Investment Strategies for Smart Grids and Meters

[I often meet with VCs and entrepreneurs who want to learn more about the revenue opportunities of Smart Grids. It is seen as the hot new technology that will create vast fortunes for next generation of entrepreneurs. For a long time I have been extremely skeptical of many of the wild exaggerated claims made about the current generation of smart grids and the opportunity to make a return on investment. However I now believe there some significant opportunities with some upcoming technology, especially in the 400Hz power space. But before we look at these technologies we must take into consideration several points of reality with regards to this smart meter/grid market:

1. The real price of electricity in most of the world, but especially in North America has been declining over the last 30 years. If price of electricity is dropping why do we suddenly need smart meters and/or grids? Why has this become so hot an issue?
2. Most utilities, perhaps excluding those in the UK, have surplus generating capacity. This surplus capacity has largely arisen from the de-industrialization of our society in the past decade. Much of this heavy industry has decamped to Asia and the third world and is unlikely to ever return. Why would utilities want to reduce demand for energy when they have huge surplus capacity?
3. New shale gas discoveries are significantly lowering the capital and operating cost of new power plants, especially those used for peak power demands. At one time the argument was made that demand side metering would eliminate the need to build power plants for peak demand
4. The power plant utility culture is extremely conservative. Their whole ethos is built around selling more power. Although they will pay lip service to various green strategies such as smart meters and grids, fundamentally they need to respond to the demands of their owners – whether they be government or shareholders and make as much money as possible selling power.
5. There have only a handful studies on the potential energy savings of smart meters. Savings of 10-15% are claimed, but this is usually with highly motivated individuals and communities. Real world deployment may result in significantly less savings. We all remember the early 500 channel broadband deployments that were done in Florida which failed after the initial enthusiasm in the beginning waned in the face of real world economics. I suspect today’s smart grids are going through the same peak of enthusiasm before the inevitable trough of disillusionment
6. According to the IEA, consumer electronics is now the biggest consumption of power in most home as opposed to traditional appliances. A lot of this power draw is from stand-by power consumption which has little effect on peak load demand. Demand type metering will have little effect on this type of load.
7. The largest portion of most consumer’s electric bill is not consumption, but fixed charges such as debt retirement, infrastructure upgrades, transmission line charges etc. Smart meters or grids will have little effect on these non-consumption charges.

It is important to note that there are at least 3 primary markets for Smart grids/meters:

1. Smart grid backbone infrastructure. This technology allows the utility to monitor phase, power factor, transformer efficiency etc. This market is dominated by companies like Eaton, Cutler-Hammer, Johnson Controls etc.
2. Demand Management systems and meters. This technology allows utilities to manage HVAC and other systems in order to reduce peak demand. Most smart meters being installed by utilities today are to implement demand management.
3. Load Management systems. This technology allows customers to more effectively manage their own load and hopefully reduce overall energy consumption. This is where most entrepreneurs and VCs hope to make vast fortunes.

My suggest investment strategies for smart grids/meters:

1. Use the Internet model of technology development. The Internet only came about because brilliant engineers realized that a new type of network could be deployed as an overlay over the existing telephone infrastructure without requiring any of the existing complex telephone control and signaling mechanisms. The same lesson needs to be adapted for next generation power systems. Avoid dealing with the utilities at all costs. The utilities are extremely conservative and fundamentally it is not in their self interest to deploy any technology that reduces demand for their basic service. We need technologies that will allow us to build a power distribution overlay network on top of the existing power infrastructure without requiring the approval of the utilities. Such a technology already exists and it is called 400 Hz power systems. They are used in aircraft and military systems. They can easily be adopted to run over existing power infrastructure at most institutions and campuses by multiplexing with existing 60 Hz systems. 400 Hz power systems are ideal for distributing power from renewable energy sources such as on campus wind mills and solar panels. 400 Hz systems are ideal for interconnection to ICT equipment which has steady but low volume power draw and can be easily adapted to variable power conditions. 400 Hz allows the disruption of power without being caught up in the complexity of interconnecting to the utility, feed in tariffs etc. They are also ideal for small community grids using renewable power

2. Focus on carbon not energy. Energy costs are getting cheaper and likely to continue in price because of surplus power and advent of shale gas power plants. The only thing that will make electricity more expensive is some sort of price on carbon. Despite the failure of Copenhagen and the latest machinations of the US Congress a price on carbon is inevitable. Regardless of whether it is a carbon tax or a more sensible cap and reward, or perhaps cap and dividend, electricity generated by fossil fuels will go up in price. Technologies and smart meters that can differentiate and negotiate between different sources of power will be important.

3. Focus on working with energy too cheap to meter. Remember that old slogan? Believe it or not it is possible to produce electricity that is too cheap to meter. But you aint going to get that kind of power from your local friendly utility. On campus windmills can produce very low cost power, although not free, in many cases it makes no sense to meter. The problem is the high degree of variability in power. Developing technology solutions ( in addition to storage) that are adaptable to highly variable will be attractive. Besides most proposed cap and trade plans call for at least 30% of utility power to come from highly variable renewable sources as well. The utilities will be desperate to find customers who can use this type of power

4. Focus on ICT. Computers and networks are the adaptable technologies to using 400 Hz and/or variable power. Reliability can be achieved through numerous such as clouds, distributing computing etc. ICT does not need a 5 nines reliable power system, just like the Internet never needed a 5 nines telephone system. If ICT composes at least 30-50% energy consumption in a typical building then removing this load from the 60Hz utility supply will have a big impact.

In summary these are the technologies I look for:

1. Consumer or intuitional grade 400/60 Hz multiplex power systems
2. Renewable power systems and electronics that can feed 400 Hz power
3. Adaptable ICT equipment that can use fluctuating power sources
4. Smart meters that can negotiate power from different sources such as renewable power, 400 Hz power and finally utility power
Bill

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Turning university campuses into "Living Labs of the Greener Future"

[Here is a great example of the type of detailed metering that campuses will need in order to convert saving in IT such as clouds and virtualization into additional funding for researchers and educators. Some excerpts from UCSD press release—BSA]

See also Educause paper on this subject:
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/ERVolume442009/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume44/185178

A major step forward in turning university campuses into "Living Labs of the Greener Future" - UCSD's Energy Dashboardhttp://bit.ly/boeJJ2


UC San Diego Energy Dashboard to Help Campus Curb Appetite for Power

San Diego, March 29, 2010 -- After an extensive period of testing, researchers have launched an Internet portal to showcase the real-time measurement and visualization of energy use on the University of California, San Diego campus.

...

The UC San Diego Energy Dashboard (http://energy.ucsd.edu/) allows users to see up-to-the-second information on a structure-by-structure basis for 60 of the largest buildings on the La Jolla campus. The data is provided by UC San Diego Physical Plant Services from over 200 energy meters providing energy usage at the building level. The portal also features information coming from roughly 40 individual power meters that measure energy consumption in the office, e.g., a computer and monitor drawing power from a single socket. A denser deployment of meters, which would measure and display individuals’ energy use, is currently under planning and development.
…
The Energy Dashboard grew out of a simple premise. “If you cannot measure energy use, you will not be able to make much headway in reducing your energy footprint,” said Yuvraj Agarwal, a Research Scientist in the Jacobs School of Engineering’s Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department.


“Energy models of buildings are decades old, and nobody was looking to see if those were still valid,” added Agarwal, principal architect of the dashboard. “People tend to think that by shutting off the lights in an office, they’ve done their part for the environment. In fact, our measurements indicate that personal computers can account for almost 25 percent of energy consumption of a building, and most of the time, these PCs are turned on but are not actually in use. If you also include servers and data centers, the contribution of so-called IT equipment can be a staggering 50 percent of total baseline energy use, because a lot of the energy is used during nights and weekends when utilization for these PCs and servers tends to be very low.”

The tools available on the Energy Dashboard include real-time power measurement of the entire UCSD campus; energy consumption for each building; and power usage of individual devices such as PCs and servers that are plugged into electrical sockets in some CSE offices. The campus meters are all viewable by the public, but access to the individual meters is currently restricted to the owner of that meter (for privacy reasons).


The Web portal provides statistics updated at least once every minute on total power consumption, power generation, imports from San Diego Gas & Electric, and a comparison between power usage and production. (UC San Diego produces about 82 percent of its annual energy load using 1.2 megawatts of electricity from photovoltaic panels and a 30-megawatt natural gas-fired co-generation plant.) To locate energy-use data on each building, visitors to the Energy Dashboard can select the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, or any of the university’s six undergraduate colleges (e.g., both the CSE Building and Atkinson Hall are located on the Warren College campus).

