Data Centre energy management company Power Assure secures more investment

US data centre energy management software company Power Assure has announced that it has raised $13.5m from a new round of funding. ABB, already one of Power Assure’s strategic partners, led the investment – ABB is a power and automation technologies company. The financing will be used to expand Power Assure’s sales and marketing and also go towards technology developments.

The announcement came a couple of weeks after Power Assure announced an investment and development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT). In-Q-Tel is a not-for-profit investment firm that identifies technology solutions to support the missions of the US Intelligence Community. Power Assure hopes that the deal will accelerate its business in the federal government sector, which has always been a primary focus.

 

Power Assure’s star seems to be on the rise and it’s been quite a rapid ascent for a company founded in 2007 that only started delivering its software at the start of 2010. Power Assure has now raised a total of $28.75m plus a $5m matching-fund grant from the US Department of Energy.

The company has won a number of awards in recent months as well as making some other significant announcements. Among them was the news that NASA has standardised on its products across all of its 75+ data centres. The company also announced it’s PAR⁴ energy efficiency rating, jointly developed with Underwriters Laboratories (UL), which measures server power usage on a transaction per watt basis.

The primary focus of Power Assure’s software may be energy cost saving but that makes it no less a leading green ICT software supplier.

Zero-touch energy assessment software for commercial buildings gets backing

FirstFuel Software (previously called iblogix), a US company that provides software to analyse the energy use of commercial property, has announced that it has won $2.4m in an initial round of financing. The company will use the money to accelerate adoption of its Rapid Building Assessment (RBA) platform.

The investment is a show of faith in FirstFuel’s zero-touch approach to assessing energy usage. The FirstFuel RBA platform profiles the energy performance of buildings without requiring on-site audits or devices. The software combines electric and gas usage data from utilities with weather and climate data and GIS- mapped building characteristics to produce a view of how energy is being used inside the building. The analysis benchmarks energy use against similar buildings in the same area to come up with recommendations for saving energy.

 

Cadmus Group, an energy engineering and consulting firm, apparently field-tested the FirstFuel software, comparing the results with an ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) audit for a school. It found that FirstFuel’s analysis was within 10% of on-site calculations and the recommendations were consistent with on-site results. 

The software is mainly aimed at utilities who can use it to benchmarking the consumption of an entire portfolio of commercial buildings much more quickly and cheaply than using traditional approaches. The recommendations lead to cost savings in the buildings, while the retrofit recommendations generate qualified leads for existing utility programs.

 

FirstFuel’s innovative approach makes assessing the energy use of commercial buildings a quick and affordable process. It’s interesting that similar approaches have emerged in other aspects of energy assessment and management, for instance in data centres. Viridity’s EnergyCenter software identifies equipment and uses reference tables to assess energy use. Combined with data on average server utilisation and the number of under-utilised servers in provides actionable information for data centre managers.

These cheaper and simpler green ICT solutions certainly have a part to play. Even if less accurate, they are good enough to identify where savings can be made and what actions can be taken. It will be all that many (if not most) companies want or need and provide an introduction to energy management for those that ultimately move on to a more detailed or comprehensive solution.

SAP supports Panasonic with its Recycling Administration solution

In recent years there’s been a rapid expansion of regulations around product recycling, not least the EU’s Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. ERP suppliers are starting to address the issue in their solutions and SAP has released details of how it is supporting Panasonic’s recycling efforts.

SAP’s Recycling Administration application helps manufacturers comply with worldwide product end-of-life regulations but it’s also aimed at making the recycling process more efficient and less costly by classifying recyclable materials by type, weight, usage, destination, brand and category. The whole process is integrated with SAP’s ERP solution so that it can support countries with different compliance requirements.

Panasonic says that using the application has saved it 15% of recycling costs. The company is continuing to roll out the application throughout its European offices and is currently using the solution for 50 different compliance schemes.

The recycling compliance challenge is growing, particularly in North America. More than 30 US states and Canadian provinces have some legislation for e-waste recycling and large retailers are demanding that manufacturers report detailed information about the sustainability status of their products and packaging. Non-compliance could result in fines, competitive disadvantage or brand damage.

 

You know a business issue has become a mainstream concern when SAP integrates a solution into its ERP software. SAP tends to react to demands rather than create markets, so there is already green ICT software out there to help manufacturers. But most of the large companies will already have an ERP solution, very likely SAP, so a module integrated with existing software from a mainstream provider has added appeal.

There is, though an increasing number of compliance issues around sustainability, from energy and water use to emissions monitoring and waste and recycling management. It’s doubtful whether they can all be effectively supplied to a variety of industry sectors by one vendor, so there will be plenty of room for competition – particular specialist suppliers – for the foreseeable future.

Legal sector adopts carbon management

A group of UK law firms have announced a partnership with carbon emissions management software company Greenstone Carbon Management to provide an online portal for member firms to measure and report their carbon emissions. 

The law firms are part of the Legal Sector Alliance (LSA), a group that is committed to taking action on climate change through working together to reduce their carbon footprint and adopting environmentally sustainable practices.

