail (because they want it to be either more radical or less restrictive) to scupper plans.

Fujitsu America introduces new Green IT solutions

Fujitsu Services in the US has announced a new QuickStart assessment and Green IT Delivery Solution services. The idea is to deliver actionable plans for reducing enterprise IT energy costs by 20% and support corporate sustainability efforts. The two elements are:

• A QuickStart assessment that takes only two weeks and provides customers with a Green IT foundation. It helps prioritise projects in five areas: business operations; data centre efficiencies; end-user efficiencies; metrics and monitoring; and lifecycle and procurement.

• A Green IT Delivery Solution to define sustainability goals and implement a six-month delivery programme. It uses data modelling techniques and scenario analysis to support an IT sustainability profile, including an estimate of IT assets' electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It includes things like consolidation, virtualisation and power management, procurement strategies and reducing waste of paper and consumables through education and policies. 

There are more details here. Both the QuickStart assessment and Green IT Delivery Solution are available now. The QuickStart price starts at $25,000 with the Green IT Delivery Solution pricing dependent on requirements. There are reports that the services are also being rolled out in the UK, which I would expect to see.

 

This sounds like a well-packaged service. A significant attraction, as the press release points out, is that companies can save more than 25% of energy costs within the data centre alone, plus PC power savings, printing costs, etc. So the cost of the services could be paid back very quickly. (Although the incentive depends on whether the department that pays the power bills buys IT services).

My only reservation would be that it focuses more on the IT operation itself than on the rest of the business. But then you have to start somewhere and the ‘enablement’ aspects, i.e. helping the company as a whole save energy/emissions through its business operations, could well be packaged in more ambitious services.

Landis+Gyr announces software reseller agreement with Grid Net

In another announcement in the ever-growing list of collaborations between smart grid/smart meter players, Landis+Gyr said last week that it has joined Grid Net’s Smart Grid Eco-system. The metering technology company announced that it had signed a software reseller agreement with Grid Net, which specialises in all-IP smart grid and smart home software platforms provider.

In July Grid Net and Oracle announced that they’ll be working together on advanced distribution management systems and meter data management technology for utilities’ Smart Grid deployments.

Landis+Gyr will offer Grid Net's PolicyNet SmartGrid NMS and SmartNOS software platforms and PolicyNet SmartAgents as software components of its smart grid solution to Australian and New Zealand utility customers, with a worldwide distribution option.

Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plan 2010 - 2015

The UK government has had a green ICT plan in place for some time now and I reported on progress to date almost a year ago, so presumably a new update is due very soon. It does seem to have gone a bit quiet since the General Election in May, though, buried under all the other priorities.

Anyway, the Australian government announced its own ICT sustainability plan early in August, before their recent election (the final outcome of which is still not clear two weeks later).  The Green party is likely to hold some of the balance of power, so the release of the plan, which has been in the discussion/consultation phase since last September, may prove to be good timing.  Full details are here.

The plan, known as the Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plan 2010 – 2015, has been aligned with a number of other policies and guidelines in relation to climate change. The main points are summarised below.

 

Procurement/recycling

The following are to be put into effect straight away, although there are transitional arrangements;

• compliance with ISO 14024 or ISO 14021 at the level of EPEAT Silver or equivalent for relevant ICT equipment;

• compliance with the current Energy Star version for relevant ICT equipment;

• product take-back and resource recovery, reuse or recycling for mobile devices, toner cartridges and ICT equipment covered by the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme;

• 75% of e-waste to be reused or recycled by 2015

• office copy paper to have a minimum recycled content of 50% by July 2011 and 100% by 2015;

• participation by ICT suppliers in the National Packaging Covenant by July 2011 or compliance with the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Material) Measure (UPM NEPM);

• adoption by suppliers of an environmental management system aligned to ISO 14001.

 

Energy and carbon emission management

A whole-of-government ICT energy consumption target will be developed, with subsequent progress and performance being monitored through the existing online system for comprehensive activity reporting (OSCAR).

Preliminary analysis indicates that Australian Government ICT operations can expect to improve energy performance by up to 20% on current consumption levels by July 2015 through improvements to desktop and data centre energy efficiencies. Specific targets include;

• desktop energy per user to be reduced from the current 630 kWh a year average to 250 kWh by 2015;

• 90% of desktop computers to be turned off after hours (with immediate effect);

• reducing desktop devices per user from 1.6:1 in 2010 to 1.2:1 by 2015;

• reducing desktop computer to printer ratio from 8:1 in 2010 to 20:1 by 2015;

• reducing copy paper per end user from 18.6 reams a year to nine;

• PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) in data centres to be reduced from 2.5 now to 1.9 in 2015.

