The UK government has announced plans to embed sustainability in policy

The UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman have just announced plans to ensure that Government policies have been ‘sustainability-proofed’. Policies must ‘help to deliver sustainable economic growth, improve our quality of life and protect our natural environment now and for future generations’.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne said: “We’re already delivering on the Prime Minister’s promise to slash the Government’s own carbon emissions by 10% in our first year, but we need to go much further beyond that.  Only by putting the low carbon agenda at the heart of everything that we do will we convince businesses and householders to do the same.”

The package includes:

• Reducing government’s waste by 25% by the end of this Parliament. Best practice water efficiency methods will be put in place as well as a new commitment on greenhouse gas reduction which builds on the current 10% reduction in the first year of the new government.

• Ensuring the Government buys more sustainable and efficient products.

• Developing measurable indicators to monitor sustainability across government and report results publicly.

• Independent monitoring of sustainability in government operations, procurement and policies by the Environmental Audit Committee, with more frequent reporting.

• The Environment Secretary will sit on the key domestic policy Cabinet committees to enforce the Government’s commitment to sustainability across domestic policy making

• A new Ministerial steering group will drive the commitments for greening government operations and procurement.

• Defra will take the main responsibility for reviewing departmental business plans to ensure they adhere to Sustainable Development principles.

 

Call me cynical, but there’s only one actual target figure given in this announcement and that’s for a 25% reduction in the government’s waste (whatever that might include). The more detailed version of the proposals - Mainstreaming sustainable development – adds very little.

In terms of emissions, as far back as 2009 all major Government departments had their own carbon budgets (as I reported at the time). They also had to produce their own plans, which had two parts; one representing a departments influence on reducing emissions from the economy (my italics) and one reflecting the emissions from their own operations.

The existing government emissions reduction target certainly needs to be increased - reducing emissions by 10% is not much of a stretch when department budgets are being cut by 25-30% anyway. In terms of reducing emissions in the economy, the government seems to be backing away from the CRC Emissions Reduction scheme, which would have helped.

Nor is there any reference to the part that technology can play in all this. The previous government had a clearly defined green IT strategy, but I haven’t heard anything recently.

To be fair, there has been a number of other announcements and policy statements, including the Green Deal, a carbon price floor, greater support for export of clean technologies and the review of waste policies. But details are not always clear and neither is the expected impact.

What is clear, as reported in The Guardian recently, is that the government’s main low-carbon agency – The Carbon Trust - has had its funding cut by 40%, causing the cancellation of grants and projects and dozens of redundancies. The organisation has been forced to end its free on-site energy surveys for businesses.

A new smart grid research centre to open in Scotland – the first in Europe

The University of Strathclyde and leading energy companies including ScottishPower and Scottish and Southern Energy, with support from Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Funding Council, are opening a £12.5m Power Network Demonstration Centre (PNDC) - the first of its kind in Europe.

It’s described as a world class research centre that will accelerate the adoption of new, 'smart' technologies, from advanced power grids to electric cars and household appliances. The Centre is expected to play a key role in increasing the UK electricity grid's efficiency and reliability, as well as testing the next generation of smart electrical technologies, including supporting the integration of new renewable energy sources, electric vehicles and smart household appliances with the grid.

 

Around 25 staff will be based at the Centre, which will be built in Cumbernauld. It will include the most advanced, control, monitoring and communications systems, and is expected to open at the end of 2011.

The main aims of the centre will be:

• To provide a purpose built platform for showcasing state-of-the-art electrical distribution, generation, storage and demand side innovation.

• To create a rapid technology pipeline accelerating the proving and deployment of integrated smart grid solutions.

• To provide a realistic and controllable test bed for the development of emerging smart grid technologies that will support the realisation of a de-carbonised grid.

The PNDC is a collaborative venture involving an industrial membership that currently includes ScottishPower, and Scottish and Southern Energy. Membership is open to interested organisations within the international energy sector to set the direction of the core research programme.

Professor Jim McDonald, Principal of the University of Strathclyde, said: "Scotland is ideally placed to develop the next generation of smart, electrical technologies that will reduce carbon emissions from the energy sector, improve energy efficiency and ensure we maintain a secure supply of power. But it is critical that we remove the technical - and economic - barriers to connecting these technologies to our existing infrastructure. The new Centre will do just that, and set new standards in electrical distribution."  

Automated consumer electronics buy-back kiosk launched in the US

ecoATM is a California-based, US start-up that produces kiosks that buy-back and recycle consumer electronics. It’s in the news because it’s just raised $14.4m for commercialisation and product launch.

It could be the right company at the right time, given that US consumers buy around 500 million new electronic gadgets each year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. With the average US household now owning 26 different consumer electronic devices, there are a total of three billion in US homes. With gadget manufacturers releasing new products all the time, upgrade cycles are getting shorter, so many of the devices in homes are not even in use.

It’s not easy to responsibly resell or recycle these devices in the US, so the vast majority enter landfill. To address the problem, ecoATM has developed a method of making it easy to recycle, with a financial incentive and the promise of personal data removal.

The process is automated through eCycling Stations - kiosks where consumer electronics and mobile phones are automatically examined, identified and tested - using machine vision, electronic diagnostics and artificial intelligence - to come up with a buy-back price.

The user receives trade-up coupon, gift card, cash, and/or charitable contribution and the portables are automatically binned inside. Around half the phones go to secondary markets and the rest are sent to materials reclamation. The company promises that all personal data from collected mobile phones are erased.

ecoATM trial locations have already collected tens of thousands of devices over the past year and paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for recycling. (There’s a demonstration video here). The company has also been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation and the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company its first patent.

 

Sounds like a great idea – ease of use and some direct benefit can be a compelling incentive. Anything to keep products from going direct to landfill.

The maturing market for energy and carbon management solutions will grow by 300% in 2011

Groom Energy Solutions has released a study that predicts a 300% growth in the Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) software market in 2011.

