Green carbon trade market could mean billions for telecom, IT
TelephonyOnline - USA
Telecom and IT companies are well-positioned to tap the potentially $700-billion market for lowering carbon dioxide emissions, ...
http://telephonyonline.com/global/news/carbon-trade-arnaud-0626/
Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-infrastructure Overview
Monday, June 29, 2009
MIT to build zero carbon data center at rural hydrodam which will create jobs etc
[Here is an excellent example of a unique partnership between MIT, Cisco, EMX to build a large data center in Holyoke, MA. With the advent of cap and trade, peak oil , shortage of energy supplies, and inadequate capacity transmission lines many organizations are realizing that locating your own independent sources of renewable power for your data center will be critical and provide a significant competitive advantage in the coming years. According to Grupp and Ellis there are only 6 sites left in the entire USA that can support a modern 40 Mw data center! As governments start to understand the significance of climate change and order a moratorium on building new coal plants or shutting down existing ones, not only will the cost of power skyrocket, but it simply may not be available at any price. Those sites that have arranged for their own source of energy, independent of the electrical grid, such as on-site windmills, run of the river turbines etc will be the real winners. And most of this capital deployment of data centers in rural/remote areas can be paid for though carbon offsets. Of course, high speed optical networks are essential for this strategy –BSA]
Data centers are running out of space and power
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/28/study-data-center-supply-near-all-time-low/
"Data Center Overload"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html
Cisco, EMC Team with MIT to Launch $100M Green Data Center
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/11/cisco-emc-team-with-mit-launch-100m-green-data-center
The city of Holyoke, with a ready source of cheap, relatively clean hydroelectic power, will host a new, energy efficient data center that will bring innovation and jobs to the city.
The data center will be managed and funded by the four main partners in the facility: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cisco Systems, the University of Massachusetts and EMC.
While the project is just at the launch of a 120-day planning phase, there are big hopes for the facility. "The potential for breakthrough technologies and research is enormous, and both the center and collaboration will undoubtedly serve to lift up the City of Holyoke and regional economies throughout Western Massachusetts," governor Deval Patrick said.
In addition to being the hub of a community-redevelopment project, the facility, if and when it is finished, will be a high-performance computing environment that will help expand the research and development capabitilities of the companies and schools that work there.
And hydroelectric power has long been a draw for big tech projects like the Holyoke facility, although rarely in as urban a setting as Holyoke -- the city is 10 miles outside Springfield, Mass., and is just 90 miles from Boston. Google's "Project 02," a code name for its massive data center in The Dalles, Ore., was sited in that location because of the cheap and abundant energy from a nearby hydroelectric plant. And last year, Microsoft was reportedly looking to site a data center near Quincy, Wash., and its nearby hydroelectric facility.
Data centers are running out of space and power
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/28/study-data-center-supply-near-all-time-low/
"Data Center Overload"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14search-t.html
Cisco, EMC Team with MIT to Launch $100M Green Data Center
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/11/cisco-emc-team-with-mit-launch-100m-green-data-center
The city of Holyoke, with a ready source of cheap, relatively clean hydroelectic power, will host a new, energy efficient data center that will bring innovation and jobs to the city.
The data center will be managed and funded by the four main partners in the facility: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cisco Systems, the University of Massachusetts and EMC.
While the project is just at the launch of a 120-day planning phase, there are big hopes for the facility. "The potential for breakthrough technologies and research is enormous, and both the center and collaboration will undoubtedly serve to lift up the City of Holyoke and regional economies throughout Western Massachusetts," governor Deval Patrick said.
In addition to being the hub of a community-redevelopment project, the facility, if and when it is finished, will be a high-performance computing environment that will help expand the research and development capabitilities of the companies and schools that work there.
And hydroelectric power has long been a draw for big tech projects like the Holyoke facility, although rarely in as urban a setting as Holyoke -- the city is 10 miles outside Springfield, Mass., and is just 90 miles from Boston. Google's "Project 02," a code name for its massive data center in The Dalles, Ore., was sited in that location because of the cheap and abundant energy from a nearby hydroelectric plant. And last year, Microsoft was reportedly looking to site a data center near Quincy, Wash., and its nearby hydroelectric facility.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Convergence of new energy and communications causes econmic revolutions
[Some interesting commentary by the famous seer Jeremy Rifkin, although I am suspect of his claims of a hydrogen economy. From every study I have seen production of hydrogen consumes more energy than it produces. Thanks to Eric Tsang for this pointer – BSA]
THE GREAT ECONOMIC REVOLUTIONS IN HISTORY: THE CONVERGENCE OF NEW ENERGY AND COMMUNICATIONS REGIMES
http://www.foet.org/lectures/lecture-hydrogen-economy.html
The great pivotal economic changes in world history have occurred when new energy regimes converge with new communication regimes. When that convergence happens, society is restructured in wholly new ways. In the early modern era, the coming together of coal powered steam technology and the print press gave birth to the first industrial revolution. It would have been impossible to organize the dramatic increase in the pace, speed, flow, density, and connectivity of economic activity made possible by the coal fired steam engine using the older codex and oral forms of communication. In the late nineteenth century and throughout the first two thirds of the twentieth century, first generation electrical forms of communication—the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, electric typewriters, calculators, etc.—converged with the introduction of oil and the internal combustion engine, becoming the communications command and control mechanism for organizing and marketing the second industrial revolution.
A great communications revolution occurred in the 1990’s. Second generation electrical forms of communication—personal computers, the internet, the World Wide Web, and wireless communication technologies—connected the central nervous system of more than a billion people on Earth at the speed of light. And, although the new software and communication revolutions have begun to increase productivity in every industry, their true potential is yet to be fully realized. That potential lies in their convergence with renewable energy, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, to create the first “distributed” energy regimes.
