“The Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership (CCSIP) Initiative is an informal process of collaboration and exchange between the two jurisdictions involving academic, private sector, financial and public sector organizations. It champions the development of new models of cooperation and specific projects in innovation-intensive areas that are priorities in both jurisdictions.
Canada and California have very strong relationships, including $36.9 billion in bilateral trade, and share many complementary strengths. They also share common concerns in areas like public health, energy and transportation. Canada is a leading country in higher-education Research and Development (R&D) intensity, and California represents one of the most dynamic innovation systems on the planet. To sustain Canada’s and California’s position as global leaders in this era of Research, Development and Delivery (RD&D), stakeholders in both jurisdictions have decided to establish the CCSIP Initiative.”
Of particular interest is the upcoming California-Canada summit in Montreal of which one of the themes will be Green IT and Next Generation Internet. California and Canada recognize that research and technology development into the future Internet and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) will play a critical role in addressing the greatest challenge facing the planet, namely global climate change. More importantly it plays to our respective strengths in ICT, cyber-infrastructure entertainment and renewable energy and will hopefully will lay the foundation for the future zero carbon economy. It is recognized that businesses and research institutions that are first to adopt a zero carbon strategy will be the global winners of this century.
Examples of such a strategy are research initiatives like GreenLight, Optiputer and CineGrid in California and PROMPT’s Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming (G-NGI) in Canada. On the Industry side a good example of collaboration in Green IT is the partnership between SUN and Mitel to develop low carbon footprint unified IP client called Sunray which won the Best of Interop Award in 2008. Products like the Mitel-SUN Sunray will be critical for businesses and universities to meet the very stringent carbon reduction targets of our respective jurisdictions.
The California-Canada summit on Green IT and Next Generation Internet is an invitation only event. But if you are a researcher or company that interested in California-Canada collaboration in the area of Green IT you may want to contact one of the people listed below. A preliminary planning meeting is being arranged in Palo Alto at HP headquarters on September 19th.
California Canada Strategic Innovation Partnership
http://www.ccsip.org/
California - Canada summit on Green IT and Next Generation Internet
http://www.ccsip.org/workshops.html
More information on GreenLight and G-NGI
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2008/07/impact-of-climate-change-on-academic.html
Mitel and Sun Sunray
http://www.mitel.com/DocController?documentId=27874
Individuals to Contact for possible participation in the Summit
Lisa Stockley: Lisa.Stockley@international.gc.ca
Thiery Weissenburger: Thierry.Weissenburger@international.gc.ca
Dominic Jean dominic.jean@ccsip.org
Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-infrastructure Overview
One of the greatest threats to our future society and economy is global warming. It is estimated that the CO2 emissions of the ICT industry alone exceeds the carbon output of the entire aviation industry. The ICT industry and research community has a collective responsibility to help address this problem. Fortunately, as compared to the aviation industry, the ICT industry and research community has the tools at hand to reduce its direct CO2 output to zero and the additional capability of enabling other sectors of society to reduce their carbon footprint through "Carbon rewards" rather than unpopular "Carbon taxes". Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The current preferred approaches are to impose “carbon” taxes and implement various forms of cap and trade or carbon offset systems. However another approach to help reduce carbon emission is to “reward” those who reduce their carbon footprint. It is estimated that consumers control or influence over 60% of all CO2 emissions. As such, one possible reward system of trading “bits and bandwidth for carbon”, or sometimes called "gCommerce" is to provide homeowners with free fiber to the home or free wireless products and other electronic services such as ebooks and eMovies if they agree to pay a premium on their energy consumption which will encourage them to reduce emissions by turning down the thermostat or using public transportation. Not only does the consumer benefit, but this business model also provides new revenue opportunities for network operators, optical equipment manufacturers, and eCommerce application providers.
Universities can also play a significant leadership role as cyber-infrastructure is one of the major producers of CO2 emissions at our universities. Although cyber-infrastructure is part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution. The beauty of cyber-infrastructure and ICT in general, is that thanks to high speed optical networks, this equipment can be located virtually anywhere. Relocating cyber-infrastructure computers, databases, instrumentation and laboratory equipment to remote renewable energy sites not only helps the environment but can also save the institution significant money in their energy bills. More importantly such a strategy also allows the university or researcher to earn valuable carbon offset dollars. A good example of this strategy is the PROMPT initiative "Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming (G-NGI)" where researchers and institutions can earn valuable offset dollars for Internet technologies and process that reduce CO2 emissions. Universities can also encourage students and faculty to reduce their respective carbon footprint by also implementing a "gCommerce" reward system such as free eTextbooks, free downloads of video and music in exchange for students paying a premium on parking, travel and other related activities.
For more details please see
Free Fiber and High Speed Internet to the Home Initiative
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/
ICT and Global Warming - opportunities for innovation and economic growth
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgbgjrct_2767dxpbdvcf
PROMPT Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming
http://www.promptinc.org/documents/NGI_release_en_v2.pdf
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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