Groom’s EECA report concludes that despite the economic slowdown and stalled climate legislation, the market grew by 400% globally in 2010. More than 200 corporations purchased EECA software in 2010 and more are reporting carbon disclosure as part of quarterly results. While the largest markets are the US and Europe, Asian and South American companies are steadily becoming part of the sales mix.

The report - ‘The 2011 Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) Software Market — A Buyers Guide’ also names the 10 EECA market leaders; Advantage IQ, Enablon, EnerNOC, Enviance, Hara, IHS, Johnson Controls, PE International, SAP, and Summit Energy. The assessment is based on number of customer deployments, technology features, energy management capabilities, market vision and financial stability.

Other research findings were that:

• Many energy /utility bill management vendors now offer strong carbon modules.

• Responding to environmental data requests from stakeholders is the main purchasing driver.

• Supply chain initiatives continue to drive sustainability efforts.

• The overall market is approaching maturity and acquisitions and venture capital investment dropped significantly from 2009 to 2010.

 

Based on Groom’s findings, this does seem to be a maturing market. It’s no longer reliant on legislation (or the threat of legislation) but increasingly an integral requirement of doing business. At the same time, M&A is down, although I can’t help thinking that some consolidation is still to come.

But it does seem to be expanding beyond just carbon counting. Groom points out that there was a shift in product requirements to include tracking of energy consumption along with carbon management. In fact it’s likely that software will grow to cover a number of environmental issues and resources. For example, the Carbon Disclosure Project recently reported that the number of institutional investors signing this year’s annual request for water information has risen over 150% from 137 in 2010 to 354 in 2011. Assessing water use looks like being next on the agenda.

GoodGuide adds cell phones to its environment/safety product assessments

GoodGuide is a US company that provides information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of consumer products. It has just added cell phones to the list of products it evaluates and has rated 576 cell phones products.

Most products are scored in three areas; environment, social and health, but in the case of cell phones the health aspect was not included on the grounds that there is no scientific consensus that cell phone use poses a significant health risk.

Full details of how the phones are assessed are here, but to use GoodGuide’s words; “Our highest rated cell phones have energy efficient chargers and are made of environmentally-preferable materials. They are made by companies that are implementing green production practices and take-back recycling programs and taking steps to ensure their supply chains treat workers fairly and avoid conflict minerals. The lowest rated cell phones have no ascertainable environmental features and are made by companies that are not focused on reducing their environmental and social impacts.”

Top of the rankings is the Nokia C6 Cell Phone, scoring 7.7 out of ten, while the BlackBerry Bold 9000 Smartphone brings up the rear, with just 3.3 points. The full list is here.

The GoodGuide also has recommendations on what to look for and what to avoid in choosing a phone. Look for positive environmental features or phones that have been certified by telcom carriers as meeting green standards. Phone manufacturers should be working with their supply chain to ensure production workers are treated fairly.

Avoid products that lack any information about their environmental attributes — a signal that the manufacturer is not focused on improving the environmental performance of their operations and products.

 

Sounds like a useful guide for those who want to buy environmentally friendly cell phones (or as environmentally-friendly as a cell phone can be). I guess it’s not much use outside the US, though, given the differences in product names and model numbers internationally.

If you know of anyone doing similar work on mobile phones outside of the US, let me know so I can pass it on.

The UK’s Green Economy Council holds its first meeting

The UK’s Green Economy Council, set up to support the transition to a green, low carbon economy, held its first meeting on Wednesday. The Council’s mandate is to look at how government and industry can work together to help business rise to the low carbon challenge.

The Council wants to get government and industry working together to minimise the costs for business and maximise the opportunities from a green economy. Business leaders from a cross-section of industries, including Ford, Centrica and IBM, will advise government on green policies relating to infrastructure, innovation, investment and regulation. On the government side, Ministers from three departments will be involved; the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Initial issues include the Green Economy Roadmap, which will set out the Government’s long term strategy on climate change and the environment.

 

There does seem to be a disconnect (if not confusion) here between reducing carbon emissions and creating an economy that benefits from the opportunities.

The current government’s climate change strategy is still not clear, but on the other hand they want business to gear up to maximise the opportunities for companies in the UK. The press release actually talks about companies advising government on ‘unnecessary regulation’, which seems a bit ironic. Without legislation and regulation around climate change there will be much less of an opportunity! 

Business Secretary Vince Cable made some sense when he said “The transition to a green economy brings both opportunities and challenges that we need to tackle now to achieve sustainable growth and meet climate change targets”. Hopefully the companies being consulted that have previously expressed their climate change concerns, such as IBM, will continue to do so in this forum.

How to get more ink from your printer cartridge

We all know that printer companies make their money from the ink and toner cartridges, rather than the printers themselves. One way they can maximise profit is through warnings of cartridges being empty when in fact there’s lots of ink left and they can go on for much longer.

Back in 2008, PC World investigated the issue and tested four printers; Canon Pixma MP610, Epson RX680, Kodak EasyShare 5300 and HP PhotoSmart C5280. Only the HP printer continued to function after a low ink warning, for both HP and compatible cartridges.

Other manufacturers used the warnings as a cut off so that the remaining ink could not easily be used. For Epson there was still 8% of the ink remaining, for Canon 24% and for Kodak an incredible 43%. On average, compatible cartridges were even worse.

I don’t know if the situation is any better now, although I can say that in the case of a Canon machine I use, only by manual intervention can it be persuaded to use up the remaining ink after the warning is given.

But greenIT.fr (who brought the above information to my attention) has identified a possible solution. A Russian developer has come up with software that lets you reset the print counter and block the low ink warning. The software only runs on Epson printers, but it is free – it’s available here.

 

It would be good if PC World (or anyone else) repeated the exercise. In these days of environmental concern and CSR reports, the reported level of ink cartridge waste would be difficult to explain away.

BASF launches Select – an online eco-label database

BASF has launched an eco-label manager database.  Known as Select (Sustainability, Eco-Labelling & Environmental Certification Tracking) the online tool has been developed to help BASF and its stakeholders manage the plethora of eco-labels, environmental claims, product directories and green ratings systems.