The same design principles and smart technologies that made possible the internet, and vast distributed global communication networks, will be used to reconfigure the world’s power grids so that people can produce renewable energy and share it peer-to-peer, just like they now produce and share information, creating a new, decentralized form of energy use. We need to envision a future in which millions of individual players can collect, produce and store locally generated renewable energy in their homes, offices, factories, and vehicles, and share their power generation with each other across a Europe-wide intelligent intergrid. (Hydrogen is a universal storage medium for intermittent renewable energies; just as digital is a universal storage mechanism for text, audio, video, data and other forms of media)
The question is often asked as to whether renewable energy, in the long run, can provide enough power to run a national or global economy? Just as second generation information systems grid technologies allow businesses to connect thousands of desktop computers, creating far more distributed computing power than even the most powerful centralized computers that exist, millions of local producers of renewable energy, using hydrogen storage and intelligent utility networks, can potentially produce far more distributed power than the older centralized forms of energy – oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear – that we currently rely on.
The creation of a renewable energy regime, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, and distributed via smart intergrids, opens the door to a Third Industrial Revolution and should have as powerful an economic multiplier effect in the 21st century as the convergence of mass print technology with coal and steam power technology in the 19th century, and the coming together of electrical forms of communication with oil and the internal combustion engine in the 20th century.
European industry has the scientific, technological, and financial know-how to spearhead the shift to renewable energies, a hydrogen economy, and an intelligent power grid and, by so doing, lead the world into a new economic era. Europe’s world class automotive industry, chemical industry, engineering industry, construction industry, software, computer and communication industries, and banking and insurance industries, give it a leg up in the race to the Third Industrial Revolution.
By fostering renewable energies, a hydrogen infrastructure, and a continent-wide intelligent intergrid, the European Union can help create a sustainable economic development plan for its 500 million citizens in the first half of the 21st century.
The Third Industrial Revolution will require a wholesale reconfiguration of the transport, construction, and electricity sectors, creating new goods and services, spawning new businesses, and providing millions of new job.
Being first to market will position the European Union as a leader in the Third Industrial Revolution, giving it the commercial edge in the export of green technological know-how and equipment around the world. Producing a new generation of renewable energy technologies, manufacturing portable and stationary fuel cells, reinventing the automobile, transforming Europe’s millions of buildings into power plants to produce renewable energy for internal consumption or distribution back to the grid, reconfiguring the electrical power grid as a intelligent utility network, as well as producing all of the accompanying technologies, goods and services that make up a high-tech Third Industrial Revolution economy, will have an economic multiplier effect that stretches well toward the mid decades of the 21st century.
The coming together of distributed communication technologies and distributed renewable energies via an open access, intelligent power grid, represents “power to the people”. For a younger generation that’s growing up in a less hierarchical and more networked world, the ability to produce and share their own energy, like they produce and share their own information, in an open access intergrid, will seem both natural and commonplace.
The key challenge that every nation needs to address is where they want their country to be in ten years from now: In the sunset energies and industries of the second industrial revolution or the sunrise energies and industries of the Third Industrial Revolution. The Third Industrial Revolution is the end-game that takes the world out of the old carbon and uranium-based energies and into a non-polluting, sustainable future for the human race.
Jeremy Rifkin is president of The Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC. and teaches at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Rifkin is currently advising the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Janez Janša, during his presidency of the European Union (January to July 2008). Mr. Rifkin also served as an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. He currently advises the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU heads of state, including Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain and Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy. Mr. Rifkin is the author of seventeen books on environmental, energy and economic related issues including The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth (Tarcher/Penguin).
THE GREAT ECONOMIC REVOLUTIONS IN HISTORY: THE CONVERGENCE OF NEW ENERGY AND COMMUNICATIONS REGIMES
http://www.foet.org/lectures/lecture-hydrogen-economy.html
The great pivotal economic changes in world history have occurred when new energy regimes converge with new communication regimes. When that convergence happens, society is restructured in wholly new ways. In the early modern era, the coming together of coal powered steam technology and the print press gave birth to the first industrial revolution. It would have been impossible to organize the dramatic increase in the pace, speed, flow, density, and connectivity of economic activity made possible by the coal fired steam engine using the older codex and oral forms of communication. In the late nineteenth century and throughout the first two thirds of the twentieth century, first generation electrical forms of communication—the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, electric typewriters, calculators, etc.—converged with the introduction of oil and the internal combustion engine, becoming the communications command and control mechanism for organizing and marketing the second industrial revolution.
A great communications revolution occurred in the 1990’s. Second generation electrical forms of communication—personal computers, the internet, the World Wide Web, and wireless communication technologies—connected the central nervous system of more than a billion people on Earth at the speed of light. And, although the new software and communication revolutions have begun to increase productivity in every industry, their true potential is yet to be fully realized. That potential lies in their convergence with renewable energy, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, to create the first “distributed” energy regimes.
The same design principles and smart technologies that made possible the internet, and vast distributed global communication networks, will be used to reconfigure the world’s power grids so that people can produce renewable energy and share it peer-to-peer, just like they now produce and share information, creating a new, decentralized form of energy use. We need to envision a future in which millions of individual players can collect, produce and store locally generated renewable energy in their homes, offices, factories, and vehicles, and share their power generation with each other across a Europe-wide intelligent intergrid. (Hydrogen is a universal storage medium for intermittent renewable energies; just as digital is a universal storage mechanism for text, audio, video, data and other forms of media)
The question is often asked as to whether renewable energy, in the long run, can provide enough power to run a national or global economy? Just as second generation information systems grid technologies allow businesses to connect thousands of desktop computers, creating far more distributed computing power than even the most powerful centralized computers that exist, millions of local producers of renewable energy, using hydrogen storage and intelligent utility networks, can potentially produce far more distributed power than the older centralized forms of energy – oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear – that we currently rely on.
The creation of a renewable energy regime, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, and distributed via smart intergrids, opens the door to a Third Industrial Revolution and should have as powerful an economic multiplier effect in the 21st century as the convergence of mass print technology with coal and steam power technology in the 19th century, and the coming together of electrical forms of communication with oil and the internal combustion engine in the 20th century.
