Preparing for Climate Change through Energy Internet and eVehicles: Green Revolving Funds can help fund costs of cloud computing and R&E networking

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

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Green Revolving Funds can help fund costs of cloud computing and R&E networking

[There have been some interesting new developments in university Green Revolving Funds (GRF) that I believe could be a significant revenue opportunity for cloud suppliers and R&E networks
. In this age of severe financial constraints and cutbacks for universities, new revenue models are needed to sustain advanced cyber-infrastructure in support of research and education. In recent years, GRFs have become increasingly popular on campuses in the United States and Canada. The funds operate and are managed by the university, with loans issued to university departments or campus groups. As of February 2011, there were 52 active green revolving funds in the United States and Canada. These funds were traditionally earmarked for energy efficiency applications like changing light bulbs or boilers. But increasingly they are now being used for IT applications.

Most green initiatives involve ICT in some form or another. A good example is Iowa State University that borrowed $300 from the university GRF to install energy saving software on over 500 computers, which is projected to result in over $49,000 in annual energy savings for the university.

One GRF model, that is gaining popularity, is national or state based GRF funds like Salix in the UK which received over $10m pounds from the UK government. These funds are also being targeted to support IT energy reduction as for example the recent funding of 2 million pounds to University of St. Andrews.

Another model, that is being explored is where the NREN operates a national GRF, sponsored by the national/state government or collectively on behalf of the institutions. Network membership or users fees can then be deducted against the fund, if the institution undertakes activities to reduce their IT energy impact through the use of clouds, remote collocation, offloading campus network management, content peering and other such services.

CANARIE, through the Greenstar program in partnership with the Canadian Standards Association has developed process and procedures on measuring the detailed energy costs savings that are possible through such arrangements. Some pointers—BSA]

Good Overview of Green Revolving Funds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_Loan_Fund

JISC white paper: Using IT to go green at universities and revolving green funds: briefing paper
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/briefingpapers/2011/goinggreen.aspx

CANARIE- Greenstar-CSA document
http://www.greenstarnetwork.com/index.php/en/protocol/gsn-protocol

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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
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