The idea of the Select Eco-Label Manager is to help users navigate through the information available. Programme requirements are presented in a structured format to allow easy comparison and assessment. The tool is available to all BASF employees and preferred BASF customers and stakeholders, although others can register and get access here.

In the press release Pat Meyer, Senior Product Steward and programme leader at BASF is quoted as saying; "The demand for environmentally preferable products is rapidly evolving and influencing purchasing decisions along entire supply chains. These purchasing requirements have spawned hundreds of eco-labels and programmes from the federal government, large retailers, trade associations and third-party organisations, leading to a lot of confusion”. As a result, businesses are spending time and resources trying to understand and manage these classifications, which is where the tool comes in.

To keep the information up-to-date, BASF has made contact with many of the programme owners. Currently, the tool includes 100 programmes for review, primarily associated with North America, but is continuing to add programmes globally.

 

Well, on the one hand it’s a shame that we need a tool to help navigate the various programmes and labels – it can’t help their credibility. But since we do, making easily comparable details available online is the next best thing.

The universal mobile phone charger. A missed opportunity?

It seems that I’m not the only one to be disappointed with the ‘universal’ mobile phone charger announced by the European Commission in January.

Steve Alder, General Manager Devices at O2 has posted a blog with his own, more detailed, criticism of the wasted opportunity and a call for a new agreement. O2 has allowed me to reproduce the blog here:

 

The Universal Phone Charger. A Missed Opportunity?

We all probably have a drawer at home full of old phone chargers or have needed to charge our mobiles while away from home and not been able to find a compatible charger. One single charger for life that works across any mobile will be good for consumers and good for the environment.

That’s why when we got together for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2009, the whole industry was agreed on the need for a universal charging solution and set the target that by 1st January 2012, the majority of all new mobile phones available would support this. O2 welcomed this at the time, and we still believe it’s a no brainer. It’s what we all want; consumers, governments, O2, everybody. 

And now it’s 2011 and where are we?  Well, we’re moving towards the 2012 target but not as quickly as we think is necessary. Perhaps for some the passion is waning?

Last December CENELEC (the European electrical standards body) released a universal charging standard endorsed by the EU and before that, in March 2010, the ITU-T (the standards body for the International Telecommunications Union) released a universal charging standard. As an industry, we no longer seem to be singing in perfect harmony.

There are two issues of divergence between the two standards; an agreed minimum current and a detachable power cable. If the mandated output current is too low the universal charger will not be able to charge many handsets such as smart phones. Also if the power cable is fixed to the charger it will not be possible to also use it to connect to your computer, meaning an additional cable would be required in the phone packaging.

At both Telefónica and O2 in the UK our vision is simple. We want to take chargers out of boxes, full stop. This will reduce packaging, transport costs and ultimately waste being sent to landfill. To achieve this we need the industry to get to one single standard and we strongly believe that standard should be capable of charging all types of mobile phone.

The good news is that through the ITU-T dialogue is now underway with a view to finding a common ground between the two existing standards. But our biggest concern is that we’re running out of time; 2012 is only 10 months away and as an industry we risk ‘grasping failure out of the jaws of success’!

We urge everyone - operators, handset manufacturers and the European standardisation bodies -  to firmly cooperate and commit to supporting the discussions now underway through the ITU-T. We need everyone to urgently get back around one table to deliver a single standard, and deliver it fast. Without this O2 cannot deliver its ambition of a workable solution for consumers in the UK.

The universal charger is too important to cut corners or bring half baked products to market. According to the GSMA, 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers are being produced every year, most of which will ultimately end up in landfill. Hopefully at this week’s Mobile World Congress, two years on from the original commitment, the industry will realise that time is running out and re-commit to a genuine charger for life approach.

Steve Alder, General Manager Devices, O2

 

It’s good to see O2 leading from the front on a green ICT issue. Let’s hope the other mobile companies (and the EC) listens.

Ericsson and Novatium announce ‘PC as a service’ - but is it green?

On Friday, Ericsson and India-based Novatium announced the global launch of PC as a Service. The basic idea is to deliver PC services through the cloud, which includes providing virus protection, software updates, application installation and maintenance. The service, including client hardware, is remotely managed.

The companies believe there are some distinct advantage from cloud-based services. Because the operating system is in the cloud, the end-user device is able to surf the web and access media content more quickly – the PC itself starts up in just five seconds. The service also consumes less energy which means better battery life and puts less load on the telecom network.



"PC as a Service is a first-of-its-kind concept and a natural evolution of telecom and computing. Today, when every transaction is moving to the Internet, we are confident that cloud based computing will transform the way we use computers, tablets and smartphones today," says Daniel Freeman, Head of Multimedia Innovation, Ericsson. "Additionally, PC as a Service offers telecom operators new ways to expand their broadband business. We see it driving mobile broadband penetration in emerging as well as developed markets as it motivates investments in rural as well as urban infrastructure."

Clearly it’s not designed primarily as a green service. It’s a way to offer potentially cheaper, quicker, easy-to-use computer services on a pay-as-you-go basis. It can make PC functionality available in emerging markets where it might not have been otherwise. It’s also an attractive service offering for mobile phone companies looking to increase revenue from their infrastructure.

Nor is there anything really new here – it could be described as remote desktop virtualisation.  
The question is, is it greener?
Well, maybe. It depends on a number of questions:

• Will the devices accessing the service be any greener than those already in use? If you use an existing device to access the service it may well create more emissions.

• How efficient will the data centres running the service be? It has the potential to be a lot more efficient in delivering computing capability than a stand-alone PC.

• How much more load will the service put on telecoms network infrastructure and how will that impact energy use and emissions?

It’s not an easy equation and certainly too difficult to call at the moment. The PC service could reduce emissions significantly, particularly if the ambitions of GreenTouch to reduce telecom emissions are realised.  A detailed analysis would be interesting, though – perhaps Ericsson will take up the challenge.

Fujitsu’s desktop emissions analysis and the implications ..

GreenIT.fr recently reported on an analysis by Fujitsu of the carbon footprint of its Esprimo E9900 desktop for German users.