European industry has the scientific, technological, and financial know-how to spearhead the shift to renewable energies, a hydrogen economy, and an intelligent power grid and, by so doing, lead the world into a new economic era. Europe’s world class automotive industry, chemical industry, engineering industry, construction industry, software, computer and communication industries, and banking and insurance industries, give it a leg up in the race to the Third Industrial Revolution.
By fostering renewable energies, a hydrogen infrastructure, and a continent-wide intelligent intergrid, the European Union can help create a sustainable economic development plan for its 500 million citizens in the first half of the 21st century.
The Third Industrial Revolution will require a wholesale reconfiguration of the transport, construction, and electricity sectors, creating new goods and services, spawning new businesses, and providing millions of new job.
Being first to market will position the European Union as a leader in the Third Industrial Revolution, giving it the commercial edge in the export of green technological know-how and equipment around the world. Producing a new generation of renewable energy technologies, manufacturing portable and stationary fuel cells, reinventing the automobile, transforming Europe’s millions of buildings into power plants to produce renewable energy for internal consumption or distribution back to the grid, reconfiguring the electrical power grid as a intelligent utility network, as well as producing all of the accompanying technologies, goods and services that make up a high-tech Third Industrial Revolution economy, will have an economic multiplier effect that stretches well toward the mid decades of the 21st century.
The coming together of distributed communication technologies and distributed renewable energies via an open access, intelligent power grid, represents “power to the people”. For a younger generation that’s growing up in a less hierarchical and more networked world, the ability to produce and share their own energy, like they produce and share their own information, in an open access intergrid, will seem both natural and commonplace.
The key challenge that every nation needs to address is where they want their country to be in ten years from now: In the sunset energies and industries of the second industrial revolution or the sunrise energies and industries of the Third Industrial Revolution. The Third Industrial Revolution is the end-game that takes the world out of the old carbon and uranium-based energies and into a non-polluting, sustainable future for the human race.
Jeremy Rifkin is president of The Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, DC. and teaches at the Wharton School’s Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Rifkin is currently advising the Prime Minister of Slovenia, Janez Janša, during his presidency of the European Union (January to July 2008). Mr. Rifkin also served as an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal during their respective European Council Presidencies, on issues related to the economy, climate change, and energy security. He currently advises the European Commission, the European Parliament, and several EU heads of state, including Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain and Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy. Mr. Rifkin is the author of seventeen books on environmental, energy and economic related issues including The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth (Tarcher/Penguin).
Monday, June 1, 2009
CANARIE announces launch of $3 million Green IT Call for Proposals
CANARIE Announces $3 Million Call for Proposals to Fuel the Development of Advanced Computing and Networking
Technologies that Reduce Carbon Emissions and Help to Slow the Rate Global Warming
June 1, 2009 (OTTAWA, Ontario)–CANARIE today announced a $3 million Call for Proposals to fuel the development of advanced computing and networking technologies that reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) infrastructure (including computer hardware, software and networks), and enable collaboration on promising green IT solutions that will help slow the rate of global warming.
The CANARIE Green IT Pilot Program will help Canadian innovators to capitalize on emerging opportunities in Green ICT—a global market that, according to Insight Research Corporation, is expected to reach over US $600 billion by 2013. Specifically, it aims to facilitate national and international collaborative research projects that demonstrate the
• technical feasibility and usability of relocating computers and other cyber infrastructure to zero-carbon data centers that are connected by optical networks, and powered solely by renewable energy sources such as the sun or the wind, and
• business case for providing carbon offsets (and/or equivalent services) to university researchers and IT personnel who reduce their carbon footprint by relocating computers and instrumentation to zero-carbon data centers
CANARIE expects to award up to $2 million for major zero-carbon data center pilot projects; and about $1 million for the development of business cases and smaller projects. The outcomes of this pilot project could influence the development of ‘Canadian-designed’ green ICT approaches, products and services that could be marketed around the world. As countries such as the United States, Britain, Singapore and Australia consider injecting billions of dollars into green and broadband strategies, these initiatives could help put Canada ‘in the global game’, stimulating business development opportunities and opening new markets for Canadian companies.
“This Call for Proposals aims to capitalize on Canada’s expertise in ICT and the development and use of advanced networks to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon ICT infrastructure and management strategies,” said Guy Bujold, President and CEO of CANARIE. “It will enable innovators to collaborate on the development and validation of novel green technologies, assess the feasibility of zero-carbon data centres, and propose cost-effective and environmentally sound IT strategies that could benefit companies in many sectors. This reinforces CANARIE’s commitment to partner with industry, academia and government to address global sustainability challenges such as climate change.”
“This Call for Proposals underscores CANARIE’s critical role as a change agent in the ICT landscape”, said Brian Fry, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for RackForce, a leader green datacenters based in Kelowna, BC. “It will provide enormous lift for companies such as RackForce that aim to develop, implement and promote the use of green data centers to reduce our carbon footprint. For example, winning project teams could influence the development of new standards, discover new ways to optimize zero-carbon data centers, and help to stimulate increased uptake of green ICT approaches. This represents a win for industry–and for society.”
The deadline for initial proposals is June 29, 2009 at 5PM EDT, with full applications to be submitted by September 10, 2009 at 5PM EDT. Selected proposals will be announced in October 2009. For additional information on this program, please visit: http://www.canarie.ca/funding/greenit/call_for_proposals.html
Technologies that Reduce Carbon Emissions and Help to Slow the Rate Global Warming
June 1, 2009 (OTTAWA, Ontario)–CANARIE today announced a $3 million Call for Proposals to fuel the development of advanced computing and networking technologies that reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) infrastructure (including computer hardware, software and networks), and enable collaboration on promising green IT solutions that will help slow the rate of global warming.
