Renewable Energy and the Future of the Internet datacenter

[An excellent summary of the economic benefits of zero carbon data centers. Green data centers also have the advantage of using renewable power that is uneconomical to develop for other industry sectors. Many renewable energy sites are not being developed because of the high cost of electrical transmission lines and the fees that utilities charge for wheeling of power. But connecting these sites with low cost fiber optic networks makes them ideal sites for green data centers. Some excerpts from ArsTechnica--BSA]


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-renewable-energy-and-the-future-of-the-datacenter.html

Renewable energy and the future of the datacenter

For the governors who attended the recent climate conference at Yale, one of the biggest political selling points for renewable energy sources was their long-term stability. In contrast to carbon-based fuels, where extraction mostly occurs overseas and for finite time periods, the sources of many forms of renewable power—solar, wind, geothermal, etc.—are widely distributed and indefinitely available. Several officials at the conference summarized these benefits of renewable power as the ability to create permanent jobs that don't get outsourced.

One point that state officials didn't raise, however, is that renewable power sources provide an additional opportunity for economic development when paired with the rise of the datacenter facility. Power consumption, and the costs that it entails, are now significant factors in locating and managing IT facilities. And though the present price of power is a major consideration, it isn't the only one; for long-term planning, the stability of a power source's cost per watt and the long-term availability of that source have to be factored in.

So in contrast to fossil fuel-based power, renewable sources represent power capacity with a source whose cost of extraction will be probably drop over time due to technological innovation, which means that, even as demand rises, the price may remain relatively stable. Renewable sources are also much less likely to suffer from disruptions in supply due to political events. These features make renewable energy sources incredibly appealing for a power- and cost-sensitive activity like running a server farm, and they're already beginning to influence decision making within the IT community. [..] The companies that build datacenters have responded to this reality not just by changing what kind of hardware they purchase, but by adopting the old real estate adage—location, location, location—in their quest for ever more cost-efficient datacenters. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have all purchased land in the Pacific Northwest in order to guarantee access to the region's cheap hydropower. Other companies are arranging for similar centers in upstate New York in order to get access to power from Hydro-Québec.

As the examples above indicate, hydroelectric power is currently the main player in the renewable energy game. Because hydroelectric is one of the cheapest forms renewable power, it's easy to dismiss its current popularity as not really indicative of the prospects for renewable energy in general. But other forms of power appear to be catching up, fast. Iceland is advertising that its combination of hydro and geothermal power make it an appealing location for data centers. Even in the US, companies are already offering renewable-power based hosting. The webhost AISO happily proclaims that it's willing to accept slightly lower profit margins in order to run its servers on solar power. Green House Data, in contrast, claims that a carefully chosen location combined with energy-conscious building techniques allows it to run off wind power for less than the cost of a typical datacenter's electric bill.

All told, the power from these renewable energy sources is competitively priced relative to non-renewable sources and, perhaps more significantly, its price and availability should remain relatively stable, simplifying long-term planning for companies. Moving forward, it's difficult to imagine any of these factors changing. The success of companies like Google and Amazon, and the continued emphasis on cloud computing means that datacenter expansion is unlikely to slow down any time soon. And the companies that build datacenters are likely to make stable and cheap energy a major focus of their construction decisions.

In the absence of federal action on carbon emissions, many states are enacting climate plans and attempting to increase the use of renewable power within their borders. If they can sell renewable power to their constituents as providing additional economic development through its ability to attract the high-tech sector, it may be easier to set these policies in motion.

Universities in BC mandated to be carbon neutral by 2010

[The provincial government in British Columbia has been a world trend setter in setting new standards and legislation to reduce GHG emissions. They are the first government in North America to introduce a carbon tax. They also have mandated all public sector institutions such as universities, schools and hospitals to be zero carbon by 2010. It is expected that other governments in Canada and around the world will soon follow BC's lead and implement similar policies, as public sector institutions should be seen as leaders in addressing the challenges of global warming.

This will have a major impact on universities as eScience and cyber-infrastructure are very energy intensive which can result in significant increase in GHG emissions if the power comes from fossil fuel plants. Moreover the power demand and concomitant GHG emission by computers and cyber-infrastructure is expected to double in the next 4 years.