Fujitsu worked with the Bifa Augsburg research institute and the assessment was made according to the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards for analysing life cycle emissions. The results were verified by an independent third party.

The Esprimo desktop that was assessed comprises an Intel CoreTMi5-670, 2 x 2 GB DDR3 memory, a 250 GB hard drive, an optical reader-writer, and an Nvidia Geforce 9500 GS. The product already has a string of green labels, certified as EPEAT Silver, Energy Star 5.0, Blue Angel and Nordic Swan.

The analysis came up with the figure of 339 kg CO₂e for emissions before it was even used, broken down by:

• Manufacture of components: 302 kg CO₂e

• Transportation: 34 kg CO₂e

• Assembly: 3 kg CO₂e

Key electronic components are made in China, while assembly is done in Europe. Some expensive components, such as microprocessors, are flown in while the rest is transported by boat, hence there is more CO₂e in transport than assembly. The chart below shows the breakdown of emissions for component manufacture.

For emissions in use, Fujitsu based the assessment on the ‘Busy’ profile defined for an Energy Star 5.0 desktop with a useful life of 260 days per year, giving an annual consumption of 113.6 kWh. Over a five year lifetime, for German users that means 373kg CO₂e. Allowing for a carbon credit for recycling of 7kg CO₂e, the total lifetime emissions reached a grand total of 705kg CO₂e.

 

It’s an interesting analysis. It reinforces the issue around transport which came up in the IBM server assessment I reported previously – much depends how components are shipped. Even more will depend on the final destination of the product – I believe in this case an average figure was used for delivery emissions and for return to the recycling facility.

But greenIT.fr raises one other significant point when it comes to assessing emissions internationally. In the use phase, CO₂e will be dependent on the emissions per kilowatt hour of electricity, which varies enormously.

For example, according to greenIT.fr, in France the equivalent emissions from the use phase of the Fujitsu desktop would be just 7kg CO₂e per year (presumably because of the high level of nuclear power in France). It means that it would take 48 years to emit as much CO₂e in use as is created in manufacture and transport. It rather changes priorities if emissions is the main factor in product choice.

New cloud and BPO partnerships for carbon and energy management solutions

A couple of tie-ups around carbon management have been announced in the last two weeks.

Firstly, Deutsche Telekom’s IT Services arm T-Systems has teamed up with environmental and energy management solutions company Hara to offer a cloud-based solution for calculating CO₂ consumption.

The solution can determine the power used in an office, the CO₂ equivalent of paper use and the average CO₂ emission of corporate vehicles, among other things. It can help manage energy efficiency measures within a company and the reporting capability is aimed at providing support for a corporate-wide sustainability strategy. The software is available as a cloud solution over a secure Internet connection.

Meanwhile, CA Technologies and Capgemini announced this week that they’re partnering to provide a global Energy, Carbon and Sustainability Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service.

The partnership brings together Capgemini’s BPO business and CA’s ecoSoftware solution into a managed service that will provide customers with ‘actionable insight’ into their level of sustainability. CA’s solution provides auditable sustainability data to meet regulatory requirements and can help enterprises reduce carbon emissions, manage natural resources, cut energy costs and achieve environmental targets.

Apparently Capgemini UK (which has been leading the group’s sustainability efforts) has already been using the new service internally. It captures all the company’s energy and carbon data and provides web-based reports to the UK Sustainability Board and operational dashboards to the Environmental team. It’s estimated that the service will reduce sustainability operating costs by 30% as well as providing better quality data.

 

It’s a sign of the increasing maturity of the carbon management market that major IT services players are increasingly partnering with specialist solution providers.

Capgemini pointed out that in the UK it had been using spreadsheets to count and manage emissions, but the increasing complexity of data requirements, multiple reporting and the need to provide different levels of user access meant that a new auditable solution was required.

This is, or will be, the case for many corporations in the coming years. Legislation, shareholder pressure, more detailed reporting, building ‘what-if’ scenarios, various departmental involvement and multiple access requirements all point to sophisticated online solution, at least for large corporates. If you don’t have (or don’t want to take on) the in-house resources to manage the solution, then the next possible step is to outsource the whole process, which is where the Capgemini BPO offering comes in.

Pike Research has published a report on the PC and server power management software market

According to a report published last week by Pike Research, the PC and server power management software market is set to expand nearly fivefold from $168m in 2010 to $783m annually by 2015. The report forecasts that PC power management software alone could be saving almost 47 MTCO2e of emissions by 2015, equivalent to taking nearly eight million cars off the road.

Power management tools offer a fast return on investment for companies looking to save costs and reduce emissions and in some countries the software may even come free of charge, thanks to utility company rebates. But the cost benefit is often not enough to encourage IT departments to adopt power management solutions, because they don’t pay for the electricity the equipment uses. Much of the market development will depend on the greater involvement of IT departments in reducing energy costs and emissions.

The PC power management market will also be shaped by competition between dedicated software providers and those that offer power management as part of a desktop lifecycle management solution. Much will depend on product integration and ease of use together with comparisons between cost and functionality required by users.

The largest market sector for PC power management segment solutions over the next five years will be Public Sector computing, followed by Financial Services and Retail/Wholesale.  Smaller, but still significant, vertical markets will include Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Services, Transport, and Energy/Utilities.

 

Firstly, I have to declare an interest here, as I wrote the report, but there is a lot in it. The report looks at what’s driving the market and what’s holding it back and provides insights into market issues and technology developments and how they may change. It also describes the competitive landscape, with vendor profiles and SWOT analyses, and has global revenue forecasts through to 2015.

Full details are here. Tell them I sent you.

France has contracted out the infrastructure for its green tax for heavy vehicles

GreenIT.fr reports that a consortium led by Autostrade per l'Italia has been chosen by the French government to implement an Eco-tax for heavy goods vehicles on French roads.