LSA members will input their business data to Greenstone’s online Acco2unt solution to calculate the associated carbon emissions. The idea is that it will enable users to quickly and easily assess emissions as part of an annual reporting process.

Matthew de Villiers, Chief Executive at Greenstone said: “It is becoming increasingly clear that industry organisations like the LSA need to have efficient central processes, tools and administration to measure, report and benchmark carbon emissions and these environments are ideal for our Acco2untportal solution.”

 

This is the way that much of the carbon management solutions market is likely to go. Companies always tend to believe that their industry is, in some ways, unique. They need reassurance that IT solutions are suitable for their needs and it applies to green IT solutions as much as anything else.

It either means industry-specific modules to cover what differences there are, or some industry body providing reassurance by recommending a solution. In this case it is an easy-to-use online process backed by the LSA. Expect to see similar partnerships in other industry sectors.

British business stalls on energy efficiency investment

According to consultancy Ernst & Young, investment by British business in energy reduction measures is in danger of grinding to a halt.

Research commissioned by the firm, based on responses from board members of 250 leading UK companies, showed that whilst the overwhelming majority have invested in low cost measures such as improved temperature controls (75%) and lighting upgrades (71%), only 12% have made investment in measures with large upfront costs such as micro-generation.

The research showed that more than half had made building fabric improvements such as double glazing and insulation, but more costly measures are either being completely ignored or dismissed due to their perceived cost. Changing working practices to reduce energy costs has also been rejected - 19% haven’t even considered it, while 39% had rejected it on economic grounds.

The research found that the key barriers to business making these more significant investments (expressed by almost 80% of respondents) were the scale of sums required and the length of time it would take to show a return.

However, it also found that businesses were more likely to implement measures requiring significant upfront investment if they had a clearer understanding of how future energy developments, like the implementation of smart grids, could impact them.

 

Ernst and Young said ‘The findings indicate that many of the easiest energy efficiency measures have already been implemented, leaving businesses with options which either require more investment, more time and confidence, or are more operationally challenging’. This resonates with my own comments on the Fujitsu research last week that much of the effort to date by IT departments to address energy use and carbon emissions is primarily cherry-picking the easy options and achieving quick, one-off wins. To make further inroads and establish a path for longer-term savings needs more management thought and more investment. It seems that it’s true about all aspects of business, not just about ICT.

The interesting part is that investment is more likely if companies have a better understanding of what’s going to happen in the future. That’s hard to achieve, but clear government policy (and public sector example) together with a better understanding of energy risks and how a low-carbon economy will impact their businesses seems an essential part of becoming more energy-efficient. It suggests that green ICT suppliers should be more proactive in educating users on the challenges and opportunities of a low-carbon future.

What does it take to be a low carbon ICT company?

Much of the headline reporting of Dell’s recently-published CSR report highlighted the fact that the company has dropped its commitment to carbon neutrality. This was achieved in 2008, but came with a couple of caveats. Firstly, it was only in terms of operations, i.e. it didn’t include the ‘embedded’ carbon in products the company sold. Secondly, the goal was achieved not just through emission reductions, but also through the use of green power and the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs – effectively payments for the extra cost of renewable generation, rather than for the power itself). Now the company has said that not only will it end its purchases of RECs to achieve carbon neutral operations, but that the way it measure its carbon footprint and sets reduction targets will change.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that the company is backing away from its carbon neutrality commitment because it failed to meet its reduction targets in 2010. In a year when Dell's revenue was up by 16% the company’s carbon emissions (allowing for renewable energy purchases) were up 22%. The biggest increase was from business air travel (almost 50% higher), while a fall in renewable energy purchases also increased emissions. But despite this top line failure, Dell has been doing some things right – enough to earn it number one position in Newsweek’s Greenest Companies in America last year.

The company has been making its products more sustainable and passing the benefits on to customers. For example, it has a top-down design approach aimed at making product recycling and reuse easier and it has started measuring the carbon footprint of some of its mainstream products. Dell now also provides a free recycling service in 78 countries and recycled more than 150 million pounds of electronics globally last year. The target is one billion pounds of e-waste by 2014.

On the customer side, in its last financial year Dell achieved a two-year goal of cutting customer-related energy use by 25% for desktops and laptops. Since 2005 it claims that its low energy products and solutions have saved customers more than 55.7 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and $5.8bn in energy costs — equivalent to the annual emissions of nearly 10 million cars.

These and other actions are not all down to altruistic actions by the company - some were forced by legislation and regulation and some came about from changes in demand. For example the trend is towards laptops and tablets which are much more power-efficient than desktops computers.

Dell freely admits that there is more it can do, but, like all companies in the industry, it faces a number of challenges. The various standards and regulations around environmental issues adds cost and confusion to making products more sustainable. Variations in available recycling facilities can limit its recycling programmes. Even the lack of a clear definition of sustainability is a problem – particularly if it ignores the ‘enabling’ capability of technology.