..
“According to some estimates, buildings account for roughly 70 percent of electrical power use in the United States and approximately 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Gupta, who is also the associate director of Calit2 on the UCSD campus. “UC San Diego is rapidly becoming an important testbed for technologies to improve energy efficiency, and the Energy Dashboard is an important step toward achieving that goal.”
The researchers were able to identify where peaks in energy consumption came from and the primary components of baseline energy use – including IT’s large energy drain even when computers were not in use (e.g., at night or on weekends when the computers are often left on, just in case the user ever wants to connect in remotely or they are running a background application that requires the machine to be powered on).
“Buildings with a large IT footprint can therefore reduce consumption significantly by decreasing their base energy load,” concluded Agarwal. “Our ability to look at energy use in fine detail gave us greater insight about how to reduce power consumption significantly in these campus buildings. To do that, you have to create effectively duty-cycled buildings.”
..
To improve the value of data in the UC San Diego Energy Dashboard, they are also working with a private company on a less expensive plug-level meter. Today individual meters that can monitor energy use remotely cost approximately $200 each; Agarwal thinks that if they can get that price down to the $30-$50 range, individuals wanting to track their own carbon footprint will be happy to invest in a meter that would transmit its real-time data to the Energy Dashboard, where the user would be able to use the portal’s tools to track their own usage – and even compare it to the energy profile of a colleague in the next office. “Working with a set of very creative and intelligent students, and leveraging their talent to address some of the energy issues of today, is also immensely satisfying since it feels like you are solving a real-world problem in the end,” said Agarwal. Among the graduate students working on the Energy Dashboard project: Ph.D. student Thomas Weng, a co-author on the November 2009* paper with Agarwal and Gupta.
According to Agarwal, his group is now working on an Energy Dashboard API that will make it possible for anyone at UC San Diego to integrate their own power meter into the dashboard and take advantage of its visualization and comparison features. In the longer term, the researchers are looking into ways to release the API to the larger community outside of UC San Diego, so that anyone with the appropriate energy meter can post, visualize and compare their energy use data on an externally available Energy Dashboard.
* “The Energy Dashboard: Improving the Visibility of Energy Consumption at a Campus-Wide Scale,” Yuvraj Agarwal, Thomas Weng, Rajesh Gupta, First ACM Workshop on Embedded Sensing Systems For Energy-Efficiency In Buildings, November 2009.
“Somniloquy: Augmenting Network Interfaces to Reduce PC Energy Usage,” Yuvraj Agarwal, Steve Hodges, James Scott, Ranveer Chandra, Paramvir Bahl, and Rajesh Gupta. In Proceedings of USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI ’09), April 2009.
“SleepServer: A Software-Only Approach for Reducing the Energy Consumption of PCs within Enterprise Environments,” Yuvraj Agarwal, Stefan Savage, and R. Gupta.
To Appear at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX '10), June 2010.
Doug Ramsey, 858-822-5825, dramsey@ucsd.edu

A UCSD/UCI PARTNERSHIP > California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology Contact Us
home : about us : people : research : partners : education : newsroom : events Calit2 is one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation


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MUST READ: Why Cloud Computing Leaders Need to Demand Clean Power

[As many of you know I have long advocated that we need to build our cloud infrastructure and data centers at locations where we use renewable power. All the energy efficiency and low PUE in the world is meaningless if the power for the data center is generated by fossil fuels. Some excerpts from an excellent column by Katie Fehrenbacher –BSA]

Why Cloud Computing Leaders Need to Demand Clean Power http://bit.ly/9jw6Nd

Why Cloud Computing Leaders Need to Demand Clean Power
By Katie Fehrenbacher Mar. 30, 2010, 12:00am PDT No Comments
60
The launch of Apple’s (a AAPL) iPad this weekend represents a lot of firsts for the tech industry: a device with some of the most media attention of all time, and the start of an $8 billion tablet application market. But the iPad also represents one of a wave of media-consuming mobile devices that increasingly depends on “the cloud” — basically the Internet and data centers — to deliver hosted services and digital content, and will help contribute to a massive growth in energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with so-called cloud-computing over the coming years.
According to a report published Tuesday from the environmental researchers at Greenpeace , the energy consumption and carbon emissions of cloud computing are already significantly higher than previously thought. Using data from The Climate Group’s Smart 2020 report, which came out in 2008 and relied on carbon emission projections from McKinsey, Greenpeace added in the energy consumption info for data centers reported by the Environmental Protection Agency. The result is that Greenpeace says that the energy consumption of cloud computing in 2007 was 622.6 billion kWh, which is 1.3 times larger than reported by the Smart 2020 report.
This new, larger estimate of energy consumption associated with cloud computing emphasizes just how big the problem will be as the sector grows over the coming years. Cloud computing is a trend that has just started (see our Structure 2010 conference) and business-focused cloud computing initiatives like Microsoft’s Azure platform have recently launched. Using the more aggressive cloud computing energy footprint, Greenpeace says that cloud computing will consume 1,963.74 billion kWh of energy by 2020.
All of this isn’t to say that cloud computing companies need to curb their growth. Rather, they need to focus on making data centers and servers more energy efficient and increasingly look to source more clean power. Greenpeace points to Facebook’s decision to build its first-ever data center in Prineville, Ore., which will primarily be powered by coal (GigaOM Pro, subscription required), as a major missed opportunity.
Instead, Internet giants like Google, Yahoo, and Apple should use their energy buying power to demand more access to economic clean power and to support policies that will help drive the proliferation of low-cost renewables. Greenpeace says:
The potential of ICT technologies and cloud computing to drive low-carbon economic growth underscore the importance of building cloud infrastructure in places powered by clean renewable energy. Companies like Facebook, Google, and other large players in the cloud computing market must advocate for policy change at the local, national and international levels to ensure that, as their appetite for energy increases, so does the supply of renewable energy.
We’ll be looking at the issues of energy consumption and the carbon footprint of information technology, data centers and servers at our Green:Net conference. Google’s Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl will be discussing some of the search engine’s industry-leading green data center work, and Greenpeace’s Casey Harrell, one of the authors of the report, will be discussing how the Internet leads to dematerialization, or replacing atoms with bits.


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Australian govt sets out ICT carbon reduction targets

[Kudos to the Australian government on this important step. I estimate such a Green ICT strategy would save up to $100 million for the Canadian government and over $1 billion for US government (more details to follow). All governments are under serious financial pressure to cut costs – a green ICT strategy is the low hanging fruit and does not need cutting jobs or pay. Relocating data centers to low carbon/low energy sites is an important first step ]

http://bit.ly/dpS2a8

Australian govt sets out ICT carbon reduction targets

Australia’s Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, has reportedly laid out a target to cut roughly 13% of the carbon emissions from its data centre operations over the next five years.

According to this report by ITwire,Tanner told a conference at CeBIT that the Australian government is the largest data centre operator in the country - larger than the country’s four big banks combined.

The goal is to reduce the estimated 300,000 tonnes of emissions annually today by 40,000 tonnes on an annual basis in five years, Tanner said.

Under a 15-year data centre strategy announced by Tanner, all departments and agencies will have to measure and report the energy consumption of their data centres and ICT infrastructure annually.

Tanner added that future government procurement of data centres will put a major consideration on the ‘green credentials’ of the site and infrastructure. The locations of data centres, as well as other contributing factors, such as free air cooling, and access to telecommunications and power infrastructure would also play key parts in the decision making process. The new procurement parametres will come into effect in the second half of the year.
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Microsoft Research Paper, Measuring Energy use of a Virtual Machine

This is a very exciting development in terms of directly measuring the carbon savings of virtualization or moving to a cloud.

http://bit.ly/9011MX



Joulemeter: VM, Server, Client, and Software Energy Usage

Joulemeter is a software based mechanism to measure the energy usage of virtual machines (VMs), servers, desktops, laptops, and even individual softwares running on a computer.

Joulemeter estimates the energy usage of a VM, computer, or software by measuring the hardware resources (CPU, disk, memory, screen etc) being used and converting the resource usage to actual power usage based on automatically learned realistic power models.

Joulemeter can be used for gaining visibility into energy use and for making several power management and provisioning decisions in data centers, client computing, and software design.

For more technical details on the system here is their paper.

Virtual Machine Power Metering and Provisioning
Aman Kansal, Feng
Zhao, Jie Liu
Microsoft Research
Nupur Kothari
University of Southern
California
Arka Bhattacharya
IIT Kharagpur


ABSTRACT
Virtualization is often used in cloud computing platforms for its
several advantages in efficient management of the physical resources.
However, virtualization raises certain additional challenges, and
one of them is lack of power metering for virtual machines (VMs).
Power management requirements in modern data centers have led
to most new servers providing power usage measurement in hardware
and alternate solutions exist for older servers using circuit and
outlet level measurements. However, VM power cannot be measured
purely in hardware. We present a solution for VM power metering.
We build power models to infer power consumption from resource
usage at runtime and identify the challenges that arise when
applying such models for VM power metering. We show how existing
instrumentation in server hardware and hypervisors can be
used to build the required power models on real platforms with low
error. The entire metering approach is designed to operate with
extremely low runtime overhead while providing practically useful
accuracy. We illustrate the use of the proposed metering capability
for VM power capping, leading to significant savings in power provisioning
costs that constitute a large fraction of data center power
costs. Experiments are performed on server traces from several
thousand production servers, hosting Microsoft’s real-world applications
such as Windows Live Messenger. The results show that
not only does VM power metering allows reclaiming the savings
that were earlier achieved using physical server power capping, but
also that it enables further savings in provisioning costs with virtualization.