From 2013 heavy trucks travelling on French roads will be required to pay a tax proportional to the number of miles travelled. The revenue gained will be fed back into a fund to develop alternative transport modes aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the sector – hence the eco-tax label. It’s expected that the tax will eventually yield more than one billion euros in revenue per year

To assess the tax liability, the length and route of a journey needs to be determined. To do this the government has commissioned a consortium of Autostrade, SFR and SNCF Thales to implement and operate the necessary infrastructure, in a deal worth two billion euros over 12 years. The technical architecture will include portals, GPS boxes, software applications and computing infrastructure (network, data centre, etc) and the contractors will also be under environmental constraints, for instance to control power consumption, recycling of WEEE, etc.

 

It’s the sort of road charging project that has been suggested in various countries around the world, including the UK. As Greenit.fr points out, though, it may well be that the economic benefit takes precedence over environmental considerations. On the other hand, if it encourages transport companies to plan their routes better to reduce the tax liability and if the income goes towards better transport development, it can’t be a bad thing. We’ll certainly be seeing more examples in the future and it represents a significant Green ICT opportunity globally.

Alcatel-Lucent announces lightRadio – a potential breakthrough in mobile network infrastructure

On Monday Alcatel-Lucent announced what it described as a breakthrough in mobile and broadband infrastructure that promises to streamline and simplify mobile networks.

Called lightRadio, Alcatel-Lucent maintains that the technology will significantly reduce network technical complexity and contain power consumption and other operating costs. The technology entails shrinking and simplifying base stations and cell site towers, the most expensive, power hungry, and difficult to maintain elements in the network.

The new architecture breaks down the base station into its components elements and distributes them into both the antenna and throughout a cloud-like network. Additionally, 2G, 3G and LTE systems antennas are combined and shrunk into a single multi frequency, multi standard antenna.

Benefits include reduced energy consumption of mobile networks by up to 50%, with a similar impact on the total cost of ownership. Also, lightRadio enables small antennas to be placed almost anywhere. Eventually the technology will enable the creation of broadband coverage virtually anywhere there is power (electricity, sun, wind) by using microwave to connect back to the network.

Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, said: “lightRadio is a smart solution to a tough set of problems: high energy costs, the explosion of video on mobile, and connecting the unconnected.”

There’s more details of the system and components in the original press release, which is here. The initial elements of lightRadio will go on trial in the second half 2011. Apparently Alcatel-Lucent is in advanced planning with China Mobile and other carriers around the globe around co-creation and field trials.

 

Certainly interesting. There is no doubt that some breakthrough technologies are needed in communications, given the almost exponential growth in use, the power required to feed that demand and hence related emissions.

There is also a huge potential for such green ICT. According to Alcatel-Lucent, the total addressable opportunity for the multi-technology radio market, which lightRadio addresses, will be over 12bn Euros in 2014, representing more than 55% of the total wireless Radio Access Network market. The cumulative total addressable market will be over 100bn Euros from 2011-2018.

Greenpeace pushes Facebook to abandon coal- powered electricity, while Intel tops the US green power rankings.

Greenpeace last week put out a challenge to Facebook, calling on it to commit, by Earth Day (April 22nd), to end its use of coal-based electricity.  

It’s the latest move in the NGO’s attempt to get Facebook to move away from the use of coal, a campaign that apparently already has 600,000 supporters. Greenpeace wants Mark Zuckerberg to commit to:

• Increase Facebook’s use of clean energy;

• Develop a plan to mitigate the company’s climate footprint and to become coal free by 2021;

• Educate Facebook users about how the company powers its services;

• Advocate for clean energy at a local, national and international level.

“Facebook has become a household name used every day by millions of people; unfortunately, it’s relying on 19th century dirty coal power to deliver its 21st century services,” said Greenpeace energy campaigner Casey Harrell. “People from all over the world are asking the website they love to lead the Energy Revolution by un-friending coal. Will Mark Zuckerberg rise to the challenge?”

In fact it wasn’t so long ago (at the beginning of January) that the US Environmental Protection Agency published its latest quarterly rankings of the annual green power purchases of leading organisations in the US.

Intel continues to lead the rankings, with over 2.5bn kWh of green electricity purchased in the last year – considerably more than any other company. This is up from 1.4bn kWh at the last quarter rankings and now accounts for 88% of the company’s total electricity use.

Other ICT companies in the top 50 are Cisco down a place in 11th with 270m kWh purchased - 29% of power used, Motorola 30th (119m kWh – 32%), Dell 35th (115m kWh – 28%) and Sprint Nextel 45th (88m kWh - 3%). The full top 50 ranking is here.

 

Arguably a company like Facebook is in the frontline of Green IT. Cloud computing is heralded as an opportunity for IT to become greener, but as I’ve discussed on these pages in the past, it very much depends on who’s providing the service and how.  Facebook is a very successful company with vast data centres and in such a role the organisation has a responsibility to set an example to the industry by making its facilities as green as possible, which includes using green power where it can. Not only that, but it should ideally be advocating energy efficiency and the use of clean power.

As for the EPA’s rankings of green power purchases, well they give a good indication of who’s doing what, but the rankings take into account the purchase of renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). RECS tend to distort the market, through effectively paying for the extra cost of renewable generation, rather than for the power itself. Interestingly, in the previous rankings Dell was shown as purchasing 129% of its electricity from green sources, reflecting its REC purchases. The company now seems to have dropped the practice.

Cardiff University models tiered storage for wider green benefits

The ever-growing demand for storage is a significant factor in the emissions from ICT. It’s an area that a team at the UK’s Cardiff University’s Information Services Directorate have been studying.

The government grand-funded JISC project, part of the Greening ICT Programme, is called Planet Filestore and entails storing data on disks with different energy consumptions depending on the frequency with which the data is accessed. For example, data which is not used very often is moved to a disk which uses less power. It saves electricity, money and emissions while still allowing users near instant access.

Hierarchical storage management technology, or tiered storage, is not new, but has mainly been used as a means to save the capital cost of storage, making it only really attractive in large commercial environments.