So even with the best will in the world, IT companies struggle to be live up to a variety of green expectations. But in Dell’s case there is another motive for abandoning the carbon neutral target. The company says that it is “Adapting our sustainability programs, baselines and goals as a result of mergers and acquisitions and the evolution of Dell’s business model, business priorities and core sustainability objectives”. Businesses are continually changing and sustainability goals should take that into consideration. The reduction in greenhouses gases that we need to achieve to save the planet is not going to change.

Intel demonstrates solar-powered microprocessor

Intel has demonstrated an experimental low-powered microprocessor, codenamed Claremont, that can be powered by a small solar cell. It raises the prospect of greener computing, longer battery life for mobile devices and powerful, energy-efficient many-core processors for use in everything from handheld devices to servers.

Intel calls the technology the Near Threshold Voltage (NTV) Processor and the purpose of the chip is to demonstrate the energy-efficiency benefits. It’s challenging to run electronics reliably at very low voltages because the difference between a “1” and a “0” in terms of electrical signal levels becomes very small, so ‘noise’ can lead to failure.

NTV technology is promising for a wide range of digital platforms. Also, these ultra-low power levels could allow Intel architecture to expand into broader applications such as embedded devices in home appliances and automobiles.

One goal of the NTV research is to enable architectures where power consumption is so low that entire devices could be powered by solar energy, or rely on such things as vibrations and ambient wireless signals. It would mean we could leave power cords and chargers behind.

At the moment, though, the chip itself is the only solar-powered part of Intel's demonstration computer. For the moment the main potential is likely to be in powering small sensors or other devices that feed into larger computers.

1E opens office in Paris – one million tons of CO2 are at stake

1E, best known for its NightWatchman PC power management product, has announced its expansion into France with the opening of an office in Paris.

The French office will be led by Christian Laloy, who launched the French subsidiary of Good Technology and has also held Global Account Manager roles at Quest Software, Insight and Microsoft. Simon Glusman, who worked as Technical Account Manager at LANDesk Software for over four years, has been named as Solutions Engineer of the operation.

1E will sell its entire suite of products in France, collectively described as the efficient IT suite. As well as PC power management, products include NightWatchman Server Edition, aimed at identifying servers that are running but not doing any work, Nomad Enterprise, a systems management product, AppClarity, which identifies software waste, and an apps store called Shopping.

 

1E needs to expand quickly as it is being closely chased by rivals. What makes the company different is it is more broadly focused on efficiency, rather than just energy savings. That’s a factor that has helped it get off the ground early and become a market leader. But as the focus turns more to energy savings across the IT operation it may well be that dedicated power saving companies (such as Joulex, which I reported on earlier this week) will have an advantage.

The company provides some interesting figures on the potential savings in France from using its NightWatchman and NightWatchman Server products. With 20 million PCs used in business in France and 520kWh wasted by any machine left on every night and at weekends, there is a potential to save 10.4bn kWh of power (although that assumes all business PCs in France are left on all the time, which will not be the case).

In addition, there are 1.3 million servers in France each emitting 3,100 kWh of energy per year each (including cooling). But since 15% of servers are generally doing nothing there is the potential to save  604.5m kWh.

So, according to 1E, the total potential savings in France from using NightWatchman (or equivalent) products are 11bn kWh of electricity, valued at €725m, and 990,405 metric tonnes of CO₂.

ICT sustainability initiatives slowed by ‘hidden’ power bills

Fujitsu in Australia has published a second ‘ICT Sustainability: The Global Benchmark Report’ analysing the extent of green ICT maturity across the globe. The headline finding of the report is that lack of visibility of energy bills has slowed the impetus of sustainability initiatives.

The research is based on 1,000 responses to 80 questions in an online survey about ICT Sustainability policies, behaviour and technologies. The respondents were CIOs and ICT managers in large IT-using organisations across industry sectors in Australia, Canada, China, India, New Zealand, UK and the USA.

The overall ICT Sustainability Index (ICTSx) measured by the research - across all countries and all industry sectors – has declined slightly since the first report. It is down from 56.4 to 54.3 (out of a 100), indicating that organisations may be losing their focus on ICT energy efficiency and existing projects have stalled.

The cause is put down to the fact that the majority of respondents were not aware of how much power ICT consumes. Only one in seven ICT departments include the cost of ICT’s power consumption in their budgets. Performance was significantly higher for the small proportion (less than 15%) who were responsible for ICT-specific power consumption – mostly larger companies.

The best performing country of the seven surveyed turned out to be Canada, with an ICT Sustainability Index of 60.3. Canada, the UK (58.3) and the USA (56.0) are above average, while Australia, New Zealand, India and China perform below the average. The ICT/Communications/Media sector is the leading industry at 58.4 and Manufacturing the lowest at 51.2 - the relative scores between industry sectors are generally consistent between countries.

There’s a lot more detail in the report, which is available for free download from here.

 

It’s disappointing that ICT operations still aren’t responsible for their power use. As Alison Rowe, Fujitsu’s Global Executive Director Sustainability, said: “Until this data can be quantified, change cannot be measured and successes cannot be recognised.”

It reinforces the view that much of the effort to date by IT departments to address energy use and carbon emissions is primarily cherry-picking the easy options and achieving quick, one-off wins. For example, installing PC power management is not something that you need to think about, given the very rapid pay-back in power costs. Similarly, server virtualisation brings with it flexibility, cost savings and makes better use of data centre capacity – you don’t need to measure the power to see the benefits.