Note there will be a desktop and laptop version available soon.

Download: A freely downloadable version of the Joulemeter software that measures laptop and desktop energy usage will be be available in a few weeks. Watch this space!

NY Times Andy Revkin on Climate Change and Tipping Points

[Great column in today's NY Times on Climate change and tipping points. Thanks to Dewayne Hendricks for this pointer--BSA]

See also my presentation on this topic:

http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/cenic-green-it


‘Tipping Points’ and the Climate Challenge
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/tipping-points-and-the-climate-challenge/



A growing effort to clarify such risks has yielded what amounts to the same message climate experts have been conveying for more than two decades: More emissions of greenhouse gases raise the odds of trouble.

USGS report finds that future climate shifts have been underestimated and warns of debilitating abrupt shift in climate that would be devastating.

Tipping elements in the Earth's climate - National Academies of Science:
“Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic climate change. “

New revenue opportunites for R&E networks in helping universities reduce their energy costs

R&E networks (NRENs) around the world are under serious financial pressure. Direct government funding has pretty well dried up and their members are also suffering financial constraints as governments world wide face huge budget deficits. At next weeks CENIC conference I will be proposing a possible new funding scenario for R&E networks that not only provides them with a new source of revenue but also has the potential to reduce overall energy costs for their member institutions. Not only do the networks get a new source revenue it will also help their member institutions reduce their costs in these challenging times of fiscal constraint.

The concept I propose is based on the idea of cap and reward similar to the new bill in the US congress called Cap and Dividend.

Computers, networks and data centers consume 30-50% of the electricity on most university campuses. Most universities and colleges are committed to reducing their energy consumption and reducing their carbon footprint. Reducing the energy consumption and
CO2 footprint of fixed infrastructure such as building and labs is difficult, if not impossible. The challenge for many universities is that in most cases they do not pass on the costs of power, cooling and space to researchers. As such there is little incentive for researchers to explore new models of cyber-infrastructure that might reduce the institutions carbon footprint. As well the purchase of offsets, even where universities are mandated to acquire them has been complicated by the fact that there are very few high quality verifiable offsets available in either the voluntary or regulated carbon markets. This is further complicated by the fact that it takes considerable time to develop new offset verifiable and auditable standards for cyber-infrastructure tools.

But ICT and cyber-infrastructure is the low hanging fruit of an effective green strategy at our universities. Virtualization, clouds and relocating computer applications and servers to low cost energy sites could have a big impact on an institutions energy costs.
Studies done by MIT and Rutgers indicate energy savings as much as 45%.

Most R&E networks already charge a membership or participation fee based on the size of the institution or the amount of research dollars they receive or some other similar metric. I propose that R&E networks should instead charge member institutions a membership or participation fee based on their annual total electricity consumption.

In exchange for this fee the R&E network commits to provide a range of ICT services that will help the university reduce its energy consumption and CO2 footprint by providing a range of low carbon ICT and cyber-infrastructure services. These would include such things as remote data storage, application hosting, video conferencing services, cloud computing, optical lightpaths, etc. The university is also encouraged to promote these services internally to its research, faculty and students to help the institution take advantage of this offering from the R&E network. If the university manages to reduce its energy consumption, it is not penalized in any way in terms of benefiting from these services and it gets the additional bonus of reduced costs for energy and network services.

I also suggest that universities establish an internal cap and reward fund to promote the adoption of low carbon ICT and cyber-infrastructure, as offered by the R&E networks and by the institution itself. Such a fund could be made up from the money already committed to make then institution carbon neutral, for those institutions who are committed to that path by government fiat or on a voluntary basis. Rather than spending money on dubious carbon offsets, researchers, faculty, staff and students would be encouraged to adopt low energy and carbon ICT practices such as using external clouds and hosting datasets off campus or using distributed optical computing infrastructure such as Optiputer. Researchers would be also encouraged to use video conferencing instead of travel. For those who adopt such a strategy with demonstrable energy savings would receive additional research funding from this special cap and reward fund and access to the low energy services offered by the R&E network.

Another green revenue strategy is to provide a low cost national mobile cell phone Internet service for students and faculty with data offload at the nearest campus or school. But I will save details on that strategy for another blog.

Comments or suggestions for improvement on this concept are most appreciated.

Bill

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Cap and Dividend versus Cap and Reward

[As many of you may know I have long argued for a program similar to cap and dividend where the money from a cap and trade system or carbon taxes is returned directly to consumers. However I have advocated that we use carbon rewards where instead of simply returning money to consumers we create a virtuous circle where the consumer is rewarded with virtual products and services delivered over the Internet. For more details please see http://green-broadband.blogspot.com-- BSA]

Cap and Dividend versus Cap and reward

Cap-and-dividend: the jolt Harper needs?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/cap-and-dividend-the-jolt-harper-needs/article1461994/


http://www.good.is/post/the-third-way-carbon-cap-and-dividend

Can we settle the carbon pricing debate by giving the money back to the people?

The loudest debate in climate policy at the moment is no longer about whether or not there should be a price on carbon emissions (there will be), but rather how to go about pricing the most dangerous greenhouse gas.

As long as this debate has been going on, two camps have emerged as the favorites of conventional wisdom—the widely lauded cap-and-trade system and the underdog, a straight-up carbon tax. Plenty of ink has been spilled criticizing and defending the two. Cap-and-trade, say the tax camp, would be too complicated, too riddled with loopholes, and too easy for Washington to screw up. A tax, counter C&Ters, is a political nonstarter, enough said. Both proposals, though, share a problem that more or less renders all other points moot: if you make energy more expensive to produce, you make energy more expensive to buy. Meaning that until clean energy gets cheaper (which it will), anyone with a home to heat, a Civic to fill, or a refrigerator to keep cool is going to take a hit in the wallet. Meaning the voting public isn’t going to be happy about putting a price on carbon. Meaning elected officials aren’t going to support it. (See: the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, a pretty weak carbon pricing plan that was still, more or less, dead on arrival.)

True, scientific—and economic—evidence now creates an even stronger case for urgent greenhouse gas reductions than it did even a year ago when Lieberman-Warner was introduced. And, true, leadership on Capitol Hill and in the White House are much more amenable to firm action on climate change than they were even on January 19th. (And that’s a whopper of an understatement.) But it’s still pretty much impossible to see a filibuster-busting 60 senators standing behind any proposal that—in the eyes of their respective constituencies—simply makes energy cost more.

Enter the Great Third Way, more formally known as cap-and-dividend. The cap part is familiar—a set number of pollution permits would be auctioned off, placing a firm, predetermined, and annually-dropping ceiling on carbon emissions. Cap-and-dividend’s first twist away from the typical cap-and-trade orthodoxy comes in where, exactly, the carbon is capped. Historically, cap-and-trade systems—like the acid rain program that so effectively reduced sulfur dioxide in the early 1990s—place a cap at the end of the industrial cycle, where the pollution left the smokestack. That’s easy enough to do when there are relatively few factories and plants emitting SO2.

This still leads to pricier power—the mine will charge more for the coal, and your utility will send along a higher bill for electricity. Which brings us to the meat of this “third way”—the dividend.

All (or most) of the revenue raised from carbon permit auctions would go back, in equal shares, to the American people. Barnes calls it an “Atmospheric Trust” that would work like the Alaskan Permanent Fund, which sends everyone in the state a check each year for their share of oil revenue.


We’ll soon find out. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is introducing a bill this week that would cap carbon emissions by 2012 and distribute 90 percent of revenue from an “upstream” auction directly to Americans in the form of monthly dividend checks. Van Hollen already has one supporter in Barnes, who called the bill “beautiful.” Time to see if the American public and their elected reps agree.

http://www.capanddividend.org/

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Obama orders 28% reduction of government-wide GHGs - Government CIOs are under the gun

[As I have blogged previously Government and other not-for-profit sector CIOs such as universities are soon going to be under the gun as the primary agents for reducing GHG emissions in their respective organizations. Information Technology (IT) is responsible up to 50% of the electrical consumption in most of these organizations. But IT has the most tools at hand and greatest flexibility in order to reduce its carbon footprint. Compared to reducing our carbon footprint in other aspects of our lives, IT should be relatively easy. As mentioned in this press release the Government is the single largest energy consumer and it government has a responsibility to its citizens to reduce its own footprint. This is a fantastic annoucement by Obama but is undermined by his own administrations activities where the GSA , NSA and NCRA are build mamoth data centers powered solely by coal fired electrcity in Utah, Wyoming etc . See http://green-broadband.blogspot.com for more details- BSA]



http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/30/obama-federal-government-wide-energy-emissions-cut/

WASHINGTON, DC - President Barack Obama today announced that the Federal Government will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by 28 percent by 2020. Reducing and reporting GHG pollution, as called for in Executive Order 13514 on Federal Sustainability, will ensure that the Federal Government leads by example in building the clean energy economy. Actions taken under this Executive Order will spur clean energy investments that create new private-sector jobs, drive long-term savings, build local market capacity, and foster innovation and entrepreneurship in clean energy industries.

