$1 Billion University Green program launched - CIO and NRENs could be big beneficiary

[The $1 billion green challenge is inspired by the exceptional performance of existing green revolving funds operated by many universities worldwide.
 Green revolving funds are either part of a  university endowment program or publicly traded entities.  They make investments in energy efficiency and GHG reduction initiatives. The pay back of the investment is through energy savings over several years or, in those markets that have cap and trade, through the sale of GHG offsets. The average return on green revolving fund is 32%!

As I have blogged many times, several studies in Europe, Canada and the US have shown that ICT can represent up to 40% of the electrical energy consumption at university, of which 15-25% can be in the campus data center alone, and another 15% in “closet clusters” scattered across the campus.  In a recent  study conducted by the Carbon Disclosure Project, they claim that commercial cloud computing can reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions by as much as 50%.

In these days of severe financial constraint, NRENs and Campus CIOs have to find new ways to reduce costs.  The obvious low hanging fruit is to move, as much as possible the closet clusters and campus data center facilities to commercial clouds.  Not only will this save energy and GHG costs, but also will obviate the need for huge capital investment in computer hardware.  Other obvious money saving practices are to power laptop and cell phone charging stations with roof top solar panels or micro windmills, deploy solar/wind powered WiFi nodes, and use on the move electric charging for campus utility vehicles, etc

As I have blogged in the past, those NRENs who have entered the market of brokering commercial cloud services, should be able to make those services plus the network connectivity almost free to the university by leveraging these green revolving funds and through the energy and capital cost savings enjoyed by the CIO.

However, one of the biggest challenges of tapping into green revolving funds, is that they are almost exclusively targeted at facilities people.  Campus IT folk and NRENs need to educate managers of such funds the IT and networking can play a much more significant role in reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions then traditional facilities based solutions.  Funding councils can also play a significant role by making commercial cloud costs an eligible research expense and promoting the development of research tools that use commercial clouds such as NSF XSEDE, Australian NeCTAR, Globus OnLIne, SURFconext, Galaxy, etc


$1 Billion University Green Challenge Launches
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/23028



The $1 Billion Green Challenge, launched this week, challenges universities and other nonprofits to invest that amount in a revolving fund that finances energy efficiency upgrades on campuses. Harvard, Stanford, and other leading universities are the first to  commit $65 million to to finance serious upgrades in energy efficiency. The Challenge is inspired by the exceptional performance of existing green revolving funds, which have a median annual return on investment of 32%, as documented by Greening The Bottom Line, a report published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute.
A bright spot in a rocky economy, these profitable investments are helping create green jobs in campus communities, while lowering operating costs on college and university campuses.
[..]
32 universities have announced they'll commit funds to the Green Challenge. In addition to Harvard and Stanford, Arizona State, Caltech, Dartmouth, George Washington, Middlebury, and others have signed on.

[…]
The Billion Dollar Green Challenge was launched at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education conference in Pittsburgh. With more than 2,500 participants, the conference is the largest gathering on higher education sustainability.



Blue-chip companies could reduce their carbon emissions by 50% if they migrate their data storage operations to the cloud, a new study says.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/07/cloud-computing-cut-carbon-emissions?newsfeed=true

The study conducted by the Carbon Disclosure Project in London focussed on large IT companies in France and the UK and found that they could achieve large cost savings and carbon reductions by 2020 if they moved their IT systems to shared data networks.
Big IT companies are also the developers of cloud services and they are keen to see expansion of the services. The study follows a recent forecast that use of cloud services could triple in the next two years. The Open Data Center Alliance, an umbrella group of more than 300 companies including global banks, released a statement last week saying they had planned to adopt cloud services much faster than thought.
[…]
For example by 2020, large UK companies that use cloud computing could achieve annual energy savings of £1.2 billion (€1.39 billion) and carbon reductions equivalent to the annual emissions of over 4 million passenger vehicles, the study says.


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Green Internet Consultant. Practical solutions to reducing GHG emissions such as free broadband and electric highways. http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/

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