The CANARIE Green IT Pilot Program will help Canadian innovators to capitalize on emerging opportunities in Green ICT—a global market that, according to Insight Research Corporation, is expected to reach over US $600 billion by 2013. Specifically, it aims to facilitate national and international collaborative research projects that demonstrate the
• technical feasibility and usability of relocating computers and other cyber infrastructure to zero-carbon data centers that are connected by optical networks, and powered solely by renewable energy sources such as the sun or the wind, and
• business case for providing carbon offsets (and/or equivalent services) to university researchers and IT personnel who reduce their carbon footprint by relocating computers and instrumentation to zero-carbon data centers
CANARIE expects to award up to $2 million for major zero-carbon data center pilot projects; and about $1 million for the development of business cases and smaller projects. The outcomes of this pilot project could influence the development of ‘Canadian-designed’ green ICT approaches, products and services that could be marketed around the world. As countries such as the United States, Britain, Singapore and Australia consider injecting billions of dollars into green and broadband strategies, these initiatives could help put Canada ‘in the global game’, stimulating business development opportunities and opening new markets for Canadian companies.
“This Call for Proposals aims to capitalize on Canada’s expertise in ICT and the development and use of advanced networks to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon ICT infrastructure and management strategies,” said Guy Bujold, President and CEO of CANARIE. “It will enable innovators to collaborate on the development and validation of novel green technologies, assess the feasibility of zero-carbon data centres, and propose cost-effective and environmentally sound IT strategies that could benefit companies in many sectors. This reinforces CANARIE’s commitment to partner with industry, academia and government to address global sustainability challenges such as climate change.”
“This Call for Proposals underscores CANARIE’s critical role as a change agent in the ICT landscape”, said Brian Fry, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for RackForce, a leader green datacenters based in Kelowna, BC. “It will provide enormous lift for companies such as RackForce that aim to develop, implement and promote the use of green data centers to reduce our carbon footprint. For example, winning project teams could influence the development of new standards, discover new ways to optimize zero-carbon data centers, and help to stimulate increased uptake of green ICT approaches. This represents a win for industry–and for society.”
The deadline for initial proposals is June 29, 2009 at 5PM EDT, with full applications to be submitted by September 10, 2009 at 5PM EDT. Selected proposals will be announced in October 2009. For additional information on this program, please visit: http://www.canarie.ca/funding/greenit/call_for_proposals.html
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Obama Adviser Looks At Deploying National U.S. Broadband Network
[As I have mentioned several times in my postings there is soon going to be a huge pot of money available to pay for several national broadband networks, as well as cyber-infrastructure facilities in the US and possibly elsewhere.
The Waxman-Markey bill wending its way through Congress will require that utilities purchase $1.25 in carbon offsets for every $1.00 they spend on emission permits (although its not clear whether this will apply to the free permits that are proposed to be allocated under the bill)
Broadband networks and cyber-infrastructure can go a long way in helping reduce the US carbon footprint. Estimates of 15-20% overall reduction of CO2 are possible through virtualization and dematerialization using broadband networks.
Qualifying these reductions as high quality offsets as per the Waxman-Markey bill will more than pay for a national broadband rollout.
On June 1st CANARIE will launch its long awaited Green IT Pilot program which will help Canadian universities, industries and R&E networks learn how to develop the necessary protocols under ISO 14064 to make cyber-infrastructure and broadband networks eligible to earn such carbon offsets.
The Waxman-Markey bill could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in carbon offsets.
Thanks to Eric Lee for this pointer on posting from Gordon Cook’s Arch-econ list—BSA]
Bill
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Obama Adviser Looks At U.S.-Built Broadband Network
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
by David Hatch
A senior adviser to President Obama is touting the idea of spending
tens of billions of dollars in public funds to build a nationwide,
state-of-the-art broadband network featuring speeds 100 times faster
than today's technology.
While there has been no formal Obama administration commitment to such
infrastructure investment, Susan Crawford, special assistant to the
president for science, technology and innovation policy, has said she
is "personally intrigued" by an ambitious plan by Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd.
His plan proposes a public-private partnership that would invest up to
$33 billion over eight years to build and operate a fiber-optic
broadband network reaching 90 percent of homes and workplaces.
Wireless and satellite technology would be used to reach the remaining
10 percent in the outback.
Obama and congressional Democrats have backed a $7.2 billion cash
infusion to stimulate domestic broadband investment as part of this
year's economic stimulus package, but experts have acknowledged that
gaps in availability and bandwidth will remain, with pockets of the
United States left with no service or antiquated technology.
Proponents of Australia's program argue that the government-subsidized
network promises myriad opportunities for online businesses and
enhancements to energy efficiency, media distribution and public
safety.
A chief concern here is that a public broadband network would be
costly -- upward of $430 billion. While U.S. consumers would benefit
from the increased competition and lower monthly rates, they would
foot the bill through tax dollars.
"I think it's a pipe dream at this point," said a telecommunications
industry source, who added, "Good luck finding the money in this
fiscal environment."
Other industry sources also cautioned that a government-subsidized
network might dissuade private sector investment, leaving Americans
with fewer options down the road. "You can't just build it and you're
done," one critic cautioned, emphasizing the government would have to
spend billions on upgrades and would be saddled with customer service
responsibilities. "The government's continually going to have this
'white whale' it's going to have to keep pouring money into."
As the FCC prepares a national broadband strategy to be presented to
Congress by Feb. 17, there's already speculation that the agency -- at
the prodding of the White House -- will give serious thought to
adapting Australia's model for the United States.
Crawford, a member of Obama's National Economic Council, raised
eyebrows when she discussed Australia's plan at a policy forum in
April.
"Simply put, a digital economy requires fiber, and Australia is making
the determination that for that to work it will require a utility
approach," Crawford said, noting that Singapore is making a similar
investment and Britain and the Netherlands are exploring the concept.
"These governments understand that a wholesale network can deliver
massive social and economic benefits," she said, referring to capacity
that would be made available to carriers at reduced rates. (For a
fuller version of this article, go to CongressDaily's TechCentral at
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/techcentral/.)