As the single largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy, the Federal Government spent more than $24.5 billion on electricity and fuel in 2008 alone. Achieving the Federal GHG pollution reduction target will reduce Federal energy use by the equivalent of 646 trillion BTUs, equal to 205 million barrels of oil, and taking 17 million cars off the road for one year. This is also equivalent to a cumulative total of $8 to $11 billion in avoided energy costs through 2020. "

As the largest energy consumer in the United States, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient," said President Obama. "Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy."

Federal Departments and Agencies will achieve greenhouse gas pollution reductions by measuring their current energy and fuel use, becoming more energy efficient and shifting to clean energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal. Examples of agency actions that are underway are available on the White House Council on Environmental Quality website and can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/ceq .

Cybera to deploy solar powered data center node for Earth Observation Science

Cybera to Host Solar-Powered Node in Canada's First "Green" Internet

http://cybera.ca/cybera-host-solar-powered-node-canadas-first-green-internet

(January 25, 2010 – Calgary, AB) – Cybera, a non-profit organization accelerating Alberta's competitive advantage research and development, will host the Calgary node for Canada’s first “green” powered internet network. The GreenStar Network Project, an alliance of Canada's leading IT companies, universities and international partners, has been funded by CANARIE, Canada’s research and innovation network, to develop an internet network where the nodes will be powered entirely by wind and solar energy.

GreenStar nodes are small datacentres-in-a-box which are solar-powered and connected to the research network infrastructure with optical fibre. Cybera will install, configure and maintain a solar-powered node in Calgary as part of the GreenStar Network. Cybera is investigating host locations in the University of Calgary’s Research Park.

"This ties in perfectly with Cybera's mandate to support and drive the development of innovative cyberinfrastructure," said Robin Winsor, Cybera President and CEO. "At the same time, it lets us contribute to the goal of building sustainable, energy-smart infrastructure."

GeoChronos, a Cybera project enabling Earth Observation Science researchers to share scientific data and applications via a web portal, will be one of the GreenStar Network’s first users. In 2008, GeoChronos received approximately $900,000 from CANARIE in the first round of its Network-Enabled Platforms program. CANARIE continues to be a supporter of GeoChronos. The Grid Research Centre at the University of Calgary, a Cybera partner, will contribute to the GreenStar Network’s research into carbon-based management of virtual machine mobility. The network’s rollout, led by the Université du Quebec's École de technologie supérieure (ETS) in Montreal, began this month.

"We are incredibly proud to launch the GreenStar Network under the leadership of CANARIE’s Green IT Pilot program,” said Dr. Mohamed Cheriet, Director of Synchromedia at ÉTS and spokesperson for the GreenStar Network. “The GreenStar Network has come together to develop low-carbon technologies, including renewable energy like wind and solar-powered networks, virtualization, carbon quantification procedures, and tools to ensure ICT’s carbon footprint remains under control and doesn’t increase as the world becomes more and more reliant on information and communications technologies."

CANARIE’s Green IT Pilot program has allocated $2.4 million in funding for four ground-breaking Green IT projects aimed at reducing ICT’s carbon footprint and measuring the impact of ICT and cyberinfrastructure on university electrical consumption. The Greenstar Network was the program’s largest funding recipient, receiving $2 million to develop its data network.

"CANARIE has always been a global leader in high-speed networks that enable research and innovation. Now, these Green IT initiatives demonstrate how CANARIE is once again trailblazing the next evolution of networks that are committed to both high performance and the environment," said CANARIE President Guy Bujold.

Participants in the GreenStar Network Project include the Canadian Standards Association, Climate Change Services; the Grid Research Centre, University of Calgary; RackForce Networks Inc.; Prompt Inc.; BastionHost Inc.; Cybera Inc.; Université du Québec a Montréal; ideal Consulting Inc.; Communications Research Centre; and Inocybe Technologies Inc.

email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

IEEE to develop standards for CO2 offsets from Hydro and Wind Power Projects

[This is important news for organizations who are looking to relocate their computers and servers to data centers powered by renewable energy sources. Having a standard set of criteria for offsets from hydro and wind power facilities will go a long way in being able to earn CO2 offsets to pay to move the computer equipment to these facilities. Thanks to Tom Bauman of ClimateCheck for this pointer -- BSA]

IEEE Begins Work on Standard for Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emission Credits from Hydro and Wind Power Projects

http://standards.ieee.org/announcements/ieeeP1595_greenhouse.html


Contact:
Karen McCabe, IEEE-SA Marketing Director
+1 732-562-3824, k.mccabe@ieee.org

PISCATAWAY, N.J., USA, 2 September 2009 -- The IEEE has begun work on a standard which will help hydro- and wind-power projects calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emission credits.

The standard, IEEE P1595(TM), "Standard for Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emission Credits from Small Hydro and Wind Power Projects, and for Grid Baseline Conditions," will establish an internationally acceptable basis for measuring, evaluating and quantifying the eligible, real, measurable, verifiable, and unique reduction in CO2 emissions attributable to the specific generation technologies of wind power and small hydro, for use in emissions trading systems.
In addition, the standard will help provide an answer to the generic question, how can one country or jurisdiction to a greenhouse gas emissions trade be assured and satisfied that it is getting real and true value for a purchased GHG emissions credit from another country or jurisdiction.

The standard will use Project Protocols for Wind Power; Small Hydro and Grid Baseline established by Natural Resources Canada as its seed documents.

IEEE P1595 is sponsored by the Energy Development & Power Generation committee of the IEEE Power & Energy Society.


About the IEEE Standards Association
The IEEE Standards Association, a globally recognized standards-setting body, develops consensus standards through an open process that engages industry and brings together a broad stakeholder community. IEEE standards set specifications and best practices based on current scientific and technological knowledge. The IEEE-SA has a portfolio of over 900 active standards and more than 400 standards under development. For information on the IEEE-SA, see: http://standards.ieee.org.




email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro

More on how Government CIOs can play leadership role addressing climate change

Increasingly many government agencies around the world are building data centers in distant locations in order to get access to large feeds of affordable power. Vivek Kundra, the Federal CIO points out the federal data centers have doubled their energy use. In a recent talk he stated he is actually anti-data center growth for the traditional model. There are 8 GSA data centers, and 23 homeland security data centers. All built on old models with 100s of millions dollars spent to build data centers the size of city block. There needs to be a new way where there are lower costs and a a greener impact.

The NSA new data centers in Utah and Texas are good examples of this trend as well as NCAR's new data center in Wyoming. Most governments around the world are building new data centers to consolidate servers and address the insatiable demand for more data and storage. Each one of these data centers will consume the power equivalent to the entire municipality of Salt Lake City (about 180,000 souls). In many ways, the data centers are becoming the new industrial heavy users of power, especially as the old manufacturing sector slowly declines and is hollowed out from competition and globalization. Unfortunately most of these new data are using coal based power and now are some of the single biggest new sources of CO2 on the planet.

As the world leaders look to address the challenge of climate change one simple gesture would be a commitment that all new public sector data centers should be built where they can use 100% renewable energy.
Forget about all this silliness with respect to energy efficiency, LEED buildings and low PUE ratios. Locating data centers in jurisdictions with renewable power is the most important step governments can take to reduce their respective carbon footprint. As a minimum government CIOs should not be increasing their nation's carbon footprint by building these facilities in jurisdictions that are entirely dependent on coal fired electricity. For those who are interested I am undertaking a study looking at how government and business CIOs can deploy an internal carbon and energy trading scheme to promote adoption of IT tools to reduce the carbon footprint within their organizations
http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/government-cio-and-climate-change


Data Center energy use growing while overall industrial use declines

http://www.greenm3.com/2009/11/data-center-energy-use-growing-while-overall-industrial-use-declines.html

NSA's new data center will consume same amount of power as entire Salt Lake City

http://www.greenm3.com/2009/11/vendor-information-for-nsa-utah-data-center.html

Vivek Kundar the Federal CIO speech on government data centers

http://www.greenm3.com/2010/01/cloud-computing-open-source-containers-federal-govt-new-appsgov-model.html

The UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) also indicates a future direction of how the cost of energy will also government computer operations. The CRC is a groundbreaking piece of legislation designed to help the UK meet its carbon reduction targets by 2020. Basically, the CRC scheme will apply to organisations that had a half-hourly metered electricity consumption greater than 6,000 MWh per year in 2008. Organisations qualifying for CRC would have all their energy use covered by the scheme, this includes emissions from direct energy use as well as electricity purchased. Initially, it is estimated, around 5,000 organisations will qualify, including supermarkets, water companies, banks, local authorities and all central Government Departments.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/lc_uk/crc/crc.aspx

My talk on the important leadership role government CIOs can play in addressing climate change

http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/government-cio-and-climate-change

e-mail: Bill.st.arnaud@gmail.com

twitter: BillStArnaud

Blog: http://green-broadband.blogspot.com

Physicist Models Humanity as "Heat Engine" Argues Difficult to Decrease CO2

[While I agree with some of Garrett's conclusions I am remain optimistic that we can decouple energy consumption from CO2 emissions - hence this is I argue energy efficiency is attempting to solve the wrong problem. I agree with him that energy consumption seems to be constant associated with a growing economy and there is little that we can do to change that. But what we need to do is use energy that produces little or no CO2. Thanks to Jerry Sheehan for this pointer-- BSA]

Physicist Models Humanity as "Heat Engine" Argues Difficult to Decrease CO2


ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2009) — In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions -- the major cause of global warming -- cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.