But employing these measures alone is short-sighted. Reducing ICT emissions (and hence saving energy and cost) is going to be a long-term process that will demand greater attention as time goes on. To really track progress you need to know where you’re starting from and what the energy savings options are.

The problem is that in the current financial climate it’s the quick wins that get the funding. To make further inroads and establish a path for longer-term savings needs more management thought and perhaps a little initial investment. It seems that at the moment that’s not happening.

Joulex claims industry firsts with the latest version of its IT energy management software

The latest version of Joulex’s Energy Management (JEM) product suit has been released with what the company claims are a number of innovative features and functions that enhance integration, sustainable procurement, reporting and configuration.

The new features include:

• New device control features allowing for integrated power capping, central processing unit (CPU) performance levelling and support for VMware vCenter, and Distributed Power Management (DPM).

• More granular control using power, temperature and utilisation metrics to optimise server performance using VMware’s vMotion.

• Detailed product analytics and reporting for sustainable procurement.

• Virtualisation and utilisation reporting to identify under- and over-utilised devices.

• Additional device support for rack and floor power distribution units (PDUs), computer room air conditioning (CRAC) and uninterruptable power supplies (UPS).

The company says that these enhancements make JEM the first enterprise energy management solution to integrate with and support all the largest and latest power management networking vendors including Cisco (EnergyWise), Intel (Data Center Manager) and VMware. Enhanced support has also been added for advanced power control of servers from Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM.

“We continue to accelerate our technology development in terms of creating actionable energy intelligence for our customers to make quicker decisions, optimize their existing infrastructure, and reduce their operating expenses,” said Tom Noonan, president and CEO at Joulex.

 

Not all these enhancements are unique to Joulex, but the company’s does seem to be developing its products across-the-board at a rapid rate. No doubt the $17m that Joulex raised in June to expand its product development and global sales footprint helps.

It’s a competitive and fragmented market, with lots of options and products available to assess and manage IT power use. Joulex’s approach is to cover all bases with integrated products that can monitor, analyse and control the energy use of all network-connected devices and systems.

It’s this comprehensive approach – a potential one-stop shop covering anything from phones to data centres – that is Joulex’s differentiator. The new investors will no doubt be hoping it becomes the supplier of choice, but there’s a long way to go yet before this market even starts to mature.

IHS helps US companies comply with greenhouse gas reporting

IHS, which provides technical information, decision-support tools and consulting, has announced new functionality within its GHG and Energy Solution to support mandatory greenhouse gas reporting in the US.

As I reported last month, the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a tool to allow the electronic reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) data, which is required under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), launched in 2009. Under the program around 7,000 large industrial emitters and suppliers have to submit GHG data to EPA annually, starting this month. The IHS software enhancement will enable users to automate the preparation of data for submission via EPA’s online system, the electronic Greenhouse Gas Reporting Tool (e-GGRT).

“Our experts were ready to build out this new functionality in our solution as soon as the EPA announced its data standards for e-GGRT, and we have started to make it available to IHS clients to facilitate electronic submission of their GHG data well in advance of the MRR deadline on September 30,” said IHS Senior Director, EHS & Sustainability Solutions Jeff Ladner.  “We expect this enhanced solution to reduce the time required to collect, prepare and enter GHG data into e-GGRT by up to 55% – and reduce data entry errors – compared to spreadsheets and manual processes.”

 

Carbon emissions legislation and regulation is continually expanding around the world and pulling more and more organisations and sectors into mandatory GHG reporting. It means there will be a constant requirement for the carbon emissions management software companies to adapt to these global requirements. In fact being at the leading edge is going to be a market differentiator in this fragmented market. The main business (at the moment) is with large companies, usually with an international presence, so just serving one country market isn’t an option.

Aqueduct Alliance maps global water risk

Last month the World Resources Institute (WRI) announced that is is launching the Aqueduct Alliance, a consortium of water experts from the private and public sectors, NGOs and academia to respond to the increasing global water risk. With rapidly increasing population and the impact of climate change, governments are concerned about water-related disruptions and seeking viable approaches for mitigating risks.

At the heart of the Aqueduct Alliance is a global database of water risk information that will enable companies, investors, governments and others to create water risk maps with more detail than was previously possible. The maps combine hydrological data with geographically-specific indicators that capture the social, economic and governance factors that affect companies and economies. The idea is that the database will help private sector efforts to reduce water use in high risk areas and create an impetus for the public sector to deliver more equitable, efficient and sustainable water resources.

Kirsty Jenkinson, Director of WRI’s Markets and Enterprise Programme said: “Aqueduct will provide accurate, high quality information together with a platform for businesses and governments to address water risks beyond physical water scarcity, including regulatory and socioeconomic risks.”

The Alliance was founded by WRI, Goldman Sachs and General Electric and has added Bloomberg, The Dow Chemical Company, Talisman Energy and United Technologies. The Coca-Cola Company is also involved and will be providing a global database of once proprietary water risk information.