The Waxman-Markey bill wending its way through Congress will require that utilities purchase $1.25 in carbon offsets for every $1.00 they spend on emission permits (although its not clear whether this will apply to the free permits that are proposed to be allocated under the bill)
Broadband networks and cyber-infrastructure can go a long way in helping reduce the US carbon footprint. Estimates of 15-20% overall reduction of CO2 are possible through virtualization and dematerialization using broadband networks.
Qualifying these reductions as high quality offsets as per the Waxman-Markey bill will more than pay for a national broadband rollout.
On June 1st CANARIE will launch its long awaited Green IT Pilot program which will help Canadian universities, industries and R&E networks learn how to develop the necessary protocols under ISO 14064 to make cyber-infrastructure and broadband networks eligible to earn such carbon offsets.
The Waxman-Markey bill could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in carbon offsets.
Thanks to Eric Lee for this pointer on posting from Gordon Cook’s Arch-econ list—BSA]
Bill
TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Obama Adviser Looks At U.S.-Built Broadband Network
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
by David Hatch
A senior adviser to President Obama is touting the idea of spending
tens of billions of dollars in public funds to build a nationwide,
state-of-the-art broadband network featuring speeds 100 times faster
than today's technology.
While there has been no formal Obama administration commitment to such
infrastructure investment, Susan Crawford, special assistant to the
president for science, technology and innovation policy, has said she
is "personally intrigued" by an ambitious plan by Australian Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd.
His plan proposes a public-private partnership that would invest up to
$33 billion over eight years to build and operate a fiber-optic
broadband network reaching 90 percent of homes and workplaces.
Wireless and satellite technology would be used to reach the remaining
10 percent in the outback.
Obama and congressional Democrats have backed a $7.2 billion cash
infusion to stimulate domestic broadband investment as part of this
year's economic stimulus package, but experts have acknowledged that
gaps in availability and bandwidth will remain, with pockets of the
United States left with no service or antiquated technology.
Proponents of Australia's program argue that the government-subsidized
network promises myriad opportunities for online businesses and
enhancements to energy efficiency, media distribution and public
safety.
A chief concern here is that a public broadband network would be
costly -- upward of $430 billion. While U.S. consumers would benefit
from the increased competition and lower monthly rates, they would
foot the bill through tax dollars.
"I think it's a pipe dream at this point," said a telecommunications
industry source, who added, "Good luck finding the money in this
fiscal environment."
Other industry sources also cautioned that a government-subsidized
network might dissuade private sector investment, leaving Americans
with fewer options down the road. "You can't just build it and you're
done," one critic cautioned, emphasizing the government would have to
spend billions on upgrades and would be saddled with customer service
responsibilities. "The government's continually going to have this
'white whale' it's going to have to keep pouring money into."
As the FCC prepares a national broadband strategy to be presented to
Congress by Feb. 17, there's already speculation that the agency -- at
the prodding of the White House -- will give serious thought to
adapting Australia's model for the United States.
Crawford, a member of Obama's National Economic Council, raised
eyebrows when she discussed Australia's plan at a policy forum in
April.
"Simply put, a digital economy requires fiber, and Australia is making
the determination that for that to work it will require a utility
approach," Crawford said, noting that Singapore is making a similar
investment and Britain and the Netherlands are exploring the concept.
"These governments understand that a wholesale network can deliver
massive social and economic benefits," she said, referring to capacity
that would be made available to carriers at reduced rates. (For a
fuller version of this article, go to CongressDaily's TechCentral at
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/techcentral/.)
The Challenge of Smart Grids - a rallying cry to R&E networks and Internet community
[There has been a lot of news in the press recently about SMART electrical grids. Cisco recently announced that Smart Grids will eclipse the size of the Internet and Google announced its plans to launch Home Energy Management software. Even some telephone companies are looking to get into the business of home energy management. Can you imagine the same companies that brought you the two tiered Internet, are now going scaling up to bring you the two tiered electrical grid. Not only do they want to manage your Internet application but they want apply the same mindset to managing your appliances.
The big challenge with today’s Smart Grids strategy is that it is all based on managing peak load and are designed around a “gosplan” utility megawatt mindset architecture of huge centralized databases for the acquisition, management and control of consumers meters and appliances. (Another aspect of Smart grids is for utilities to better manage their own infrastructure which makes sense, but that is separate issue than managing consumer devices) .The main beneficiary is not the consumer but the utility operator in avoiding having to build new power plants for peak load. The environmental benefits are minimal and the savings to the consumer are marginal (around 10%) based on data from the Smart Grid trial at PNNL in Washington State. There are also huge challenges with respect to security as outlined by Rahul Tongia at CMU in his e-mail on Dave Farber’s IPer list. Imagine if someone hacked such a network and were able to turn off and on your appliances and electricity at will.
Innovation rarely comes from large monopolies like electrical utilities and telcos. But the Internet research and education community has a long of history of innovation particularly in adopting principles of the Internet in terms of intelligence at the edge and broadband network infrastructure as exemplified in the excellent paper “Unleashing Waves of Innovation” http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/488.pdf. R&E networks around the world have been instrumental in network innovation and working with communities in broadband infrastructure such as initiatives led by Educause, Internet 2, NLR, KAREN, i2Cat, etc. I believe the same organizations have the capability, infrastructure and knowledge to pioneer new techniques for smart grids built around the principle of intelligence at the edge and customer control. Universities, schools and research institutions in partnership with R&E networks are well suited to work with communities on exploring new architectures and solution for Smart grids that will have genuine benefits for the consumer (as opposed to the utility) as well as the environment.