Networks, grids and virtualization linked with zero carbon data centers will play a critical role in helping universities meet their carbon neutral targets. These technologies may mean even help universities earn additional dollars to support research and infrastructure through carbon offset trading. Kudos to BCnet and BC university CIOs who are already arranging strategy meetings to address this initiative. As I have always argued, jurisdictions that are the first to address this major environmental challenge will be the real winners in the future in creating new jobs and business opportunities of a zero carbon society. More details on my blog. Some excerpts from the BC legislation--BSA]


http://www.leg.bc.ca/38th3rd/3rd_read/gov44-3.htm

Targets for carbon neutral public sector

5 (1) Each public sector organization must be carbon neutral for the 2010 calendar year and for each subsequent calendar year.

(2) The Provincial government must be carbon neutral for the 2008 and 2009 calendar years in relation to its PSO greenhouse gas emissions that are directly related to public officials travelling on public business for which the travel expenses are covered by the consolidated revenue fund.

(3) In advance of the obligation under subsection (1), for the 2008 and 2009 calendar years, each public sector organization must pursue actions to minimize its PSO greenhouse gas emissions. Requirements for achieving carbon neutral status

6 (1) In order to be carbon neutral for a calendar year, a public sector organization must

(a) pursue actions to minimize its PSO greenhouse gas emissions for the calendar year,

(b) determine its PSO greenhouse gas emissions for that calendar year in accordance with the regulations, and

(c) no later than the end of June in the following calendar year, apply emission offsets in accordance with the regulations to net those emissions to zero.

Save the Planet and win 500,000 Euros

[Another brilliant concept by Branson and Dutch Postcode Lottery. If the Internet and ICT can help countries reach 90% of their Kyoto commitments I think this is a great opportunity for Next Generation Internet researchers, as well as those involved with grid and virtualization research to develop architectures, business models and technologies that reduce carbon footprint--BSA]

http://www.greenchallenge.info/

Contest seeks pioneering ideas for climate change breakthrough PICNIC Green Challenge ‘08, fuelled by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, has started

Amsterdam, May 13th 2008 – The PICNIC Green Challenge ‘08, the international creative competition of the Dutch Postcode Lottery and cross-media event PICNIC, starts today. The PICNIC Green Challenge urges people to send in creative and innovative ideas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Like last year, the best idea will win €500,000 to execute the winning plan. The prize money, provided by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, will be awarded at PICNIC ’08 in Amsterdam the 25th of September.

Kicking off May 9th, The PICNIC Green Challenge is aimed at creative, innovative people who can instigate change. The contest is looking for products and services that contribute to an eco-friendly lifestyle, directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and scoring well on convenience, quality and design too.

The contest closes at the 31st of July 2008. From the various entries sent the preliminary jury will select 3 to 5 finalists. These nominees will present their ideas on September the 25th at PICNIC ’08. The best entrant wins €500,000 to market the winning idea. The winner will be introduced to potential clients and business partners.

Last year the chairman of the jury, Sir Richard Branson, presented the €500,000 to finalist Igor Kluin of Qurrent and his Qbox. The Qbox enables people to generate their own energy locally from renewable sources. Other finalists presented a solar lamp, carbon reduced goods transport, online green initiatives and climate friendly clubbing. The PICNIC Green Challenge ’07 received 439 green ideas.

Webcast of OECD workshop ICTs and Environment Workshop

[The OECD will be webcasting their entire workshop on ICTs and Environment Workshop. I congratulate OECD for making this workshop available by webcast as not only this save on CO2 emissions from air travel but I also believe this will be a seminal workshop on the topic and will tie in closely with the recent OECD Broadband report released earlier this week and also provide input to the upcoming OECD First Ministers conference in Seoul. In addition ITU will be hosting a similar workshop in London in June followed by the Green Telco Congress in Paris in January. Lots of conferences on this very important topic - but soon it will be time for action --BSA]