 

Events of extreme drought and flooding are increasing and will only be made worse by the impact of climate change. Such events have significant impact on people, businesses and local infrastructure. The potential impact is clear from a survey of 150 large corporations conducted by CDP Water Disclosure in which nearly 40% of companies said that they had already experienced disruptions in operations, increases in expenses and other detrimental impacts related to water.

Systems to predict future problems and warn of short-term disruption are an essential element of green ICT and will become a much more significant aspect as climate change gathers pace.

E.ON offers €1m for smart home research

Energy company E.ON is looking for proposals for research projects into smart homes and has €1m up for grabs to fund the research. The general theme is "Smart Home a new customer relationship with energy", with the aim of examining the impact of smart home systems on the future relationship between utilities and customers.

As energy supply, home appliances, mobility, security and consumer electronics increasingly become integrated in smart homes, E.ON is funding research projects to prepare itself for the challenges. This research is to assess customer motivation, behaviour and responses to emerging smart homes technologies and identify the potential that the trends offer, since smart home developments will have a significant impact on E.ON’s business. "We regard the research initiative not only as a means of promoting science and research. We also expect it to provide important external stimuli for the development of new business areas," said Urban Keussen, responsible for Technology & Innovation at E.ON.

Researchers can submit proposals for research projects, which have to be executed within one year, to E.ON by 30 November (www.eon.com/research_initiative). Successful project proposals will cover the core themes of assessing the appeal to customers and the strategy and marketing required for the wider adoption of smart homes in Germany, Italy or the UK. A team of experts from the company’s Technology & Innovation sector will decide on the award of the funds to one or more applicants.

A new supplier sustainability tracking tool launched

Global consultancy company Aecom has launched a tool to assess the sustainability performance of a company’s supply chain. The Supplier Tracking and Assessment tool for Sustainability (STATS) collects and analyses data on supplier financial, social and environmental performance. 

Aecom is a Fortune 500 company with clients in around 125 countries and a revenue of $7.7bn. The company has a ‘leading’ environmental health and safety management and sustainability practice.

The STATS tool pulls together supplier performance data and creates a scorecard for each one, as well as a ranking of suppliers and an automated  comparison process. It means that companies can increase transparency in sustainability reporting as well as building collaborative relationships across the supply chain.

Apparently developed in response to client requests, STATS is an Excel-based tool which can be customised for specific criteria over a range of standards. Aecom says it is particularly suited to companies making the initial steps to add sustainability assessments to their supplier management.

Jim Weinbauer, Vice President for Sustainability at Aecom said “Stakeholder expectations require a complete value chain approach to sustainable development including supply chain performance, manufacturing, product development/distribution/use and end of life.”

 

It sounds like a useful tool and reflects how far we’ve come in recent years in addressing supply chain sustainability. Three years ago there were very few companies looking outside their own operations – no one was really attempting to assess Scope 3 (supply chain) carbon emissions for example. Now it’s more mainstream and companies need the tools.

Aecom is not the only one supplying a solution but requirements will no doubt become more sophisticated. Not a new aspect of green ICT, but an expanding avenue for carbon emissions management software solutions to explore.

AT&T is the latest ICT company to announce plant-based packaging

AT&T has announced plans to introduce a greener plastic in the packaging for its branded accessories. The new material is composed of up to 30% plant-based materials sourced from ethanol harvested from natural sugarcane. The sugarcane used is a rapidly renewable crop and replaces nearly a third of the fossil fuels previously used in the packaging.

It doesn’t sound like a huge step forward, but AT&T says it’s the first US telecoms company to use this plastic. It doesn’t compare with the likes of Dell, though, which is using bamboo-based packaging for smaller products, including smartphones and notebooks, and mushroom-based ‘cushions’ for heavier products like servers and desktops

To be fair to AT&T, the adoption of the new plastic is just part of the company’s commitment to minimize the environmental impact of its packaging. In 2010 AT&T announced plans to slim down their accessory packaging and in 2010 and 2011 eliminated over 500 tons of paper and plastic. It has also been using soy and/or vegetable-based ink and recycled paperboard. The company also said “We are actively working with our accessory suppliers to incorporate both less packaging and more sustainable plastic and paper.”

Let’s hope other ICT companies follow suit.

Smart City business is booming – ABI Research

According to the Smart Cities Market Data study from ABI Research, the global spend on Smart City technologies will grow from $8.1bn in 2011 to $39.5bn in 2016 – an average annual compound growth rate of over 37%.

According to ABI there are six dimensions that together make up a smart city: smart economy, environment, governance, lifestyle, transportation and community. Josh Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research, said that “Smart city concepts are really taking off globally. Currently, the largest spending on smart city technologies is for smart grids; however, over the next five years we will see a significant increase on spending for smart transportation technologies such as automatic vehicle ID and smart governance systems such as e-ID and ID document systems.”

According to the report there are currently 102 smart city projects worldwide, with Europe leading the way at 38, North America at 35, Asia Pacific at 21, the Middle East and Africa at six and Latin America with two.