Germany happens to be a world leader in this area and has many great examples of new smart grid architectures where consumers can also supply power to the grid. The 5th estate video compares and contrasts the German approach to what is largely happening in North America. In Germany consumers can arrange for their own meter independent of the utility and subscribe to different energy providers. Thanks to John Spence and Frank Coluccio for these pointers – BSA]
Great 5th estate video on green in Germany versus Canada in Smart grids and renewable energy http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/the_gospel_of_green/video.html
Opportunity is promising, but utility cooperation will be the challenge
By Sean Buckley | Telecommunications Magazine | March 31, 2009
"As I head out to CTIA to help host our one-day Machine to Machine: Show me the Money panel series, it’s hard not to notice reports that Verizon is considering the idea of adding energy management services as one of the services it could offer over a home network connected to its FiOS FTTH service. Other than saying they will offer videoconferencing, Verizon has not formally confirmed a plan for an energy management service. I don’t think the idea of a telco like Verizon, or any service provider for that matter, offering energy management is far-fetched. Service providers, especially those like Verizon and their RBOC counterparts (AT&T and Qwest) are looking to find new ways to differentiate themselves and avoid having others leverage their connections into the home for applications they don’t control."
[Indeed!]
Cont.: http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_5074
Rahul Tongia tongia@cmu.edu from a posting on Dave Farber’s IPer list
As a researcher in the "smart grid" space, I will mention several facts/observations about smart grids:
1) People are throwing solutions out before figuring out what the problems are. Adding billions of $ to the mix (with strange rules to boot - e.g., sizes and $ limits per project) doesn't help. 2) The fundamental thing utilities need to understand when designing systems is what their functional goals are: audit (important in a place like India, with 10-20% theft), monitoring, or control. You need different
designs. These then lead you to the issue of communications design.
It's NOT bandwidth that is the concern, but predictability and reliability. Should the utility own it themselves, or rely on outsiders? I could user outsiders with the former, but is it appropriate for things like control? I don't think so (IMHO). 3) Some of the largest vendors of meters and affiliated technology are behind the curve in technology. Some of the best firms in this space are relatively small.
4) Security cannot be an add-on. Everyone pays lip service to security, just like being "green." But have we developed the right, lightweight solutions?
5) Open standards are going to be critical, else we will end up with $ $, proprietary, and sometimes inferior solutions. 6) Getting communications right in both directions is the key challenge. We need to innovate more! Both directions means from the user/meter to and from the utility. Then, from a user's central point (maybe meter, maybe inside), signaling to appliances and devices.
One has to realize how little the costs could be for smart systems.
Take a smart fridge. No, I don't want it to order milk when my an RFID chip on the milk carton says expired. I just want energy efficiency and load control. If a fridge knows when peak electricity is, then there is no reason it should run the compressor, or five times worse, the defrost cycle, during peak periods. Extra cost at the fridge level for the intelligence AND short-range communications? A few dollars (if built to standards in high volume). The issue is chicken- and-egg. Who signals, where, and how is an unanswered Q. The utility?
Governement? A neutral grid operator? Consumer aggregators (energy service providers)? Or the consumer himself/herself?
I think automated systems that don't rely on humans are going to work better than people staring at a household display (thermostat/meter) to take actions. As a consumer, I should be in charge of that, unless
I am willing to give the utility or a 3rd party such control.
Certainly price signals are important. Here Time of Use is not as good as Real-time (near real time) since (1) ToU can become a self- negating prophecy and (2) only the latter can deal with unforeseen events.
A relatively sophisticated (but low bandwidth) solution is important.
We need bidirectional communications once we go beyond automated metering as a goal. For starters, you need that if you consider communications security. You need to have touchless upgrades and security enhancements - a meter will last 15-20 years. Can anyone
swap out a network key with a one-way radio broadcast and verify it?
Bidirectional is also important when we consider compliance (if not "theft"). I'm not talking the India or Nigeria kind. I remember a story about direct load control in the Detroit area in the early 1920s or 30s. The utility would pay people to let it control their water heaters or other such load, using analog radio signals. People then figured out they could get paid but yet have no discomfort if they just put aluminum foil over the receiver!
The good news is the amount of load control we need to make a difference isn't much. Avoiding blackouts is cutting loads of maybe 5-10% or so. Saving 5% of PEAK electricity is (rule of thumb) some 25% of generation costs.
Rahul
>
CISCO: SMART GRID WILL ECLIPSE SIZE OF INTERNET Cisco sees a $100 billion market opportunity in the smart grid. The company make communications equipment for the electricity grid -- everything from routers in grid substations to home energy controllers. Cisco's move is a sign that the creaky electricity distribution system is poised for a digital upgrade. Other high-tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and several start-ups, are ramping up smart-grid efforts to capitalize on expected investments from utilities and federal governments. Cisco estimates that the communications portion of that build-out is worth $20 billion a year over the next five years. The idea of the "smart grid" is to modernize the electricity industry by overlaying digital communications onto the grid. Smart meters in a person's home, for example, can communicate energy usage to utilities in near real time. That allows the utility to more efficiently manage the electricity supply and potentially allow a consumer to take advantage of cheaper rates.
Courtesy of the Benton Foundation RSS Feed:
The big challenge with today’s Smart Grids strategy is that it is all based on managing peak load and are designed around a “gosplan” utility megawatt mindset architecture of huge centralized databases for the acquisition, management and control of consumers meters and appliances. (Another aspect of Smart grids is for utilities to better manage their own infrastructure which makes sense, but that is separate issue than managing consumer devices) .The main beneficiary is not the consumer but the utility operator in avoiding having to build new power plants for peak load. The environmental benefits are minimal and the savings to the consumer are marginal (around 10%) based on data from the Smart Grid trial at PNNL in Washington State. There are also huge challenges with respect to security as outlined by Rahul Tongia at CMU in his e-mail on Dave Farber’s IPer list. Imagine if someone hacked such a network and were able to turn off and on your appliances and electricity at will.