We are pleased to announce that the Workshop presentations will be web-cast via a link on the Workshop web-pages at these URLs:

www.oecd.org/sti/ict/green-ict

http://en.itst.dk/the-governments-it-and-telecommunications-policy/green-it/oecd-workshop-on-green-it

Or directly accessible here: http://itst.media.netamia.net/green-ict/


ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/climatechange/index.html


Green Telco World Summit to occur in Paris next January, 2009: http://www.upperside.fr/greentelco2009/greentelco2009intro.htm

UK study on how grids and virtualization reduce CO2 by universities

[Excerpts from Guardian article. Universities and their funding bodies around the world should take note --BSA]

http://education.guardian.co.uk/link/story/0,,2278356,00.html
Why the future's green for IT

A survey into ways in which colleges and universities can make computing greener and more sustainable is about to publish its preliminary findings.

Higher Education Environment Performance Improvement (Heepi) and SustainIT, an NGO set up to focus on the environmental and social impact of IT, are researching how sustainable further and higher education IT is, and how education best practice compares with the private sector.

The report being written for the Joint Information System Committee (Jisc) says green IT is best achieved through the collaboration of IT and estates management. It finds that increased energy and computing costs can be offset by technologies such as grid computing and virtualisation. The need to reduce carbon the footprint is behind a cull of wasteful IT practices.

The author of the report, Peter James, who is also part-time professor of environmental management at Bradford University and associate director of SustainIT, says: "Eighty to 90% of a computer's capacity is wasted.

"By linking PCs together we can run complex computing tasks broken down into manageable chunks when the computers are not in normal classroom use."

[..]
Virtualisation offers much more dramatic savings. "This is one component of grid computing that's really going mainstream," says Berry. "Many servers set up to run a single application are running at less than 10% capacity. By using virtualisation you can bring several applications onto one server and use less energy for IT, power and cooling."

[...]
Meanwhile, Cardiff University has come up with an innovative solution to the cost of running super computers for research projects by centralising departments' IT budgets and transferring byte-hungry number-crunching to clusters of smaller high-performance computers. The project is called Arcca (advanced research computing at Cardiff).

"Before Arcca, departments ran their own computers for their own researchers," says Dr Hugh Beedie, Cardiff's chief technology officer, who was personally charged with reducing IT costs throughout the institution. "When they weren't online the computers were idle. Now we manage things centrally and any researcher can access our super computer cluster." [...]

The Best Place to Build Zero Carbon Data Centers in North America

[It is good to see a growing recognition by industry of the importance of zero carbon data centers. I think it is imperative that academia also move in this direction. As I have mentioned cyber-infrastructure is increasingly one of the biggest power consumers on many campuses and, as a result, a large contributor by universities to Green House Gas emissions. Funding agencies can play a critical role by developing Private-Public-Partnerships (PPP) much like the NSF has done with IBM and Google to assist universities to move their campus cyber-infrastructure to zero carbon data centers. Thanks to Doug Alder also maintains an excellent blog on this subject--BSA]

The Virtual Data Center - http://www.rackforce.com/blog/?p=59
Is Your Data Center Green Enough - http://www.rackforce.com/blog/?p=49
GigaCenter: Where We are Going - http://www.rackforce.com/blog/?p=48


The Best Place to Build a Data Center in North America http://www.cio.com/article/183256/The_Best_Place_to_Build_a_Data_Center_in_North_America

It's Kelowna, British Columbia, says IBM, which is working with Rackforce to open a huge data center in this small city far from earthquake and flood zones, close to cheap power sources and just a short flight from Vancouver.


But what most tourist brochures don't mention is that the Okanagan also is becoming known in IT spheres for something else: data processing and storage.

Thanks to its seismic stability, cheap and accessible power and a talented workforce, the Okanagan recently has seen a proliferation of data services vendors and has attracted interest from at least one major international corporation to build one of the biggest data centers in the world.

When it opens later this year, this $100 million data center—appropriately dubbed the Gigacentre—will total 85,000 square feet and will have the capacity to store nearly 35,000 terabytes of data. Put differently, the Gigacentre will generate more than 700 watts per square foot, while most data centers currently generate a maximum of 300 watts per square foot.