"It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in carbon dioxide emission rates," says the new paper by Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences.

[..]

The study -- which is based on the concept that physics can be used to characterize the evolution of civilization -- indicates:

* Energy conservation or efficiency doesn't really save energy, but instead spurs economic growth and accelerated energy consumption.
* Throughout history, a simple physical "constant" -- an unchanging mathematical value -- links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions.
* "Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually -- approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy."

Getting Heat for Viewing Civilization as a "Heat Engine"

Garrett says colleagues generally support his theory, while some economists are critical. One economist, who reviewed the study, wrote: "I am afraid the author will need to study harder before he can contribute."

Garrett treats civilization like a "heat engine" that "consumes energy and does 'work' in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy," he says.

[..]

Garrett says his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor."

That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says.

Garrett tested his theory and found this constant relationship between energy use and economic production at any given time by using United Nations statistics for global GDP (gross domestic product), U.S. Department of Energy data on global energy consumption during1970-2005, and previous studies that estimated global economic production as long as 2,000 years ago. Then he investigated the implications for carbon dioxide emissions.

"Economists think you need population and standard of living to estimate productivity," he says. "In my model, all you need to know is how fast energy consumption is rising. The reason why is because there is this link between the economy and rates of energy consumption, and it's just a constant factor."

Garrett adds: "By finding this constant factor, the problem of [forecasting] global economic growth is dramatically simpler. There is no need to consider population growth and changes in standard of living because they are marching to the tune of the availability of energy supplies."

To Garrett, that means the acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions is unlikely to change soon because our energy use today is tied to society's past economic productivity.

"Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter," Garrett says. It is like a child that "grows by consuming food, and when the child grows, it is able to consume more food, which enables it to grow more."


[..]
Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use.

"Making civilization more energy efficient simply allows it to grow faster and consume more energy," says Garrett.

He says the idea that resource conservation accelerates resource consumption -- known as Jevons paradox -- was proposed in the 1865 book "The Coal Question" by William Stanley Jevons, who noted that coal prices fell and coal consumption soared after improvements in steam engine efficiency.


Garrett says often-discussed strategies for slowing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming include mention increased energy efficiency, reduced population growth and a switch to power sources that don't emit carbon dioxide, including nuclear, wind and solar energy and underground storage of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Another strategy is rarely mentioned: a decreased standard of living, which would occur if energy supplies ran short and the economy collapsed, he adds.

"The problem is that, in order to stabilize emissions, not even reduce them, we have to switch to non-carbonized energy sources at a rate about 2.1 percent per year. That comes out to almost one new nuclear power plant per day."

"If society invests sufficient resources into alternative and new, non-carbon energy supplies, then perhaps it can continue growing without increasing global warming," Garrett says.


--

ICT and wireless can eliminate 6.9 Gt of CO2

[Another study pointing to the significant impact that ICT can have on reducing on CO2. But once again they dont mention the need for a proper carbon audit as per ISO 14064. As such any such claims of Co2 reduction are only hot air. Too many people still confuse energy efficiency with carbon reduction. The two are not related. We need to decouple energy issues from carbon emissions and focus on reducing the later -- BSA]

http://www.greentelecomlive.com/?p=1437

ICT can eliminate 5.8 Gt of CO2 by 2020 - IDC

A new IDC report, dubbed the G20 ICT Sustainability Index, has identified some 5.8 billion tons (Gigatons) of CO2 that can eliminated by 2020 with the “focused use of ICT-based solution.” The report was released last week in parallel with the United Nations COP15 meetings in Copenhagen,

As a comparison, the GSMA last month released its own projections that highlighted the potential CO2 reductions from the use of mobile technology at 1.15 Gt CO2e by 2020.

[...]

Huge jump in carbon footprint from telecom and Internet

Huge jump in carbon footprint from telecom and Internet http://bit.ly/4MVcET

About 37 percent of the carbon footprint of the entire information and communication technology sector (ICT) in 2007 was due to the energy consumption of telecom infrastructure and devices, according to the Climate Group (14 percent came from data centers, and 49 percent came from PCs and peripherals). Contrast that with telecom’s carbon footprint figure in 2002 which was 28 percent of ICT’s carbon footprint.

UK’s Carbon reduction commitment legislation – the shape of things to come globally for universities and business

UK’s Carbon reduction commitment legislation – the shape of things to come globally for universities and business http://bit.ly/73VM2a

[...]
the UK has passed legislation called the Carbon Reduction Committment (CRC).

The CRC is a groundbreaking piece of legislation designed to help the UK meet its carbon reduction targets by 2020. Basically, the CRC scheme will apply to organisations that had a half-hourly metered electricity consumption greater than 6,000 MWh per year in 2008. Organisations qualifying for CRC would have all their energy use covered by the scheme, this includes emissions from direct energy use as well as electricity purchased. Initially, it is estimated, around 5,000 organisations will qualify, including supermarkets, water companies, banks, local authorities and all central Government Departments. Qualifying organisations mostly fall below the threshold for the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, but account for around 10% of the UK carbon emissions.

The organisations involved will need to register or make an information disclosure by 30 September 2010. A financial penalty (£5,000 plus a per diem charge for each subsequent working day an organisation fails to submit a report) will be imposed on organisations who fail to meet the deadline.

The first year of the scheme (April 2010-2011) is called the footprint year. Companies are required to submit an audited report of their emissions during the footprint year by 29 July 2011. Again financial penalties will be imposed for failing to meet the deadline.

In the second year, (2011-2012) participants will have to purchase emissions allowances to cover their forecast emissions for 2011/12. And in 2013 auctioning of carbon allowances begins, with all the income from the auctions recycled back to participants by the means of an annual payment based on participants’ average annual emissions since the start of the scheme.

There will be a bonus or penalty according to the organisation’s position in a CRC league table. The league table will be made public thereby enhancing the transparency of companies carbon reporting and hopefully shaming any egregious emitters into reducing their carbon footprint.

I have gone in to a bit of detail about the CRC here because it is difficult enough to find out information about the scheme and most UK business appear to be wholly unprepared for its implementation. The UK Department of Climate Change (I think it is interesting that the UK has a government department of climate change in the first place – how many other governments do?) has an easy to follow guide to the CRC [PDF] available for download which will help.

The CRC is going to be closely watched by other countries and you can be sure it will be used as a model by many to reduce their carbon emissions.

Emerging standards for greenhouse gas emissions for ICT

[These 2 projects are very significant as now we are starting to see some quantifiable standards in order to measure the claims of CO2 abatement through ICT. As you know there are many studies claiming significant reduction of CO2 through ICT - but up to now there has been no independent process to validate these claims. Various energy efficiency schemes are probably the most egregious example of these types of hand waving arguments. While energy efficiency may reduce costs it is very ineffective tool for reducing CO2 emissions as compared to purchasing renewable energy credits or sourcing renewable energy directly. If you are interested in the following opportunities, please contact David Wright or Tony Vetter directly as listed below. Thanks to Bill Munson from ITAC for these pointers -- BSA



----- Forwarded by Bill Munson/ITAC/CA on 08/12/2009 17:33 -----


OPPORTUNITY TO TEST DRIVE EMERGING STANDARDS FOR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS
(a) Product Life Cycle GHG Costs
(b) Supply Chain GHG Costs


The World Resources Institute and the World Business Council on Sustainable
Development have developed standards on how to implement ISO 14064 for
companies and for projects, which have become widely used, particularly in
countries implementing the Kyoto Protocol.

They have now developed 2 new (draft) standards for Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
Accounting for (a) Product Life Cycle GHG Costs and (b) Supply Chain GHG
Costs. They are looking for companies to test-drive their draft standards
with a view to providing feedback on how the drafts can be updated to
provide a final standard. They are particularly interested in
sector-specific information and the ICT sector is a of great importance in
this area, because of its potential to impact GHG emissions both positively
and negatively.
http://www.ghgprotocol.org/standards/product-and-supply-chain-standard

Professor David Wright (dwright@uottawa.ca) at the University of Ottawa is
able to work with a company on this project. A rough division of
responsibilities would be that the company would assess its GHG emissions,
and Dr Wright would assess the impact on the draft standard.
http://www.telfer.uottawa.ca/component/listing,Wright,%20David/option,com_directory/page,viewListing/lid,111/Itemid,116/lang,En/




Shown below is a proposal from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, whois seeking support from ICT industry partners
for their CANARIE study. The key contact is their Project Manager, Global Connectivity, Tony Vetter, he can be reached at tvetter@iisd.ca or 613-288-2024.