Innovation rarely comes from large monopolies like electrical utilities and telcos. But the Internet research and education community has a long of history of innovation particularly in adopting principles of the Internet in terms of intelligence at the edge and broadband network infrastructure as exemplified in the excellent paper “Unleashing Waves of Innovation” http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/comments/488.pdf. R&E networks around the world have been instrumental in network innovation and working with communities in broadband infrastructure such as initiatives led by Educause, Internet 2, NLR, KAREN, i2Cat, etc. I believe the same organizations have the capability, infrastructure and knowledge to pioneer new techniques for smart grids built around the principle of intelligence at the edge and customer control. Universities, schools and research institutions in partnership with R&E networks are well suited to work with communities on exploring new architectures and solution for Smart grids that will have genuine benefits for the consumer (as opposed to the utility) as well as the environment.
Germany happens to be a world leader in this area and has many great examples of new smart grid architectures where consumers can also supply power to the grid. The 5th estate video compares and contrasts the German approach to what is largely happening in North America. In Germany consumers can arrange for their own meter independent of the utility and subscribe to different energy providers. Thanks to John Spence and Frank Coluccio for these pointers – BSA]
Great 5th estate video on green in Germany versus Canada in Smart grids and renewable energy http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/the_gospel_of_green/video.html
Opportunity is promising, but utility cooperation will be the challenge
By Sean Buckley | Telecommunications Magazine | March 31, 2009
"As I head out to CTIA to help host our one-day Machine to Machine: Show me the Money panel series, it’s hard not to notice reports that Verizon is considering the idea of adding energy management services as one of the services it could offer over a home network connected to its FiOS FTTH service. Other than saying they will offer videoconferencing, Verizon has not formally confirmed a plan for an energy management service. I don’t think the idea of a telco like Verizon, or any service provider for that matter, offering energy management is far-fetched. Service providers, especially those like Verizon and their RBOC counterparts (AT&T and Qwest) are looking to find new ways to differentiate themselves and avoid having others leverage their connections into the home for applications they don’t control."
[Indeed!]
Cont.: http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_5074
Rahul Tongia tongia@cmu.edu from a posting on Dave Farber’s IPer list
As a researcher in the "smart grid" space, I will mention several facts/observations about smart grids:
1) People are throwing solutions out before figuring out what the problems are. Adding billions of $ to the mix (with strange rules to boot - e.g., sizes and $ limits per project) doesn't help. 2) The fundamental thing utilities need to understand when designing systems is what their functional goals are: audit (important in a place like India, with 10-20% theft), monitoring, or control. You need different
designs. These then lead you to the issue of communications design.
It's NOT bandwidth that is the concern, but predictability and reliability. Should the utility own it themselves, or rely on outsiders? I could user outsiders with the former, but is it appropriate for things like control? I don't think so (IMHO). 3) Some of the largest vendors of meters and affiliated technology are behind the curve in technology. Some of the best firms in this space are relatively small.
4) Security cannot be an add-on. Everyone pays lip service to security, just like being "green." But have we developed the right, lightweight solutions?
5) Open standards are going to be critical, else we will end up with $ $, proprietary, and sometimes inferior solutions. 6) Getting communications right in both directions is the key challenge. We need to innovate more! Both directions means from the user/meter to and from the utility. Then, from a user's central point (maybe meter, maybe inside), signaling to appliances and devices.
One has to realize how little the costs could be for smart systems.
Take a smart fridge. No, I don't want it to order milk when my an RFID chip on the milk carton says expired. I just want energy efficiency and load control. If a fridge knows when peak electricity is, then there is no reason it should run the compressor, or five times worse, the defrost cycle, during peak periods. Extra cost at the fridge level for the intelligence AND short-range communications? A few dollars (if built to standards in high volume). The issue is chicken- and-egg. Who signals, where, and how is an unanswered Q. The utility?
Governement? A neutral grid operator? Consumer aggregators (energy service providers)? Or the consumer himself/herself?
I think automated systems that don't rely on humans are going to work better than people staring at a household display (thermostat/meter) to take actions. As a consumer, I should be in charge of that, unless
I am willing to give the utility or a 3rd party such control.
Certainly price signals are important. Here Time of Use is not as good as Real-time (near real time) since (1) ToU can become a self- negating prophecy and (2) only the latter can deal with unforeseen events.
A relatively sophisticated (but low bandwidth) solution is important.
We need bidirectional communications once we go beyond automated metering as a goal. For starters, you need that if you consider communications security. You need to have touchless upgrades and security enhancements - a meter will last 15-20 years. Can anyone
swap out a network key with a one-way radio broadcast and verify it?
Bidirectional is also important when we consider compliance (if not "theft"). I'm not talking the India or Nigeria kind. I remember a story about direct load control in the Detroit area in the early 1920s or 30s. The utility would pay people to let it control their water heaters or other such load, using analog radio signals. People then figured out they could get paid but yet have no discomfort if they just put aluminum foil over the receiver!
The good news is the amount of load control we need to make a difference isn't much. Avoiding blackouts is cutting loads of maybe 5-10% or so. Saving 5% of PEAK electricity is (rule of thumb) some 25% of generation costs.
Rahul
>
CISCO: SMART GRID WILL ECLIPSE SIZE OF INTERNET Cisco sees a $100 billion market opportunity in the smart grid. The company make communications equipment for the electricity grid -- everything from routers in grid substations to home energy controllers. Cisco's move is a sign that the creaky electricity distribution system is poised for a digital upgrade. Other high-tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and several start-ups, are ramping up smart-grid efforts to capitalize on expected investments from utilities and federal governments. Cisco estimates that the communications portion of that build-out is worth $20 billion a year over the next five years. The idea of the "smart grid" is to modernize the electricity industry by overlaying digital communications onto the grid. Smart meters in a person's home, for example, can communicate energy usage to utilities in near real time. That allows the utility to more efficiently manage the electricity supply and potentially allow a consumer to take advantage of cheaper rates.