 

Using ICT to enable broader sustainability

The plan requires agencies to actively pursue the use of ICT to improve environmental performance within government operations and in the delivery of government programs.

There will also be online information and better practice case studies issued showing where ICT can be used as an enabler of sustainability in government operations.

 

Transformational change

The plan is designed to promote transformational change at both organisation level and system level, so initiatives are linked to an agency's non-ICT operations as well as the policies and programs of the Australian Government overall. Consequently;

• agencies will conduct an environmental risk assessment and integrate significant ICT aspects into their EMS (Environmental management system);

• agencies will review their internal governance arrangements and integrate ICT sustainability into internal documentation;

• agencies will implement strategies to raise awareness, provide training programs, and monitors and reports performance through a GreenICT Scorecard;

• a nominated agency will provide central coordination, guidance and support for agencies when implementing the plan.

 

This does seem to be significantly different from the UK Government’s green ICT plan. In the UK the plan is much less prescriptive about individual ICT targets.  There’s a list of 18 green actions that departments are ‘advised’ to adopt, but no individual action has the specific targets cited in the Australian version. It’s even stranger given that the only specific target the UK government has is to make ICT carbon neutral in operation in Government departments by 2012, something that’s only feasible with the purchase of significant carbon offsets (with a corresponding impact on ICT budgets). It does seem that the Australian plan is more practical and realistic in its approach.  We shall see.

Cisco acquisitions and alliances in the fast-growing smart grid market

Cisco has announced its intention to acquire Arch Rock Corporation, which provides internet protocol-based wireless network technology for smart-grid applications. 

Cisco says that the acquisition of the privately-owned, San Francisco-based company will help it offer an open-standards based IP infrastructure for smart meters. Arch Rock's technology helps utilities connect smart meters over a multi-way wireless mesh network, which adds value to Cisco’s IP-based, end-to-end smart-grid offerings, which we discussed last month.

Yesterday’s acquisition announcement came just a day after Cisco revealed a collaboration with Itron, a leading provider of smart metering, data collection and utility software systems. The two companies will collaborate on developing a ‘standards-based, highly secure technology for full IPv6 implementation of field area communications to support smart metering, intelligent distribution automation and interfaces to the customer premise’. The idea is to provide interoperability between wired and wireless communications among the various components of the smart grid.

Itron will license and embed Cisco IP technology within its OpenWay meters as well as distribute Cisco networking equipment and software as part of its smart meter deployments.

Laura Ipsen, Cisco senior vice president and general manager for the Smart Grid business unit said: "The alliance between Cisco and Itron represents a major step forward in the realisation of a modern, more intelligent energy infrastructure. Together, we aim to enable standardisation of the smart-grid architecture and help create an end-to-end communications platform".

The company said that Arch Rock acquisition would complement the strategic alliance with Itron.

 

Cisco is pushing hard into the smart grid communications space, looking to replicate its dominance in internet infrastructure. Given the opportunities it’s no surprise.

Market research company SBI Reports, through its SBI Energy brand, has identified smart grids as one of six clean energy markets that will change life as we know it in the next five years – details are here.

The report points out that implementing and integrating renewable energy sources is contingent on the upgrade of existing electrical grids around the world. SBI Energy sees the global smart grid market climbing by nearly 150% between 2009 and 2014, reaching $171bn in 2014, with the US market doubling over the timeframe to about $43bn by 2014.

Sony Europe launches ‘Open Planet Ideas’ to generate eco technology applications

On Wednesday Sony Europe, supported by WWF, launched Open Planet Ideas, an online community ‘incubator’ for collaborative technology solutions to critical environmental issues. To quote the web site “Open Planet Ideas is a place where you can collaborate to identify environmental issues and then tackle them as a community using Sony technology in new and clever ways”. 

Community members can draw their inspiration from the environmental information hosted on the platform, which will give a snapshot of current environmental challenges based on the latest facts and figures assembled by WWF.

