Preparing for Climate Change through Energy Internet and eVehicles: New Educause Report on Green IT for the campus

Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview

Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.

Linking renewable energy with high speed Internet using fiber to the home combined with autonomous eVehicles and dynamic charging where vehicle's batteries are charged as it travels along the road, may provide for a whole new "energy Internet" infrastructure for linking small distributed renewable energy sources to users that is far more robust and resilient to survive climate change than today's centralized command and control infrastructure. These new energy architectures will also significantly reduce our carbon footprint. For more details please see:

Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37

Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG

High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP

Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g

How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd

Sunday, January 18, 2009

New Educause Report on Green IT for the campus

[Educause has released an excellent report on Green IT for higher ed. Most people are surprised at the volume CO2 emitted by our higher ed institutions. Although there is no precise data, back of the envelope calculations suggest that Higher ed produces anywhere up to 10% of all CO2 in the USA. This is greater than the combined emissions of steel smelting and cement manufacture. Universities on average produce between 200,000 to 500,000 metric tons annually of CO2 of which one or third or half is from the campus IT and data centers. However, there is good news. Universities are well positioned to significantly reduce their GHG footprint and earn significant dollars through the sale of carbon offsets by adopting Green IT strategies through the use of high speed optical research networks. For more details please see the presentation I gave at the Educause Summit on “How Universities can play a Leadership Role in helping reduce carbon emissions and moving to a zero carbon economy” http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/educause-green-it-summit-nov-13-presentation -- BSA]

EDUCAUSE Releases White Paper from IT Greening and Sustainability Summit
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/TheRoleofITinCampusSustai/48000

Last November, EDUCAUSE held a two-day IT Greening and Sustainability Summit in Adelphi, Maryland, at the University of Maryland, University College. Those participating included several thought leaders in the industry—a cross-section of relevant higher education professionals, as well as those outside the academy. EDUCAUSE has released a white paper, The Role of IT in Campus Sustainability Efforts, which captures key findings from the brainstorming, discussion, and resource sharing and outlines a higher education agenda for moving forward.