Courtesy of the Benton Foundation
Electricity consumption by consumer electronics exceeds that of traditional appliances in many homes
[More alarming data on the contribution of ICT, especially consumer devices to energy consumption and resultant CO2 emissions. We know that demand for ICT products and services will grow much faster than growth rate of overall economy. Will energy efficiency be able to keep pace with this growth in demand for ICT equipment, especially as ICT is also used for energy reduction and CO2 abatement? Already consumer electronics are predicted to produce approximately 1/6 of CO2 in the US. Excerpts from Globe and Mail and IEA press releases—BSA]
http://www.iea.org/journalists/headlines.asp
IEA - Rising numbers of electronic gadgets undo efficiency gains
Reporting about the new IEA publication Gadgets and Gigawatts which finds that the rapidly growing number of televisions, laptops and other electronic devices will triple energy consumption by 2030, the newswire quotes.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090513.wgadgetsstaff0513/BNStory/Technology/home
Power alarm over home electronics
In a report yesterday, the Paris-based IEA urged governments around the world to quickly adopt new standards that would make electronic devices such as televisions, laptops and game consoles more energy efficient.
All those PlayStations that are hooked up in the family rooms of the nation are notorious energy vampires. So, too, are the chargers that are needed to keep juiced the iPods, cellphones, laptops and cordless phones that are staples of modern living.
In its report yesterday, the International Energy Agency said the boom in electronics threatens to undermine efforts to reduce residential power demand and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Despite anticipated improvements in the efficiency of electronic devices, these savings are likely to be overshadowed by the rising demand for technology” in both the rich world and developing countries, IEA president Nobuo Tanaka said in a release.
Residential power demand is soaring with the proliferation of MP3 players, home video games, set-top boxes, wireless routers, portable phones and flat-screen, high-definition digital televisions. In the typical rich-world household, electricity demand from consumer electronics now far exceeds the amount of power used by appliances like fridges and dishwashers.
Last year, the world spent $80-billion (U.S.) on electricity to power these household electronics, and that is expected to grow to $200-billion by 2030. To meet the demand would require the output of 200 new power plants, and would double greenhouse gas emissions to one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=361
Gadgets and Gigawatts -- Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics, ISBN 978-92-64-05953-5, paper €100, PDF €80 (2009)
Type: Studies
Subject: CO2 Emissions ; Electricity ; Energy Efficiency ; Sustainable Development
By 2010 there will be over 3.5 billion mobile phones subscribers, 2 billion TVs in use around the world and 1 billion personal computers. Electronic devices are a growing part of our lives and many of us can count between 20 and 30 separate items in our homes, from major items like televisions to a host of small gadgets. The communication and entertainment benefits these bring are not only going to people in wealthier nations - in Africa, for example, one in nine people now has a mobile phone. But as these electronic devices gain popularity, they account for a growing portion of household energy consumption.
How “smart” is this equipment from an energy efficiency perspective and should we be concerned about how much energy these gadgets use? What is the potential for energy savings?
This new book, Gadgets and Gigawatts: Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics, includes a global assessment of the changing pattern in residential electricity consumption over the past decade and an in-depth analysis of the role played by electronic equipment. It reviews the influence that government policies have had on creating markets for more energy efficient appliances and identifies new opportunities for creating smarter, more energy efficient homes. This book is essential reading for policy makers and others interested in improving the energy efficiency of our ho
http://www.iea.org/journalists/headlines.asp
IEA - Rising numbers of electronic gadgets undo efficiency gains
Reporting about the new IEA publication Gadgets and Gigawatts which finds that the rapidly growing number of televisions, laptops and other electronic devices will triple energy consumption by 2030, the newswire quotes.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090513.wgadgetsstaff0513/BNStory/Technology/home
Power alarm over home electronics
In a report yesterday, the Paris-based IEA urged governments around the world to quickly adopt new standards that would make electronic devices such as televisions, laptops and game consoles more energy efficient.
All those PlayStations that are hooked up in the family rooms of the nation are notorious energy vampires. So, too, are the chargers that are needed to keep juiced the iPods, cellphones, laptops and cordless phones that are staples of modern living.
In its report yesterday, the International Energy Agency said the boom in electronics threatens to undermine efforts to reduce residential power demand and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Despite anticipated improvements in the efficiency of electronic devices, these savings are likely to be overshadowed by the rising demand for technology” in both the rich world and developing countries, IEA president Nobuo Tanaka said in a release.
Residential power demand is soaring with the proliferation of MP3 players, home video games, set-top boxes, wireless routers, portable phones and flat-screen, high-definition digital televisions. In the typical rich-world household, electricity demand from consumer electronics now far exceeds the amount of power used by appliances like fridges and dishwashers.
Last year, the world spent $80-billion (U.S.) on electricity to power these household electronics, and that is expected to grow to $200-billion by 2030. To meet the demand would require the output of 200 new power plants, and would double greenhouse gas emissions to one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=361
Gadgets and Gigawatts -- Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics, ISBN 978-92-64-05953-5, paper €100, PDF €80 (2009)
Type: Studies
Subject: CO2 Emissions ; Electricity ; Energy Efficiency ; Sustainable Development
By 2010 there will be over 3.5 billion mobile phones subscribers, 2 billion TVs in use around the world and 1 billion personal computers. Electronic devices are a growing part of our lives and many of us can count between 20 and 30 separate items in our homes, from major items like televisions to a host of small gadgets. The communication and entertainment benefits these bring are not only going to people in wealthier nations - in Africa, for example, one in nine people now has a mobile phone. But as these electronic devices gain popularity, they account for a growing portion of household energy consumption.
How “smart” is this equipment from an energy efficiency perspective and should we be concerned about how much energy these gadgets use? What is the potential for energy savings?
This new book, Gadgets and Gigawatts: Policies for Energy Efficient Electronics, includes a global assessment of the changing pattern in residential electricity consumption over the past decade and an in-depth analysis of the role played by electronic equipment. It reviews the influence that government policies have had on creating markets for more energy efficient appliances and identifies new opportunities for creating smarter, more energy efficient homes. This book is essential reading for policy makers and others interested in improving the energy efficiency of our ho
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