 

 

The idea of the Filestore project was to build a demonstrator system and develop models for implementing tiered storage in other organisations so they could achieve the green benefits. The project used techniques and technologies that will easily transfer to corporate systems, including education, research, public bodies and commercial companies.

The project looked at what was required in terms of managing the migration of data and monitoring storage capacity to reduce energy costs. It also aimed to produce a set of measurements that show the energy savings against migration policies and to undertake an economic assessment of the system.

What the project team found is that by moving 80% of files from RAID10 tier 1 storage to non-mirrored RAID5 tier 2 storage results in a 72% energy saving. When implemented at the university it is anticipated that the approach will save the 87,600 KWh of electricity (approximately 51 tonnes of CO₂) per year, worth around £10,000. Savings will increase as storage requirements and energy costs inevitably rise, and there will also be savings in space occupied, procurement, shipping, disposal and hazardous waste reduction.

Rob Bristow, JISC Programme Manager, said: “The approach piloted by Cardiff Information Services has the potential to make a real difference to the carbon footprint of universities if it is adopted across the sector. The more than £100m that electricity for ICT costs the sector every year is likely to rise in the future and initiatives like this can make a real difference”.

The report and recommendations are here. In line with JISC project requirements, the project has been widely promoted through events, a website and project blog. And to help make the approach more widely available, JISC is funding the development of a web-based tool that universities and colleges can use to model the benefits of different scenarios of file storage in terms of environmental and economic savings.

 

An interesting project with the potential to help a lot of organisations save energy cost and emissions related to storage. The report goes into the various aspects and approaches of tired storage, what can be achieved and how. It’s a useful analysis for anyone considering the approach as part of a green IT strategy.

It’s a shame that the forthcoming web-based tool only seems to be for the use of universities and colleges. Why? It would be a useful contribution to have a wider tool for general use, after all, it is funded from public money.

CDP supply chain report – suppliers could do better

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) has published the latest report from its Supply Chain programme. There are 57 global corporations who are members of the programme and the report is based on their work in reducing emissions as well as the input from 1,000 participating suppliers worldwide.

With more than half of an average corporation’s carbon emissions coming from their supply chain, rather than within their own operations, managing supply chain emissions is a critical factor in addressing climate change.

The report found that only a third of suppliers have a target for carbon reduction and even the targets that are in place are not sufficient – averaging 3.5% a year. The CDP estimates that this would mean global emissions will increase by 6% by 2015, rather than the 20% reduction required to limit the rise of global temperatures.

However, compared with last year, companies have improved reporting, have clearer responsibility for emissions management and recognise that carbon management presents a cost and revenue opportunity rather than just being a risk mitigation activity.

The report found that the CDP supply chain programme members are leading the way by using different approaches depending on the relationship with their suppliers.

These strategies include:

• Reducing external demand for carbon. Travel is an example - rather than direct negotiations with suppliers, video conferences can be used, or rail substituted for plane travel.

• Where the company has the power it can select suppliers by integrating sustainability requirements into Requests for Proposal (RFPs). Similarly, it can deselect suppliers that do not meet targets.

• When the company and supplier are more inter-dependent, a collaborative process is more effective. The example quoted is of companies that have moved their supplier’s production in-house to achieve significant emission reduction, waste reduction and cost savings.

• If the supplier holds the power, then its down to the company to do what it can, for instance by re-designing products to reduce carbon impact. Products such as low-energy electronic devices can be designed to reduce emissions across the entire value chain and in use.

  
  

The issue of carbon emissions down the supply chain is coming much more into focus as the much easier internal actions are increasingly in place. It’s not nearly so straightforward to manage supply chain emissions, as the CDP analysis indicates – much depends on the company/supplier relationship.  

As business-to-business companies, most IT firms sit in the middle, as both suppliers and supplied. Hardware companies, in particular, have a global supply chain feeding various manufacturing and assembly points, so there’s a lot of attention required to maximise emissions savings.

There are also implications here for IT solutions that manage sourcing and delivery. Adding an emissions factor into the equation can significantly impact preferred choices, given, for example, the transport emissions that might be involved. It’s something that procurement and logistics systems will need to take into account to be considered green IT solutions.

The European Parliament votes for tougher e-waste rules

Last Thursday the European Parliament voted to press ahead with plans to tighten up the rules on waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE). They also want to make the rules simpler and introduce tougher measures to prevent the export of e-waste to developing countries.

The European Parliament has proposed a 2012 target for Member States to collect 4kg of e-waste per inhabitant (the existing level) or the same weight as in 2010, whichever is greater. But by 2016 the figure goes up to 85% of the e-waste they produce.

The legislation is not just about safe disposal, though. MEP’s recommended a 50-75% recycling target (depending on the material involved) in order to reclaim valuable raw materials, and a new 5% re-use goal.

With a significant amount of e-waste declared as "reusable" and illegally exported for treatment in developing countries, the European Parliament also supported the Commission’s proposals for stricter inspections of shipments. Parliament believes that the exporter should carry the burden of proof that goods are reusable.

But MEPs did also acknowledge the need for more standardised registration and reporting to simplify the rules and reduce the cost of compliance, for instance by reducing the number of electrical equipment categories. In addition, the Parliament is looking to manufacturers of electronic goods to pay towards treatment as well as respecting eco-design rules and creating products that are easier to repair or recycle (such as the laptop I reported on last week).

Karl-Heinz Florenz (EPP, DE), who steered the draft legislation through Parliament, commented that "we can no longer afford to waste our waste. Parliament has sent a strong message that public authorities, manufacturers and consumers all need to play their part to ensure we collect and recycle more of our electrical and electronic goods. We have also set out stricter rules to stop potentially harmful waste being illegally shipped to developing countries."

The next step is the the proposals go to the European Council, which will consider the European Parliament’s position ahead of a possible second reading.

 

It’s not unexpected, given the rumblings about how some countries were avoiding their responsibilities under the WEEE legislation and the amount of e-waste being exported to developing countries. The rules need to be tighter and the penalties higher if the EU is serious about ensuring the legislation is adhered to.