The Gigacentre is a joint venture between IBM and Rackforce, a local hosting service provider. It will be IBM's first data center in British Columbia and is powered by hydroelectric energy from the Columbia River

Brian Fry, vice president and cofounder of Rackforce, says the center, expected to open by this summer, will cement the Okanagan's position as the new data capital of the West—a position that could be particularly intriguing for U.S. companies who are looking to keep mission-critical in

Clouds, Grids and Resources for Green Cyber-Infrastructure

[Increasingly universities and research centers around the world are recognizing that the pursuit of scientific research without thinking about the consequences of power consumption or the impact on the environment is no longer an option. Cyber-Infrastructure and eScience in particular is placing huge new demands on campus power systems. In an growing number of situations high energy consuming HPC and instrumentation systems need to be located off campus, ideally at zero carbon data centers. Even the quintessential cyber-infrastructure project - the Large Hadron Collider at CERN - is now looking to offload computational tasks to other sites around the world because of power limitations and costs at CERN. Researchers also need to move their computational requirements to grids and clouds (whose underlying servers are also located at zero carbon data centers) in order to reduce power consumption load on their campuses (and in my opinion, it will also improve their eScience capabilities). Here is a list of some resources I have compiled that may help those researchers who are serious about reducing their carbon footprint -- BSA]

CyberInfrastructure 2.0 Blog
http://blog.cybera.ca/

BCnet Workshop on Green Cyber-Infrastructure
May 22 Vancouver


CLS workshop on web services for remote instrumentation http://www.lightsource.ca/medsi-sri2008/workshops.php#remote

The tools being developed by researchers to allow remote access for scientific instruments such as under the ocean or remote beam lines will serve as a model for future "green" cyber-infrastructure. Because of the huge power demands of new big science instruments and computers combined with the increasing shortage for power at our existing research centers means increasingly these facilities will have to be located in remote zero carbon, renewable energy, science centers. Instruments and computation will need to be accessed remotely.

Green House and Green Computing at Norte Dame http://ianfoster.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/greenhouse-and.html

Clouds over Chicago http://ianfoster.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/clouds-over-chi.html
Integration of Grids and Clouds

4th International IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Scalable Computing eScience 2008 Conference http://escience2008.iu.edu

Organizing committees of the 4th International IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Scalable Computing eScience 2008 Conference are now accepting papers and proposals for tutorials; posters, exhibits, and demos; and workshops and special sessions.

Topics of interest cover applications and technologies related to e-Science and grid and cloud computing. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

* Application development environments
* Autonomic, real-time, and self-organizing grids
* Cloud computing and storage
* Collaborative science models and techniques
* Enabling technologies: Internet and Web services
* e-Science for applications including physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, finance, engineering, and the humanities
* Grid economy and business models
* Problem-solving environments
* Programming paradigms and models
* Resource management and scheduling
* Security challenges for grids and e-Science
* Sensor networks and environmental observatories
* Service-oriented grid architectures
* Virtual instruments and data access management
* Virtualization for technical computing
* Web 2.0 technology and services for e-Science


NSF Cluster Exploratory Project http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=111186

In an open letter to the academic computing research community, Jeannette Wing, the assistant director at NSF for CISE, said that the relationship will give the academic computer science research community access to resources that would be unavailable to it otherwise.

"Access to the Google-IBM academic cluster via the CluE program will provide the academic community with the opportunity to do research in data-intensive computing and to explore powerful new applications," Wing said. "It can also serve as a tool for educating the next generation of scientists and engineers."

"Google is proud to partner with the National Science Foundation to provide computing resources to the academic research community," said Stuart Feldman, vice president of engineering at Google Inc. "It is our hope that research conducted using this cluster will allow researchers across many fields to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by large-scale, distributed computing."

"Extending the Google/IBM academic program with the National Science Foundation should accelerate research on Internet-scale computing and drive innovation to fuel the applications of the future," said Willy Chiu, vice president of IBM Software Strategy and High Performance On Demand Solutions. "IBM is pleased to be collaborating with the NSF on this project."