ICT network operators and equipment vendors are looking to a variety of
solutions to reduce the GHG footprint of the world's ICT infrastructure.
Efficiency in how data centres consume energy may be part of the solution;
however using renewable energy is another “zero-carbon” option. CANARIE
Inc. invited proposals to their Green IT Pilot Program for projects that
will accelerate the development of, and participation in, national and
international "zero-carbon" cyber infrastructure and network platforms.

CANARIE has awarded funding to IISD for a project to assess the business
case for moving University IT assets to remote, zero-carbon data centre
facilities. Central to the business case will be an examination of whether
Universities could qualify for tradable “carbon offsets” (credits for GHG
reductions achieved which can be sold to industries who need them), a
revenue opportunity which could help underwrite the costs associated with
relocating their IT assets.

We think this project will be of interest to CIOs of all large
organizations because moving IT assets to zero-carbon facilities has not
previously been considered for generating carbon offsets. Further, there
may be other unexpected barriers to relocation of IT assets that could be
resolved through appropriate policy interventions, including jurisdictional
barriers arising from data security policies and capital financing rules,
and challenges associated with the availability of national
telecommunications infrastructure. These will also be explored through this
project.

Rational:
Due to the nature of how carbon credit awarding mechanisms are evolving,
IT organizations may in the end not be able to benefit from the carbon
reductions that their IT initiatives could help realize. This is due to
the concept of “additionality” – whether a project is deemed likely to
have occurred anyway without the support of revenues generated by
selling carbon offset credits.
This project’s assessment could open the door to broader acceptance of
IT asset relocation as a carbon reduction activity that should be
supported through carbon offset financial instruments.
Revenue opportunities from carbon credit trading could accelerate the
development of national and international "zero-carbon" cyber
infrastructure.

The tasks of this project will be to:
estimate depending on data availability, the aggregate carbon footprint
of IT assets and associated data centres at three Canadian Universities
assess the feasibility for Universities to generate carbon offsets if
their IT departments were to move location agnostic IT assets to remote
data centre facilities powered by renewable sources of energy
assess the feasibility of quantifying and selling these offsets in
registries and carbon exchanges;
assess the business case for University IT departments to move IT assets
to remote, zero-carbon data centre facilities, with attention to the
role of offset revenues if accessible to the relevant business unit;
assess the implications of study findings for scaling similar IT asset
relocation schemes for government agencies and institutions, as well as
the private sector


Anticipated insights:
characterization of the carbon incentives or disincentives to scaling
the relocation of IT assets to zero-carbon facility initiatives
long term implications of University IT asset growth projections and
associated carbon penalties
characterization of organizational boundaries encountered in carbon
accounting processes for facilities expenditures, energy consumption and
GHG emissions
characterization of jurisdictional barriers resulting from data security
policies and capital financing rules to the migration of University,
other public sector, and private sector IT infrastructure and services
characterization of the adequacy of National broadband infrastructure
for supporting cost effective access for remote relocation of IT
infrastructure and services



We believe that some ICT companies may be interested helping to determine
whether relocating IT assets to zero-carbon facilities might qualify for
tradable “carbon credits” in the emerging regimes, as well as in the
identification of other barriers and policy gaps that would impede the
feasibility of such initiatives.


--------------
Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
www.canarie.ca/~bstarn
skype: pocketpro
blog:http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/

Calit2 and CANARIE See Campuses as Living Labs for a Greener Future

**Universities Challenged to Develop Technology Solutions for a
Carbon-Constrained World**

http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1626

Calit2 and CANARIE See Campuses as Living Labs for a Greener Future

On-Site WInd Power Provides 100% of Power to Data Center

[Forward looking data center companies like Other World Computing
understand that data cneters are quickly becoming the new "heavy
industry" of the information age. If the Gartner forecast of 650%
growth become true we need to find alternative zero carbon solutions
for data centers and networks. CANARIE's recent annoucemnt
(http://www.canarie.ca/templates/news/releases/Green_IT_Nov17_2009_E.pdf)
to fund Greenstar (www.greenstarnetwork.com) is a good example of this
apporach. Greenstar network is a university-industry partnership
involing companies like CISCO and Ericsson to build worlds first zero
carbon Internet to enable the deployment of follow the wind/follow the
sun data networking. -- BSA]

On-Site WInd Power Provides 100% of Power to Data Center

http://ecogeek.org/wind-power/3009-on-site-wind-power-provides-100-of-power-to-data-c?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EcoGeek+%28EcoGeek%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

We've heard of data centers that are running on green power, though
these are often mostly done through buying energy credits for distant
generating facilities. But Woodstock, IL-based Other World Computing
is the first to have 100% on-site wind power to run its operations.
The 39 meter (128 foot) diameter, 500 kW turbine is expected to
generate an estimated 1,250,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. This is
more than twice as much electricity as is used by all of OWC's
operations. The facility is grid-tied, and will sell the excess power
back to the local utility, as well as being able to utilize grid power
as backup during slack wind periods.

Top data center challenges include social networks, rising energy
costs

Data growth will hit 650% over next half-decade, Gartner says

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/120109-data-center-challenges.html

Enterprise data needs will grow a staggering 650% over the next five
years, and that's just one of numerous challenges IT leaders have to
start preparing for today, analysts said as the annual Gartner Data
Center Conference kicked off in Las Vegas Tuesday morning.

Rising use of social networks, rising energy costs and a need to
understand new technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing
are among the top issues IT leaders face in the evolving data center,
Gartner analyst David Cappuccio said in an opening keynote address.

The energy cost of two racks of servers, at full density, can exceed
$105,000 a year, he said. And servers are only growing denser, with
new blades that incorporate servers, storage, switches, memory and I/O
capabilities. At today's prices, the money spent on supplying energy
to an x86 server will exceed the cost of that server within three
years, he said

Green IT Conferences for research community

http://www.greenm3.com/2009/11/green-it-conferences-for-research-community.html

Green IT Conferences for research community

Thanks to Jordi Torres, Barcelona Supercomputing Center for sending a link to http://www.greenit-conferences.org/.

New web page for Green Computing research community

A group of outstanding researchers has set up a simple new web page to make it easier for research community find updated information about the emerging conferences in Green Computing, the next wave in computing.

The www.greenIT-conferences.org site, includes a list of research conferences focused on green computing and energy-aware computer and network technologies. The site has been designed to make it easier for researchers for find information about new conferences (and conference tracks) in the area. Hopefully the page will serve to improve research in this important area.

The impact of cap and trade on your web server

For more information on this item please visit my blog at
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------------

[Doug Alder of Rackforce has put together an excellent in-depth analysis of the impact that cap and trade (with carbon at $20/tone) will have on web and computer servers that are located in jurisdictions that are dependent on coal based power. While the pending cap and trade bills in the US Congress will mitigate most of the costs for consumers, industry and institutions will not be similarly protected. The EPA estimates that cap and trade will raise the cost of electricity for these organizations by an “average” of 60% with significantly higher prices in states dependent on coal powered electricity . To put this in context, cap and trade will cost an organization at least an additional $65 -$150 per year per server (200 W) if those servers are located in a coal powered state or province versus a state or province that is powered by renewable energy such as hydro-electricity. Considering that most businesses and universities have thousands of servers, the aggregate bill could be gigantic. Some excerpts from his excellent blog-- BSA

http://www.thealders.net/blogs/2009/11/22/power-sources-and-their-coming-importance-to-your-business/

Power Sources and Their Coming Importance To Your Business
Do you have your own website? If you do it’s hosted on a server. Do you know where that server is located? Do you know the type of carbon footprint that server has where it is hosted? Do you care? If you do pay attention and you’ll learn something.
.
If we look at energy, first we will see how the source of that energy is important when considering the carbon footprint of a data center.

Let’s look at an example of two data centers, one in West Virginia and the other in British Columbia. Based on the data from Stats Canada, Environment Canada, & US Department of Energy that I researched I was able to build a spreadsheet showing the likely carbon cost for operating a server in each province and state (click on image for a readable version)(terms: gCO2eq/Kwh= grams of CO2 equivalent per Kilowatt hour, mTCO2eq/Mwh = grams CO2 equivalent per Megawatt hour, PUE = Power Usage Effectiveness a way of measuring how efficiently a data center uses the incoming power, that is what is the ratio of power used by the data center to the amount of power required to operate the ICT [Infornation Communications Technology] equipment (servers, switches, routers) – 1:1 would be perfect but basically impossible)

Now let’s see what that could mean to your business.