But there must also be an onus on electronics equipment manufacturers, particularly in the ICT industry, to do their bit. Collecting their e-waste is important and supporting the recycling effort is helpful, but it would also be very useful if products were designed with recycling in mind in the first place. If they could be stripped down to their main material components quickly and easily much of the problem would disappear. Perhaps that should be a defining criteria of green ICT equipment – maybe also included in Greenpeace’s Greener Electronics Guide?

The Foundation for IT Sustainability launches a Professional Members Programme.

‘Computers Off’ was set up in Australia to educate individuals and corporations on the environmental footprint of technology and how to reduce it. It also encourages organisations to use sustainable technology to help reduce the environmental impact of the rest of their business.

The global, not-for-profit organisation has since changed its name to The Foundation for IT Sustainability (FFITS) and has now extended its coverage by launching a Professional Members Program. The aim is to help individuals in business, IT and environmental roles to stay up to date on green IT, promote the implementation of Green IT best practices, and encourage the development of more sustainable technology alternatives.

As well as keeping individuals up to date on the latest Green IT trends, technologies and news, the Professional Member Program benefits also include monthly Green IT webcasts, an annual Green IT guide, discounts on Green IT products and services, listing in the professionals directory and a 15% discount on the FFITS Certification for businesses.

Apparently 95 members had already joined up by last Wednesday. The cost is AUD$169 (US$171, Euro 124, UK£106 at current prices). I assume that’s for a year – the web site’s not clear.

 

Sounds good. The challenge will be in making the programme truly global. It’s a big subject, as readers will appreciate!

Cisco and ECOtality join forces around home electric vehicle charging

Smart grids and home energy management systems will open up a whole new communications and networking infrastructure, so it’s no surprise that Cisco is pushing hard to stay in the loop (see previous posts).

The company has its own own Home Energy Management Solution (HEMS) and on Monday it was announced that electric car company ECOtality had completed integrating it’s Blink Network electronic vehicle (EV) charger interface with Cisco’s HEMS.

It means that the Blink Network charger interface can be accessed through the Cisco Home Energy Controller (HEC), so that those with a Blink EV Home Charging Station can get access to information about their electric vehicles and optimise their charging and energy usage.

An optional set of Cisco compatible peripherals can be wirelessly connected to the HEC to provide monitoring and control of energy loads such as pool pumps, water heaters, appliances, etc. The HEC is controlled from a touch-screen display, which Blink Home Charging Station owners will be able to use to control and monitor their EV charging. The interface will determine which charging times are most cost-effective and the charger can be programmed to start and stop at any time.

The integration also means that Cisco's HEMS technology will be deployed as part of The EV Project in the US, the largest rollout of EV infrastructure to date, of which ECOtality is the project manager. In October 2009 ECOtality was awarded a $99.8m grant from the US Department of Energy to deploy nearly 15,000 charging stations in 16 cities located in six US states.

"Energy management is one of the key smart features of Blink charging stations. By combining Cisco's Home Energy Management solution with our Blink Network charger interface, consumers will now be able to monitor and control their energy use-including EV charging-at home and on the road," said Jonathan Read, CEO of ECOtality. "The Blink interface communicates directly with utilities to determine off-peak and low-cost charging times, and allows consumers to maximize energy usage and reduce costs. Together with Cisco, we are delivering a solution that empowers consumers to adopt renewable energy and promotes energy efficient technology that supports the deployment of the smart grid."

 

The home energy management market increasingly looks like the new frontier for IT networks and communications, with huge potential for all sorts of services in the future – EV charging is just one (important) aspect. Cisco is trying hard to maintain its place as the network infrastructure provider, but there’s going to be huge competition.

Mechanical Engineering students demonstrate a user-recyclable laptop

An Autodesk-sponsored team of Mechanical Engineering students from Finland’s Aalto University and Stanford University in the US have designed a laptop that can be disassembled for recycling.

After nine months of research and testing, the end result is the prototype Bloom laptop. It can be disassembled in 10 steps, without tools, and separated into material types, such as plastics and metals. As a comparison, a comparable commercial laptop took a team of three engineers 45 minutes, three tools, and 121 steps to disassemble.

 

 

The team was set the task of developing an electronic product that makes recycling a more effective, engaging, and complete process for consumers. The laptop prototype achieves the aim because it can be disassemble for recycling easily and intuitively without tools. The "greenness" is reinforced by the modular design that offers other benefits. The ease of taking the device apart also makes it easier to repair and upgrade, extending the products useful life beyond a one-off investment  Finally, the user-friendly design of the laptop reinforces consumers’ internal "feel good" motivations for recycling.

 

Great idea. Let’s hope it reaches mainstream production. So many other products could benefit from similar design. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, 1.9 to 2.2 million tons of electronics became obsolete in 2005. Of those, only 345,000 to 379,000 tons were recycled.

Defra has published guidance on claiming environmental credentials for products

Defra, the UK Government’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, has published new Green Claims Guidance aimed at helping companies describe the environmental credentials of their products. Defra wants to make it easier for consumers to assess green claims and prevent ‘greenwashing’.

There is a confusing array of advertising labels around green products, with new products and new descriptions appearing all the time. The Defra quotes an example of the term ‘negative carbon footprint’ used in relation to recycling! Understandably, it makes it harder for consumers to make the best choices and businesses find it harder to communicate genuine product improvements.

Environment Minister Lord Henley said: “If people are making the effort to buy green it is only right that we try to make the process as easy as possible. Our guide will make things easier for both business and consumer – helping restore public faith in environmental advertising and acting as a resource for companies developing more sustainable products.”

The Guidance is an update and went through a public consultation in 2010. It’s widely supported by industry – the groups involved included the Advertising Standards Authority, Department of Business Innovation and Skills, Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), Consumer Focus, Forum for the Future, Office of Fair Trading and the Sustainable Development commission.