In October of last year, Google and IBM created a large-scale computer cluster of approximately 1600 processors to give the academic community access to otherwise prohibitively expensive resources. Fundamental changes in computer architecture and increases in network capacity are encouraging software developers to take new approaches to computer-science problem solving. In order to bridge the gap between industry and academia, it is imperative that academic researchers are exposed to the emerging computing paradigm behind the growth of "Internet-scale" applications.

This new relationship with NSF will expand access to this research infrastructure to academic institutions across the nation. In an effort to create greater awareness of research opportunities using data-intensive computing, the CISE directorate will solicit proposals from academic researchers. NSF will then select the researchers to have access to the cluster and provide support to the researchers to conduct their work. Google and IBM will cover the costs associated with operating the cluster and will provide other support to the researchers. NSF will not provide any funding to Google or IBM for these activities.

While the timeline for releasing the formal request for proposals to the academic community is still being developed, NSF anticipates being able to support 10 to 15 research projects in the first year of the program, and will likely expand the number of projects in the future.

Information about the Google-IBM Academic Cluster Computing Initiative can be found at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20071008_ibm_univ.html

Excellent example of Zero Carbon Data Center in Wymoning

[One of the world's first zero carbon data centers has been built in Cheyenne, which is taking advantage of the natural cooling because of its location in the northern US. Several more of these zero carbon data centers are being deployed around the world such as Bastionhost.com in Nova Scotia. To my mind zero carbon data centers are more important than targeting energy efficiency as a way of reducing the impact of Internet on global warming. There are many thousands of untapped renewable energy sites around the world which are uneconomical to develop by traditional power companies because of the cost of transmission lines etc. But rather than bringing power to the datacenters in major urban areas, it would be much easier to move the data centers to the renewable power sites with relatively low cost optical networks. As well the power will be essentially be free, because no other industry sector can compete for this power because of its remoteness -- BSA]


http://www.greenhousedata.com/green_datacenter/index.htm


100% Renewable Energy Wind Energy
The entire facility IS powered by wind generated renewable power. The company will own several wind turbines to the north of its facility and purchase the excess energy needs from the local power company's wind farm or through grid tied green-e tags.

The facility will represent the largest wind powered public data center in the nation with over 10,000 square feet of raised floor computing facilities. Don't be alarmed by the 100% renewable energy, reliability is a must. The company ensures this by being tied to the main power grid with contracts to purchase supplemental renewable (wind) energy from the local power company.

Energy Efficiency Built In Energy Efficiency
Green House Data is working with MKK and APC to build out the green data center. As part of our highly refined Green efforts,Green House Data will opperate its facility at approximately 60% greater energy efficiency than the average data center.

The Data Center will leverage the following attributes to gain the efficiencies:

* Water-Side Economizers: Free cooling from Cheyenne's average annual temperatures of 45.6 degrees.
* Server Side Cooling - Cooling directly at the source of the heat for managed services.
* Modular Scalable Data Center - matching maximum efficiencies without over building and waste.
* Efficient Floor Layout and Design - aligning hot aisle/cold aisles for heat capture and efficient cooling.
* Ground Source Heat Pumps - provide up to 25% more energy efficient cooling than traditional HVAC cooling equipment.

Excellent report on Internet Data Centers and Global Warming

This is a good comprehensive report but surprisingly misses the entire subject of Khazzoom-Brookes postulate (aka Jevons Paradox) which refutes the entire argument of energy efficiency. Khazzoom-Brookes have effectively demonstrated that improved efficiency actually results in increased energy consumption as it decreases the overall cost of a product or service and therefore increases demand.