 

The ABI figures give a useful indication of the scale of the technology opportunity in smart cities. Not that I doubted it – any market that IBM (and most other major IT services companies) is targeting so strongly must represent a significant opportunity. 

It’s not a clear cut market, though. For example, depending on the country, a city may not be directly responsible for the power supply, so the grid may not be an issue (although smart grids do constitute the lions share of the overall business that ABI has identified and I suspect that remains the case through to 2016). Cities will have greater or lesser control over several of the other factors that can make them ‘smart’.

But the real question is whether smart city technology is green ICT. Certainly some of the technology has that impact – smart grids and smarter, integrated transport systems hold the promise of much reduced emissions (at least in the long term). But smart cities are ultimately about making cities work better. Green factors are just one of the outcomes, but one that is likely to become increasingly important, and a greater technology focus, over time.

IBM technology speeds up flooding predictions

Researchers from IBM and the University of Texas at Austin have devised a way to speed up simulations of river flow and hence flood predictions, allowing more time for disaster prevention and preparedness.

IBM has applied the advanced analytics to river systems, weather and sensor data to predict the Guadalupe River’s behaviour at more than a hundred times the normal speed, simulating thousands of branches of the river.

Traditionally, flood prediction methods focus on the main stems of the largest rivers, leaving out the tributaries where flooding starts. But IBM's new technology can simulate tens of thousands of river branches at a time. The team is applying the model to predict the entire 230 mile-long Guadalupe River and over 9,000 miles of tributaries in Texas. In a single hour the system can currently generate up to 100 hours of river behaviour.

By coupling this sort of analytics software with advanced weather simulation models, river sensors, radar precipitation tracking, etc. the authorities and emergency services can make early plans and pinpoint potential flood areas. The increased speed also helps in urban and suburban areas where flash flooding can be caused by severe thunderstorms.

 

It’s a good example of The Green IT Report’s sixth area of Green IT:

1. Carbon counting and management solutions.

2. Carbon economy systems, e.g. carbon reporting, compliance and trading.

3. New infrastructure/transport projects, e.g. smart grids, road charging systems, public transport optimisation, etc.

4. Enterprise solutions – greening data centres, facilities management, optimising logistics/transport, etc. 

5. Renewable energy generation and distribution, e.g. solar/wind-farm control and distribution systems.

6. Climate change impact mitigation, such as weather monitoring and reporting, impact assessments, risk management systems, business continuity, real-time information, etc.

I published the above list of what constitutes green ICT in a report in 2008 and see no reason to change it (although you could, perhaps, combine the first two elements). To take a narrower view was as short sighted then as it is now.

How to green your data centre and save money - Google

Google has published a case study showing how it goes about greening its smaller data centres, using techniques that could easily be employed anywhere.

In ‘Google’s Green Data Centers: Network POP Case Study’ the company describes the cost-saving measures that the company has employed in its “Points of Presence” (POPs) - networking rooms similar to small and medium-sized data centres. The case study describes the retrofit of one of these ‘smaller’ rooms (compared with the company’s huge proprietary data centres), describing best practices and simple changes that you can improve the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness - which compares overall power use with that used by IT equipment) and save on energy costs.

The basic requirement was that they had to work with what was already in the room, with no significant capital investment, and the room had to stay operational throughout.

The actions taken are detailed in the case study, but it boiled down to seven specific changes:

1. Added temperature monitoring
2. Optimised air vent tiles to minimise hot spots
3. Increased temperature and relative humidity settings on CRACs
4. Blocked off the ends of cold aisles with curtains
5. Put blanking plates and side panels to block cold air passing through empty rack spaces
6. Added 48” extensions to all CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioners) air returns
7. Added a new CRAC controller

But the most impressive aspect is the impact on PUE and the savings and ROI achieved:

 

 

Is there any excuse for NOT employing these techniques in your data centre? It makes good business sense and it helps save the world (or the other way round, depending on your priorities).

Gmail – more energy efficient than a message in a bottle?

The debate about how green cloud computing is rumbles on, but there is more and more evidence to support the view that cloud computing is, generally, more sustainable.

Jonathan Koomey is Consulting Professor at Stanford University and has researched and written extensively on electricity use by IT equipment. In a recent blog he gave four reasons why he thought cloud computing is (with few exceptions) significantly more energy efficient than using in-house data centres:

• It’s cheaper for large cloud computing providers to make efficiency improvements because they can spread the costs over a larger server base and can afford to be more focused on addressing energy use.

• With more users who are spread across different locations, computing loads are spread over the day, allowing for increased equipment utilisation. Cloud facilities for major vendors can be in the 30-40% utilisation range, compared with 5-15% for in-house data centres.

• Cloud installations more often use virtualisation and other techniques to separate the software from the physical servers, which allows for the greater optimisation of servers.

• Cloud computing sidesteps organisational issues, such as the problem of IT driving server purchases but facilities paying the electric bill. Cloud providers generally have one data centre budget and clear responsibilities assigned to one person.

Koomey concludes that there are still some issues to work out, but that the economic benefits are so large that we’ll see a whole lot more cloud computing in the coming years. As if to reinforce the point, Google is the latest company to offer an analysis of its own activities (see also Microsoft).