Research for the guidance found that clear language is important and that some phrases like ‘energy efficient’ were better understood than others such as ‘carbon negative’. Full details of the guidance is here, but basically Defra advocates three key steps that businesses need to follow to build consumer confidence in the environmental attributes of their products:

• Ensure the content of the claim is relevant, with a real environmental benefit

• Present the claim clearly and accurately

• Make sure the claim can be substantiated

 

Sounds good, but it is only guidance. In the ICT industry greenwashing has subsided significantly over the last couple of years as awareness of the issue has grown, but it can still be difficult to compare green claims.

Certainly, any claims made must be able to be substantiated, which I guess falls within UK trading standards laws, but even that could lead to significant argument. 

The Green Grid – new management and shifting direction

The Green Grid is a group of IT companies and professionals looking to improve energy efficiency in data centres. The organisation’s aim is to bring together efforts to standardise on a set of metrics, processes and technologies – the widely used Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measure for data centres comes from The Green Grid. The nearly 200 members include most major IT companies.

The organisation made a couple of significant announcements last week. Executive Director Larry Vertal, one of the founders, has stepped down. He will be replaced by Mark Monroe, also a founding director and with 30 years of experience in the IT industry including direct experience in data centre design and operations. Mark worked for Sun Microsystems for 16 years, with responsibility for internal, customer, and industry thought leadership on sustainability and energy efficiency topics.

The organisation also announced that it is expanding its focus to ‘address the sustainability and resource efficiency of information technology’. The broader sustainability focus will be a main topic of discussion at The Green Grid’s forthcoming Technical Forum and Members Meeting on March 1-2 in Santa Clara, CA. The event’s theme, “Get Connected: Efficient IT for Business Advantage,” aims to emphasise the importance of data centres as key business differentiators. Sessions are aimed at explaining how tools from The Green Grid can help chart a path to more energy efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective data centre facilities.

 

The change in direction is not unexpected, in fact I’m not sure if there’s anything new here, given that the organisation has already announced new metrics such as the Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE). Maybe there will be more details at the March meeting.

Certainly, considering broader sustainability issues around data centres must be a good thing – it’s an essential part of enterprise-wide sustainability. My reservation, which I’ve expressed a number of times in the past, is the potential overlap with other green ICT organisations. The Green Grid has carved itself a leading position in data centre energy efficiency. The danger is that the broader scope will create overlaps with other organisations, such as the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) or even the Open Data Centre Alliance, which I mentioned yesterday.

Too many cooks can muddy the waters and dilute the message (if you see what I mean!). 

Green Touch reports on progress in achieving a 1000-fold reduction in communications power use

You may recall the launch of Green Touch a year ago – it was set up by a communications industry consortium with the aim of dramatically reducing the energy used in communications networks. Today’s networks are optimised for performance, so a different design and architecture is needed to maximise energy efficiency and that’s what the consortium is addressing

The target of Green Touch is to reduce communications energy consumption per user by a factor of 1000 from 2010 levels by 2015. It plans to define the architecture, specifications and roadmap — and demonstrate key components — needed to achieve the target.

Anyway, in London this morning Green Touch demonstrated a technology that will help it reach that target. It’s an antenna system that offers the potential for significant wireless transmission energy savings. The Large-Scale Antenna System proof of concept demonstrated that the radiated power consumption of a mobile mast could be significantly reduced as the number of antenna elements is increased. An antenna array comprising 100 elements would transmit only one percent of the energy transmitted by a single antenna for the same quality of service.

 

http://www.greentouch.org/index.php?page=videos

Instead of broadcasting signals throughout the entire coverage area, as other antenna systems typically do, the Large-Scale Antenna System ‘utilises knowledge of the propagation channels to transmit concentrated beams of information selectively to many users at once. The greater the number of antenna elements deployed, the higher the concentration of the beams and, therefore, the lower the power that any antenna needs to send a given amount of information’.

At the same time, Green Touch gave a series of presentations of significant milestones it has reached since its launch, highlighting more than two dozen research projects in progress or under consideration. The projects are drawn from the consortium’s key areas of technology focus – wireline access; core switching and routing; mobile communications; core optical networking and transmission; and services, applications, and energy trends. The projects will be introduced in greater detail in the coming months.

 

Well it does seem that Green Touch is gathering speed. It’s difficult to believe that it can really reduce communications energy consumption per user by a factor of 1000 by 2015, but there is clearly a great reduction in power use possible and Green Touch seems to be going for it. Communications is the fastest growing carbon emitter in the ICT industry, so there’s a lot to play for.

The Open Data Centre Alliance has announced new members and structure

The Open Data Centre Alliance has added Capgemini and China Unicom Group to its Steering Committee.

You may recall the launch of The Open Data Centre Alliance, which I reported on back in October. It was set up to define models that will help IT users choose open, interoperable, industry-standard solutions in their data centres. There are now over 100 members and the organisation will be introducing membership dues this year which “allows us to ensure that we can offer our membership the collaboration and communication opportunities that they are seeking through their membership in the organisation”.

Steering Committee members chart the course of the Alliance.  The two new members join BMW, China Life, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, National Australia Bank, Shell Global Solutions, Terremark and UBS. The committee has a collective two-year commitment including active participation in the Alliance Technical Workgroups and providing financial support.

The Alliance also announced that the Steering Committee has selected 32 global companies as Contributor Members. These companies will join Technical Workgroups, covering infrastructure, management, regulation & ecosystem, security, and services, to help develop the Usage Model Roadmap. The vendor-agnostic Roadmap will set out what’s needed to resolve the key IT challenges in the future, particularly around cloud infrastructure. A list of the companies selected is on the web site.

 

It seems that the Open Data Centre Alliance is achieving some momentum. It will need to if it’s going to succeed. There are a lot of vendors and solutions out there, so the Alliance will need to keep up if it is going to have any impact.

From the green IT perspective the greatest contribution the organisation could make would be to develop open standards for measuring power use in the equipment and facilities of data centres. There are a number of incompatible and proprietary approaches and it needs some integration and co-ordination to be effective. It’s an area the Alliance will be looking at. The more that open standards are in place the cheaper and easier it will be to monitor, manage and reduce data centre power use. The cheaper and easier it is the more data centre managers will do it.