Say each data center is 120,000 sq. ft. raised floor (not at all unusual) Now allow a standard 32 sq. ft. per cabinet. That would give you a maximum number of 3125 racks (120,000/32) and each rack can hold a maximum of 42u worth of gear (a standard rack) but some of that will be the power distribution units of the data center and likely some of their networking gear too, so in general you will get around 36u of usable space. Assume you put 36 1u 200W servers in those slots. That gives you 112,500 servers in those 3125 racks. In BC, each of those servers would cost you an additional $1.06 per year. In West Virginia that would be $65.72 extra per server (the actual results would be higher though as a 120K sq. ft. data center would use up at least 20% of that space on aisles and various components needed to run a data center.) which, translates to $2365.92 instead of $38.16per rack per year extra. How will you justify that extra $2327.76 per rack per year to your shareholders?

The calculations above though were theoretical. They were based on a data center with perfect utilization of energy. That is for every watt of power required to run the ITC equipment in that data center they only used 1 watt of incoming power. Sadly, that is not the case and the average data center today has a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 2.5 (and many are much worse – that is an average). That means they need to purchase 2.5 watts of power for every watt they sell to their customers. Now go back to the last paragraph and multiply those final numbers by 2.5. Your extra cost is now $4654.52 per rack.

If your company is a public company then, as carbon taxes and/or carbon Cap &Trade becomes legislated then you will have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders to seek out the option that has you paying the least amount of taxes in order to maximize your returns. If you are a private company then you still need to consider the source of what powers your servers lest your competition beats you to it and gets a substantial edge in costs over you.

Small Windpower Can Make a Difference in Remote Telecom Facilities

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Small Windpower Can Make a Difference in Remote Telecom Facilities
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In the spirit of James Burke, it is always fun to follow the leads and find the connections. In this case, we start with a USA Today article “Wind backs up Honolulu airport power.” Hawaii and clean tech are one of my personal interest. The crux of the story is how the Hawaii Department of Transportation (DOT) has supplemented the power consumed with 16 small 1 Kw wind turbines. Nothing remarkable about a 16 Kw system. 16 Kw would be fine to offset daily power use for a utility building (in this case, the backup power for the Honolulu airport). How these small turbines were mounted drew in my attention.

The system is a state Department of Transportation pilot project and data is being gathered to determine the system's cost savings and energy output. It was installed at the end of June and cost about $100,000. Photos by RICHARD AMBO | The Honolulu Advertiser

We’ve seen many different wind systems which take advantage of the building’s real estate. But, the leading roof top edge has interesting aerodynamic benefits. Buildings have interesting aerodynamic effects. It is a whole specialty realm of engineering which is currently focused on physical stress loads on the build’s structure.

AeroVironment, the makers of the small, modular wind turbine installed at Honolulu’s Airport is on to something which would have significant impact to the way we look at structures. AreoVironment is a revolutionary aviation company. They understand aerodynamics from a flight perspective. Yet, with their Architectural Wind Services, they are applying that knowledge to leverage “the natural acceleration in wind speed resulting from the building’s aerodynamic properties. This accelerated wind speed can increase the turbines’ electrical power generation by more than 50% compared to the power generation that would result from systems situated outside of the acceleration zone.” Imaging what would happen if the expertise from AeroVironment was synergized with a company like Force Technologies? What could be gained by mindfully designing a building to capitalized the natural wind dynamics and use the changes the build acts on those dynamics to recoup energy?

As a minimum today, we can see telecoms buildings in remote rual areas use AeroVironment’s small wind technology to cost effectively offset power utilization. The price range for 12 units range at list between $134,000 to $180,000. In most areas of the US country with commercial electrical rates, that would be a ~5 year payback for the investment. Given that most telecommunications facilities have lifecycles which last decades, this is an interesting investment in energy offsets. Move this to a developing country installation, where you have higher electricity rate, fuel cost (generators), and unpredictable power, and the attractiveness increases. Then add the utilization of space. AeroVironment’s installation on the building does not interfere with other roof mounted solar installations or pole/antenna mounted wind systems. So this specific design can be used as a local power producing suite – offsetting the electrical cost of the telecommunications facility while opening the door for feed-in tariffs for any excess (if there are feed-in tariffs).

World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists

World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists
http://bit.ly/4CPppP

World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists - Climate Change, Environment -

The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. ...

E.U. to Mandate 'Nearly Zero' Power Use by Buildings

[This is a very significant announcement for universities and businesses in Europe. Europe has been well ahead of the rest of the world in implementing solutions to address climate change. As such I think they will be well positioned to be the big winners as we move to a low carbon economy. As mentioned in the article buildings are responsible for 36% of Europe’s GHG emissions. And according to several studies ICT represents 30-40% of the energy consumption in a typical office building. For universities ICT may represent 50% of the electrical consumption in a typical research facility. More astounding, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) the aggregate electrical consumption of ICT in many homes is now greater than the aggregate consumption of traditional appliances such as fridges, stoves, etc. We desperately need new solution to address the impact of ICT in our buildings such as using 400/60 Hz multiplexed power systems over existing copper wire, where the 400Hz power is reserved for small scale renewable power to drive low power ICT equipment. Excerpts from NY Times – BSA]

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/11/18/18greenwire-eu-to-mandate-nearly-zero-power-use-by-buildin-59814.html

E.U. to Mandate 'Nearly Zero' Power Use by Buildings

Most significantly, the European Union directive will require that nearly all buildings, including large houses, constructed after 2020 include stark efficiency improvements or generate most of their energy from renewable sources, coming close to "nearly zero" energy use.

European countries will also be required to establish a certification system to measure buildings' energy efficiency. These certificates will be required for any new construction or buildings that are sold or rented to new tenants. Existing buildings will also have to, during any major renovation, improve their efficiency if at all feasible.

Buildings are responsible for about 36 percent of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions, and stricter efficiency requirements have been sought for the past several years as absolutely necessary for the bloc to meets its goal of cutting emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Other regions should take note, said Andris Piebalgs, the E.U. energy commissioner, in a statement.

"By this agreement, the E.U. is sending a strong message to the forthcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen," Piebalgs said. "Improving the energy performance of buildings is a cost effective way of fighting against climate change and improving energy security, while also boosting the building sector and the E.U. economy as a whole."

Gartner Says More Than 30 Percent of ICT Energy Use Is Generated by PCs and Associated Peripherals,"
Gartner news release, April 20, 2009,
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=941912

Electricity consumption by consumer electronics exceeds that of traditional appliances in many homes
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2009/05/electricity-consumption-by-consumer.html

NCAR's new data center - an embarrassment to the climate community

NCAR's new data center - an embarrassment to the climate community

http://www.cisl.ucar.edu/nwsc/

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its managing organization, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), is building a new supercomputing center in Wyoming. The current NCAR data center in Mesa has outgrown the facility's capacity, and a new facility that can accommodate future expansion is needed. The Wyoming facility will contain some of the world's most powerful supercomputers dedicated to improving scientific understanding of climate change, severe weather, air quality, and other vital atmospheric science and geoscience topics. The center will also house a premier data storage and archival facility that holds irreplaceable historical climate records and other information.

NCAR is probably the world’s premier research facility for undertaking climate modeling and research. So it is very bizarre that such an organization would undertake to build a new data center in a state where almost 100% of the electricity comes from coal fired generating plants. What is ever more outrageous is that one of the principal partners in the project, Cheyenne Light Fuel and Power is leading a campaign to stop cap and trade - http://www.cheyennelight.com/cap-and-trade/.

NCAR’s strategy to build a data center in Wyoming also highlights the ridiculousness and absurdity of claims to build an energy efficient data center with a low PUE in a LEED qualified building. These claims are meaningless when all of the electricity is coal generated. If NCAR was genuinely concerned about the environment a much smarter move would have been to locate the data center a few hundred kilometers west to Idaho where almost of the electricity is generated from hydro. Relocating to Idaho would do more for the environment than even the most stringent energy efficiency and LEED qualified buildings. It would also send an important message that new jobs and business opportunities are only going to occur in those jurisdictions that provide clean, renewable energy.

I suspect NCAR is being seduced to locate its new data center in Wyoming because of the low price of electricity that comes from coal fired plants. But that strategy may backfire on them as Cheyenne Light Fuel and Power claims that their electricity prices will increase 73% with cap and trade.

Australian ISP goes carbon-neutral

[A great example of a forward thinking ISP. No mention of whether
thay also plan to earn carbon offsets by going carbon neutral. Some
excerpts -- BSA]

Australian ISP goes carbon-neutral
http://www.telecomasia.net/content/australian-isp-goes-carbon-neutral?page=0%2C0

While most carriers are reluctant even to set targets for reducing
their carbon footprint, Australian ISP Internode has already been
carbon-neutral for a year.

The company, which has over 170,000 subscribers Australia-wide,
sources 100% of its electricity needs from renewable energy, and has
molded its equipment upgrade purchasing decisions towards energy
efficiency and sustainability.



The company has also started to invest in its own renewable energy
infrastructure, choosing to run a number of remote sites via solar
cells. With operators forced to pay a premium for piping power to
remote areas - and to provide expensive, long-lasting battery backups
- it is becoming cost-competitive to run these sites on solar, Lindsay
said.