Google compared Gmail to the traditional enterprise email solutions it replaces and concluded that switching to Gmail can be almost 80 times more energy efficient than running in-house email. Google made the similar points that cloud-based services are typically housed in highly efficient data centres with higher server utilisation rates from purpose-built hardware and software. Something that small businesses just can’t do.

Google went on to say that it takes more energy to send a message in a bottle than it does to use Gmail for a year, if you include the energy used to make the bottle and the wine that was in it. Not a very good comparison, given that the wine and bottle were not made for sending messages. You could equally argue that by re-using the empty bottle, rather than it being recycled, sending the message is carbon negative and hence more efficient than using Gmail. Not quite as efficient, though!

Cleantech leads green company investment growth

Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) has released its August 2011 update of the Green Transition Scoreboard (GTS) which tracks global private sector investments since 2007 in green companies and technologies. The total investment figure is now more than $2.4 trillion.

Ethical Markets Media is a multi-media company analysing and reporting on the transition to green business and on responsible, ethical investments and companies worldwide. The Scoreboard tracks five sectors: Renewable Energy, Efficiency and Green Construction, Cleantech, Smart Grid and Corporate R&D.

The largest area of investment is in renewable energy, which accounts for 64% of the total, followed by efficiency and green construction (14%). Cleantech accounted for $106bn and Smart Grid $161bn.

The overall figure is up $400bn since the previous GTS update in February, a 20% increase. But the fastest growing area of investment is cleantech, up over 62% ($40bn) since the last update. The GTS anticipates investments and commitments of $1 trillion annually until 2020. Corporate R&D and cleantech M&A are seen as driving much of the green economic growth.

“In a Wall Street versus Main Street discussion, the GTS shows how both types of investors increasingly are moving toward green technologies and processes,” says Rosalinda Sanquiche, Ethical Markets Media’s Executive Director and editor of the Green Transition Scoreboard report.

 

The analysis gives an indication of the underlying investor interest in green markets. On the surface it can look like some aspects of green ICT haven’t fulfilled their market promise, so its reassuring to see that there is a hive of activity underneath as investors position themselves to benefit from the opportunities in a growing green economy.

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The Open Data Center Alliance has launched a competition for the most innovative cloud-related practices

On Tuesday the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) announced a best practices competition called Conquering the Cloud Challenge to find the most innovative cloud-related practices by corporations and institutions.

Companies are eligible to submit entries whether they are in the planning stages, developing solutions or have already implemented cloud-practices. A top prize of $10,000, will be awarded to the entry selected by a panel of judges but there is also an online Audience Award determined by public votes received at the Alliance website between November 1 and November 15.

The competition is open to corporations managing data centre resources, as well as government organisations, universities and other non-profit organisations in all geographies. The Challenge is aimed at four separate categories:

1. Secure cloud enterprise applications

2. Application resiliency in the cloud

3. Identity management in the new hybrid cloud world

4. Interoperability of applications and workloads across many clouds and platforms

Judging for the winners of all awards will take place after October 26, 2011. A total of six prizes will be awarded: four to the winners of each Category Award, one to the Audience Award winner and one to the winner of the Alliance Grand Prize. Full details are on the web site.

 

It’s a good way to gather innovative and best practice ideas around implementing cloud computing, which is pretty much what the ODCA was formed for. I’m looking forward to seeing the winning ideas.

If you’ve done something better than most, then have a go. Apart from the prize the ideas could well be an inspiration to other data centre managers to adopt better cloud practices. The more efficient cloud services are the greener corporate ICT will become.

Mouchel partners with Greenstone to address the public sector carbon management solutions market

Mouchel Consortium, the specialist solutions provider arm of consulting and business services group Mouchel, has partnered with Greenstone Carbon Management to provide its Acco₂unt carbon management solutions and services to its clients across the UK.

Mouchel is one of the largest suppliers of solutions and services  to the UK public sector. Matthew de Villiers, CEO of Greenstone said, “We are delighted to have established this partnership with Mouchel and see this as a significant step forward in our long-term strategy to strengthen our relationship with UK public sector clients. The timing is excellent given the increasing need for government authorities and publicly funded bodies to measure, manage and reduce their carbon emissions and deliver material savings.”

 

This looks like a good move for Greenstone. Matthew de Villiers is absolutely right to say that the public sector will be in the front line of carbon management – whatever government policy is, the public sector (and publicly funded bodies) and their suppliers will have to be first in line and set an example. And Mouchel has a good reputation as a provider of consulting and solutions to the public sector in the UK. With 9,000 employees and a turnover of £740.6m, it’s a great channel for any green ICT solutions provider.

RFID tags for home recycling

There was a story in Computerworld a couple of weeks ago about RFID tags attached to residential recycling bins in a county in South Carolina boosting the amount of plastics, paper and glass being recycled.

The tags on the bins are read by an RFID reader inside the recycling trucks and the information is collected over a wireless link. A pilot project allowed officials to track the recycling from 5,000 homes. Those that had not put out recycling bins for three months received postcards urging them to join the programme and recycle. The result was a 117% increase in recycling.