The approach of re-using existing technologies apparently comes from a project last year. A group of young people in California thought up the idea of using Sony’s IPELA security cameras, wireless networks and photo-stitching software to create an online community of citizen firewatchers in a high-risk forest fire area.

Open Planet Ideas will remain open until January 2011 and then the most viable concepts – as selected by the community and a panel of top Sony and WWF experts – will be taken to the next stage of technical and environmental viability. Those that thought up the idea will then work with a Sony design team to bring the idea to fruition. So if you’ve got any bright ideas, off you go.

 

It’s a great concept and may well generate some interesting ideas for green technology applications. What we really need, though, is the same thing on a wider scale and not tied to a specific make of technology. Just generating innovative ideas of how to apply existing technology to help address our environmentally challenges would be useful. Particularly given the poor showing of Green IT in enabling carbon reduction, as revealed in the Fujitsu research I reported on the other day.

Oracle has announced the availability of its new utilities smart meter data management software

Oracle has announced the availability of it’s Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management 2.0 software, aimed at helping utilities manage the vast amount of energy and water consumption data collected through the deployment of smart meters. It’s a component of the company’s Utilities Smart Meter Platform.

Using the Smart Meter Platform utilities can turn consumption data into useful intelligence, enabling them to improve services, better control costs and respond to meter-related events.

Oracle maintains that the new version gets round the problem of integrating customer information systems with meter data management systems. Utilities can continue to access custom, legacy systems whilst retaining the flexibility to configure an IT solution to meet the goals of future smart grid initiative.

The software also includes a centralised device portal. As well as providing customer service support it also contains tools that help utilities view/edit interval data, look for signs of tampering or theft, view/analyse audit records and examine weather patterns to determine usage variations.

Over the next year Oracle plans to add more applications to the platform, including business intelligence, a smart grid gateway and support of communication to customers regarding usage and efficiency programs.

 

It’s no surprise that Oracle is putting a lot of effort into its smart meter/smart grid software, given the global opportunities it represents. There’s a lot of competition, but Oracle is well-entrenched in the utilities market and developing its offering fast.

Fujitsu releases Green IT benchmark report – US, UK, Australia and India

Fujitsu has released the results of a multi-country benchmarking exercise to assess the maturity of Green IT practices and
technologies in end user organisations.  It’s based on a survey of over 630 CIOs and senior IT managers of large IT-using organisations in the US, UK, Australia and India.

The methodology, developed by Australian sustainability consultancy Connection Research and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), looks at the maturity of organisations across four main pillars of Green IT; equipment lifecycle, end-user computing, enterprise computing and IT as a green enabler. The methodology allows the implementation of Green IT to be quantified and compared between countries and industry sectors.

The full report is here, but the research found that the overall Green IT maturity level is low – the index for all respondents is just 56.4 (out of 100). The best performing country of the four surveyed is the UK, with an overall Green IT Readiness Index of 61.0, followed by the US with a score of 58.6, Australia (53.9), let down by its low level of measurement, and India (52.0), where end user Green IT is not widely implemented.

The two operational components of Green IT
that were found to be most mature were End User Computing, which includes the use of PCs, laptops and printers, and Enterprise Computing, primarily servers. Perhaps it’s no real surprise, given that these are the two most visible aspects of IT, the focus of a lot of the Green IT technologies and practices and where Green IT often goes hand-in-hand with short-term cost savings.

Nor is it any great surprise (although some disappointment) that Enablement, i.e. using IT to reduce the carbon footprint elsewhere in the organisation, is scored much lower. As the report points out, it reflects the continued inward focus of many Green IT initiatives.

What is more of a surprise is the fact that Metrics, i.e. the process of measuring and monitoring green initiatives in the organisation, is the least mature aspect. You would think (and hope) that monitoring the success would be an essential part of any green activity in a company, but it seems to remain a low priority.

The best performing industry sectors are IT/Communications/Media, followed by Professional Services and Utilities/Construction. But the report notes that the differences between industry sectors are similar across the countries surveyed, indicating that Green IT performance is at least as much a function of industry sector as it is of country.

 

Having had a very small part in this research, it’s interesting to see the overall results. It’s not always comfortable reading because it highlights how much more there is that Green IT could and should be doing, but the detail does give a good impression of where we are now. It would be interesting to see how these scores change in the coming years. For example, I would expect to see the metrics aspect start to catch up quite quickly in the next year or two.