Becoming carbon-neutral is “not as expensive an undertaking as most
people looking at it would imagine,” Lindsay said. In South
Australia, green power costs around 20% more than traditional forms of
power, and that is the dominant cost.

The positive publicity benefits of the decision likely outweigh any
extra financial burden, he added.



“Any telecom company can do what we've done,” Lindsay said.
“It's not as big a challenge as it looks. It comes down to the
fundamental question – do the shareholders of the business care more
about the dividend this year, or about the long-term impact of people
on the planet?”

The impact of Cyber-infrastructure in a carbon constrained world

[With the growing power of supercomputers and data centers, people
are starting to realize that cyber-infrastructure may soon have a
significant impact on the environment because of its huge electrical
consumption and the resultant CO2 emissions if the electricity that
powers these systems comes from coal fired electrical plants. As I
mentioned in a previous blog the UK Meteorological Office new
supercomputer is one of the single biggest sources of CO2 emissions
(Scope 2) in the UK. Paradoxically this is the same computer that is
being used for climate modeling in that country. Thanks to a pointer
from Steve Goldstein we learn that even America’s spy agency –NSA,
is also running into energy issues and as such is building a huge new
data centers in Utah and Texas, of which both will probably use dirty
coal based electricity as well. There are also rumors that NCAR is
building a new cyber-infrastructure center in Wyoming (presumably
which will also use coal based electricity) which sort of undermines
its own credibility as America’s leading climate research institute.
I suspect very shortly with all the new announcements of grids and
supercomputers from OSG to Jaguar, that cyber-infrastructure
collectively in the US will be one of the top sources of CO2 emissions
as it is now in the UK. This is an unsustainable path and will come to
haunt those cyber-infrastructure organizations, particularly if
Congress passes a cap and trade bill. Cap and trade will increase the
price of electricity for institutions and businesses by an
“average” of 60% according to the EPA. But electrical prices will
be substantially more in states that are totally dependent on coal
fired electrical generation. Not only that, under the proposed cap and
trade bills any organization that emits over 25,000 tons of CO2 per
year (which includes most universities and research institutions) will
be required to purchase emission allowances or offsets if they want to
exceed their current level of emissions. It is not only traditional
power generators, cement plants or manufacturers that will be affected
by cap and trade. Most of the US higher ed and cyber-infrastructure
research facilities will be similarly affected. However there is some
good news: Cyber-infrastructure, if done right, can be a powerful tool
for reducing CO2 emissions. Larry Smarr and I recently gave a talk on
this topic at Educause which is now available per the link below –
BSA]

Cyber-Infrastructure in a Carbon Constrained World

http://educause.mediasite.com/mediasite/SilverlightPlayer/Default.aspx?peid=2719597468ab467382691f0915f524e0

See also article in Educause Review

http://www.educause.edu/er

Slides are available on Slideshare

http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/educause09-smarr-arnaud

Weather supercomputer used to predict climate change is one of
Britain's worst polluters

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1209430/Weather-supercomputer-used-predict-climate-change-Britains-worst-polluters.html

The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was
revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate
change is one of Britain's worst polluters. The massive machine - the
UK's most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of
memory - was installed in the Met Office's headquarters in Exeter,
Devon. It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to
feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run -
enough to power more than 1,000 homes.

New NSA data centers in Utah and Texas

From http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23231

"..."As strange as it may sound," he writes, "one of the most urgent
problems facing NSA is a severe shortage of electrical power." With
supercomputers measured by the acre and estimated $70 million annual
electricity bills for its headquarters, the agency has begun browning
out, which is the reason for locating its new data centers in Utah and
Texas. And as it pleads for more money to construct newer and bigger
power generators, Aid notes, Congress is balking.

"The issue is critical because at the NSA, electrical power is
political power. In its top-secret world, the coin of the realm is the
kilowatt.

More electrical power ensures bigger data centers. Bigger data
centers, in turn, generate a need for more access to phone calls and
e-mail and, conversely, less privacy. The more data that comes in, the
more reports flow out. And the more reports that flow out, the more
political power for the agency.

Shortage of uranium may limit construction of nuclear plants

From Slashdot
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/11/17/157231/CERN-Physicist-Warns-About-Uranium-Shortage

"Uranium mines provide us with 40,000 tons of uranium each year. Sounds like that ought to be enough for anyone, but it comes up about 25,000 tons short of what we consume yearly in our nuclear power plants. The difference is made up by stockpiles, reprocessed fuel and re-enriched uranium — which should be completely used up by 2013. And the problem with just opening more uranium mines is that nobody really knows where to go for the next big uranium lode. Dr. Michael Dittmar has been warning us for some time about the coming shortage (PDF) and has recently uploaded a four-part comprehensive report on the future of nuclear energy and how socioeconomic change is exacerbating the effect this coming shortage will have on our power consumption. Although not quite on par with zombie apocalypse, Dr. Dittmar's final conclusions paint a dire picture, stating that options like large-scale commercial fission breeder reactors are not an option by 2013 and 'no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.'"

Dr Dittmar's study:
http://www.aspo-ireland.org/contentfiles/ASPO6/3-2_APSO6_MDittmar.pdf

Rethinking Cyber-infrastructure - Dan Reed on the future of Cyber-infrastructure and Green IT

[Dan Reed is well known in the academic computing and cyber-infrastructure community. Dan is Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Extreme Computing where he also works with Tony Hey –the founder of eScience in the UK. Previously, he was the Chancellor’s Eminent Professor at UNC Chapel Hill, as well as the Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) and the Chancellor’s Senior Advisor for Strategy and Innovation for UNC Chapel Hill. Dr. Reed has served as a member of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and as a member of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). He has also been Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at UIUC, where he also led National Computational Science Alliance, a fifty institution partnership devoted to creating the next generation of computational science tools. He was also one of the
principal investigators and chief architect for the NSF TeraGrid
.

Dan Reed recently gave a great presentation on the Future of Cyber-Infrastructure at a SURA meeting. You can see a copy of his presentation at http://www.sura.org/news/2009/it_matsf.html

His basic thesis is that the bulk of academic computing will probably move to commercial clouds. Although there will still remain some very high end close coupled applications that need dedicated supercomputers the majority of academic computing can be done with clouds. Despite the presence of grids and HPC on our campuses most academic applications still run on small clusters in closets or stand alone servers. Moreover the challenge with academic grids is building robust, high quality middleware for distributed systems and solving the myriad political problems of sharing computation resources in different management domains. As well, the ever increasing costs of energy, space and cooling will soon force researchers to start looking for computing alternatives. Clouds are solution to many of these
problem and in many ways represent the commercialization of the original vision for grids.

Dan also ruminates about the possibility of building “follow the
sun/follow the wind” cloud architecture on his blog, which of course
is music to my ears:

http://www.hpcdan.org/reeds_ruminations/2009/08/egg-baskets-lambdas-and-geo-resilience.html

[…]

**Geo-dispersion: The Other Alternative **

If it were possible to replicate data and computation across multiple, geographically distributed data centers, one could reduce or eliminate UPS costs, and the failure of a single data center would not disrupt the cloud service or unduly affect its customers. Rather, requests to the service would simply be handled by one of the service replicas at another data center, perhaps with slightly greater latency due to time of flight delays. This is, of course, more easily imagined than implemented, but its viability is assessable on both economic and technical grounds.

In this spirit, let me begin by suggesting that we may need to
rethink our definition of broadband WANs. Today, we happily talk of
deploying 10 Gb/s lambdas, and some of our fastest transcontinental
and international networks provision a small number of lambdas (i.e.,
10, 40 or 100 Gb/s). However, a single mode optical fiber

has much higher total capacity with current dense wave division
multiplexing
(DWDM) technology, and typical multistrand cables contain many
fibers. Thus, the cable has an aggregate bandwidth of many terabits,
even with current DWDM.

Despite the aggregate potential bandwidth of the cables, we are
really provisioning many narrowband WANs across a single fiber.
Rarely, if ever, do we consider bonding all of those lambdas to
provision a single logical network. What might one do with terabits of
bandwidth between data centers? If one has the indefeasible right to
use
(IRU) or owns the dark fiber

, one need only provision the equipment to exploit multiple fibers
for a single purpose.

Of course, exploiting this WAN bandwidth would necessitate dramatic
change in the bipartite separation of local area networks (LANs) and
WANs in cloud data centers. Melding these would also expose the full
bisection bandwidth of the cloud data center to the WAN and its
interfaces, simplifying data and workload replication and moving us
closer to true geo-dispersion and geo-resilience. There are deep
technical issues related to on-chip photonics

, VCSELs

and ROADMs

, among others, to make this a reality.

In the end, these technical questions devolve to risk assessment and
economics. First, the cost of replicated, smaller data centers without
UPS must be less than that of a larger, non-replicated data center
with UPS. Second, the wide area network (WAN) bandwidth, its fusion
with data center LANs and their cost must be included in the economic
assessment.

These are interesting technical and economic questions, and I invite
economic analyses and risk assessments. I suspect, though, that it is
time we embraced the true meeting of high-speed networking and put our
eggs in multiple baskets.