The pilot will apparently be expanded to another 5,000 homes in October before being rolled out to all 110,000 homes in the county in the next 12 to 18 months.

 

This is not the first such pilot and RFID is increasingly being used in various ways to help recycling. There has, though, been some resistance by households, with the RFID tags seen as another form of snooping on individuals. But the data obtained can be used in a variety of ways to both encourage recycling and helping the authorities maximise the efficiency of, and benefits from, recycling.

RFID tags can also be used in other ways to promote recycling, for instance by using them to return and reuse packaging – tags that can withstand several trips have been developed for just this purpose.

Unfortunately, in the UK bin tags have been more associated with various plans to weigh non-recycled rubbish at the collection point in order to allow the possibility of charging householders by weight. Some bins are fitted with the tags but the principle of charging by weight has fallen into disrepute, given the various implications – an increase in fly tipping for example. (As someone who lives in a rural area, its something we already suffer from).

Interxion’s London data centre goes green

European co-location data centre services company Interxion has announced that its London data centre has moved to reduce its carbon footprint by signing up to 100% renewable energy from UK provider SmartestEnergy.

SmartestEnergy describes itself as the UK’s leading purchaser and supplier of electricity from independent generators, sourcing power from wind, hydro and biomass, as well as using Combined Heat and Power(CHP) sources. The company provides a clear audit trail and records relevant renewable energy certificates for Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO).

The City-based data centre is the latest of Interxion’s facilities to convert to 100% renewable energy as part of an ongoing sustainability programme. Other measures that the company has in place include a monthly overview of energy-efficiency, energy efficient components built into data centres, natural cooling wherever possible, and energy metering and efficiency measurements available to customers.

 

Data centres are already a major focus for green IT and that concern is extending to any company that offers IT hosting capabilities. An efficient data centre and/or renewable power is going to become a must-have in the hosting industry before long, potentially a supplier differentiator, so Interxion is just one example of a hosting company heading in this direction.

As more and more companies look for details of the carbon emissions from their suppliers, customer energy metering and measurement is going to become more important. It’s not an easy thing to do accurately, given the nature of shared resources like these, but the time will come when customers will need to use these energy measures to include in their own GHG Protocol Scope 3 emissions calculations.

Silver Springs now integrates with Freestyle’s water meter

Silver Springs Networks, which provides a smart grid networking platform, has announced that it is now integrated with Freestyle Technology’s smart water meter module.

California-based Silver Springs provides the infrastructure and services for utilities to run smart grid solutions. The company’s Smart Energy Platform enables 2-way connectivity between utilities and their customers. Australian company Freestyle has developed an application environment that links communications, metering and other sensory systems across the network.

The idea is that with Freestyle’s Zigbee(low-power wireless standard)-enabled smart water meter module, the Silver Spring networking platform can be leveraged to remotely manage water meters. 

 

A reminder that smart meters are not just for electricity. While most of the smart meter talk is power-related, because of the wider implications for electricity distribution and delivery and home energy management, smart meters can also help to better manage water use. Water management is going to be just as important (if not more so) in some parts of the world – Australia (where Freestyle is based) being one example, so its an area that smart meter solutions providers want to be involved in.

There’ll be many other partnerships, mergers and acquisitions in this area of green ICT in the coming months and years.

Accenture and Telstra launch Australian cloud computing lab

Accenture and Australian telecoms company Telstra have announced a new Product Innovation Lab in Melbourne, hosted by Telstra, which will develop cloud computing solutions for customers in Australia and New Zealand.

The Telstra Product Innovation Lab will support the existing cloud computing alliance between Accenture and Telstra. The two companies already have a strategic relationship aimed at providing business-focused technology solutions in the cloud to help organisations build their own cloud-based businesses.

The Lab will serve as an innovation hub for the development of business oriented technology solutions. The lab aims to offer Australian organisations a vision of how cloud computing technologies, along with other technology trends, can improve their business performance, and demonstrate first-hand the solutions they can adopt.

Citrix finalises RingCube acquisition

A couple of weeks ago Citrix Systems announced that it had completed its acquisition of RingCube, a company that provides personalisation solutions for virtual desktops.

Desktop virtualisation is starting to expand rapidly, partly because of the increasing move to the cloud. Rather than each user having their own PC, with desktop virtualisation you can use a ‘dumb’ device and run all your applications over the network from a virtual PC in the data centre. It can be a greener and more cost-effective solution, provided a thin client device is used and the virtual desktop is delivered from an efficient data centre.

But using VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) has traditionally required a unique virtual desktop for each user in the data centre, which can be expensive to maintain. Alternatively, there is a single image of the Windows OS and each app in the data centre which is dynamically assembles at runtime as required. But that way all users get the same desktop configuration.

RingCube’s technology combines the two. It creates a personal vDisk for each employee that contains only the applications, data and settings that are unique to that user, while the Windows OS and all common corporate applications are stored just once in the data centre. So each user gets their own unique personal desktop each time they log in, while IT gets the advantages of centrally managing a single instance of Windows and each corporate application for all users while expanding the VDI implementation and reducing the cost per user.