World's first green cyber-infrastrucure collaboration announced

[This Memorandum of Understanding is a very exciting first step in how green cyber-infrastructure can address the challenges of green house gas emissions at our universities and research centers. Of particular interest is the proposal to explore development of “virtual” carbon trading where cyber-infrastructure services can be used in exchange for carbon offsets in order to help reduce an institution’s carbon footprint – BSA]
California, Canada campuses combat greenhouse gas emissions with green IT
In one of the first efforts of its kind, universities in Canada and California are pledging to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their campuses while developing so-called "green cyberinfrastructure" – information technology that improves energy efficiency and reduces the impact of emissions on climate change.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed today by the University of British Columbia (UBC), the University of California, San Diego – both sustainability leaders – and Prompt Inc., a non-profit corporation that fosters research and development, building university-industry partnerships to increase the competitiveness of Quebec's information and communications technology (ICT) sector.
The MoU signing took place at the third Summit of the Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership (CCSIP), held Oct. 26-27 in Montreal.
"By pooling our knowledge, resources and best practices, Canada and the U.S. will be that much more able to contribute cutting edge research on climate change," says John Hepburn, UBC Vice-President, Research.
"Moreover, this is a critical lead role that we're taking to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from computer and telecommunications technologies within campus infrastructure."
In the near term, the institutions agreed to develop methods to share greenhouse gas (GHG) emission data in connection with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards for information computer and telecommunications equipment (ISO 14062), as well as baseline emission data for cyberinfrastructure and networks (ISO 14064).
"Many universities are confronting the issue of global climate change with a new focus on sustainability," said Art Ellis, Vice Chancellor for Research at UC San Diego. "This MoU creates a unique international partnership that will examine how cyberinfrastructure can be used in research universities to create carbon-neutral environments. We are committed to sharing best practices, and working together to realize the promise of our collaboration."
"This collaboration will enable the development of industrially-relevant methodologies and technologies with broad application across the ICT sector," says Charles Despins, President and CEO of Prompt.
"Building on our mandate," says Despins, "we aim to facilitate university-industry partnerships that will help translate 'green' research results into viable new commercial opportunities for companies in Quebec, across Canada and California."
"While the carbon footprint of high performance computing has risen because of huge growth in this area, networking and trends such as virtualization offer great hope that we can also be part of the solution," says Bill St. Arnaud, Chief Research Officer at CANARIE. "This MoU reinforces existing close links between key Canadian institutions and their counterparts in California, notably at UC San Diego, and we are hopeful that over time we will be able to extend the alliance to other universities in both countries."
[Excerpts from the MoU]
The University of California, San Diego is one of the premier research universities in the United States and it committed to continued institutional leadership in the area of understanding, analyzing, and developing solutions to issues of global climate change. UCSD was recently rated 21st out of 300 colleges and universities surveyed by the Green Report Card, was the first University on the West Coast to join the Chicago Climate Exchange, and through the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, is host to the GreenLight Project for measuring climate impact of cyberinfrastructure.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) is one of Canada’s leading research-intensive universities with a strong commitment to sustainability research and practice. In the 2009 Green Report Card, UBC is the only university in Canada to earn an A- and one of just 15 schools to achieve that grade. In 1997, UBC became Canada's first university to implement a sustainable development policy. A year later, the university opened Canada's first Sustainability Office (SO). UBC is among hundreds of leading educational institutions that signed 1990's Talloires Declaration. These institutions pledged to make sustainability the foundation for campus operations, research, and teaching.

PROMPT Inc (PROMPT) is both a private corporation and a non-profit organization whose efforts are supported financially by the Quebec government and industry in the ICT sector. Its objective is to reinforce the Quebec innovation system and increase the benefits of public investments to research. Prompt’s mission is to enhance the competitiveness of companies in the ICT sector through research partnerships with universities and Quebec public research centers. These research partnerships are jointly financed by the private sector, the Quebec government and the government of Canada. PROMPT has recently been building a Green Next Generation Internet initiative involving a large critical mass of domestic and foreign partners. (www.promptinc.org)


CONTEXT

The signatories to this agreement recognize that:

1. Global climate change is occurring and that society has a responsibility to address it;

2. Cyber-infrastructure, research networks, and information communication technologies are critical tools in helping North American universities and research centers reduce their GHG emissions;

3. Many universities throughout North America are moving toward carbon-neutral strategies either on a voluntary basis, or as part of a government mandate; and

4. UCSD, UBC and PROMPT wish to further promote their respective objectives by providing for appropriate collaborations and interconnections between their researchers, public sector organizations, and industry partners.


AGREEMENT

Therefore, UCSD, UBC and PROMPT agree as follows:

1. To explore and share best practices in reducing GHG emissions at their respective institutions and more specifically to develop methods to share GHG emission data for ICT equipment (ISO 14062) and baseline emission data for cyber-infrastructure and networks as per ISO 14064, either through a common registry or other means.

2. To strategically engage the appropriate national organizations in their respective countries toward securing resources that will support various instruments and test beds - such as UCSD’s “GreenLight Project” and PROMPT’s G-NGI - to enable measurement of ISO 14062 life cycle and ISO 14064 project baseline emission data.

3. To work with national funding bodies in their respective countries for the establishment of cyber-infrastructure programs to explore carbon reduction strategies enabled, either directly or indirectly, by new network and distributed computing architectures such as PROMPT G-NGI, OptiPuter and CineGrid.

4. To collaborate with appropriate wide area research networks to explore methodologies and architectures to decrease GHG emissions, including options such as relocation of resources to renewable energy sites, virtualization, etc.

5. To explore the potential for “virtual” carbon trading systems, whereby carbon offsets earned through a variety of GHG reduction mechanisms are traded between participating institutions in exchange for access to cyber-infrastructure resources (grid computational cycles, wide area network bandwidth, research funding and or other virtual services.)

6. To explore the creation of a multi-sector pilot of a generalized carbon trading system including stakeholders from government, industry, and universities.

7. To collaborate with each other and with government agencies and departments and other organizations in their respective countries to promote and encourage other universities, institutions and organizations such as EDUCAUSE, CENIC, Compute Canada, CANARIE, and CUCCIO to be additional signatories to this Memorandum of Understanding.