For more details please see my blog on energy efficiency and data centers as well a paper prepared in part for the OECD on this subject. The OECD is also having a workshop where this subject will be discusses in Denmark May 22-23.--BSA]

Paper on Khazzoom-Brookes postulate and datacenters http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgbgjrct_2767dxpbdvcf


Some excerpts from the McKinsey report
http://uptimeinstitute.org/content/view/168/57

For many industries, data centers are one of the largest sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. As a group, their overall emissions are significant, in-scale with industries such as airlines. Even with immediate efficiency improvements (and adoption of new technologies) enterprises and their equipment providers will face increased scrutiny given the projected quadrupling of their data-center GHG emissions by 2020

Significant failings in asset management (6% average server utilization, 56% facility utilization). Up to 30% of servers are dead [i.e. not being used at all, but consuming power nevertheless]

Data center facilities spend (CapEx and OpEx) is a large, quickly growing and very inefficient portion of the total IT budget in many technology intensive industries such as financial services and telecommunications. Some intensive data center users will face meaningfully reduced profitability if current trends continue

True costs are often 4-5x the cost of the server alone over a 5-10 year lifetime of a server

Incremental US demand for data center energy between now and 2010 is equivalent of 10 new power plants

EPA has advocated use of separate energy meters for large data centers

Green Internet/ICT will help Japan reach 90% of its Kyoto target

[Another excellent presentation from the recent ITU conference in Kyoto on ICTs and Climate Change. In his presentation Dr. Yuji INOUE, President & CEO The Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC) demonstrated that it is possible for Japan to reach 90% of it Kyoto target to reduce CO2 emissions (68m tones) through application of ICT to various everyday activities, especially de-materialization and trading eProducts and eServices for their physical counterpart. Even if a more realistic outcome is closer to 50% of the Kyoto target, this is still a significant impact on CO2 emissions for Japan. I believe we can achieve even more significant results by moving all Internet network and computational facilities to zero carbon data centers and using carbon rewards as opposed to carbon taxes, to underwrite the costs next generation last mile networks in order that consumers fully utilize eProducts and eServices --BSA]

ITU - ICTs and Climate Change http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/climatechange/programme-kyoto.html

Dr Yuji INOUE's presentation http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/06/0F/T060F0060080025PDFE.pdf

Excellent presentations on ICT and the Environment

[Recently the ITU and IDC in Canada held conferences on the subject of the impact of ICT and environment. As well the OECD is holding a workshop on this theme in Denmark on May 21-22. As at any such conference there was the usual mix of bromides and platitudes about energy efficiency, tele-presence, tele-working- to all of which I am remain extremely skeptical. However the GeSI study pointed out that ICT can have a major impact in "de-materialization" and building zero carbon networks and distributed computing architectures. The later will enable the ICT industry to have a zero or negative carbon footprint, and the former can reduce overall CO2 emissions by much as 10%. The challenge is how to promote de-materialization? I have long advocated the equivalent of a carbon tax - but where the revenue from such a tax goes directly to the consumer rather than the government, under the condition that customer is restricted to buying products and services that have essentially a zero carbon footprint such as fiber and high speed Internet to the home, eMovies, eMusic etc
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/ --BSA]

GeSI presentation at ITU http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P16849&pageType=EVENTPROCEEDINGS

ITU Conference on ICTs and Environment http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/climatechange/programme-kyoto.html

IDC Conference on ICTs and Environment http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/06/0F/T060F0060080003PDFE.pdf

The Internet's role in aggravating and alleviating the energy crises

[Another excellent analysis by Andrew Odlyzko on Internet's role in aggravating and alleviating the Internet. I fully agree with his analysis on the limited of possibility of reducing CO2 emission by substituting transportation of atoms with electrons (or photons) through telecommuting and tele-presence. These are useful applications, but the real power of the Internet to affect human behaviour in reducing CO2 emissions will come in other areas - as for example in the (yet unproven) idea of providing "carbon reward" rather than taxes by offering free eProducts and eServices in exchange for consumers reducing their own carbon footprint in other aspects of their lives. Consumers control or influence 60% of human generated CO2 emissions, so the Internet may be powerful tool to induce them to change their behaviour. --- BSA]



http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/internet.energy.crises.txt

The Internet has long been touted as a major weapon in reducing road congestion, through enabling and stimulating telecommuting. More recently, it has been promoted as a means to fight global warming. (An excellent source of information on these topics is Bill St. Arnaud's "Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-Infrastructure" blog at
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/.) But these hopes fly in the face of centuries of experience. It is likely that the Internet will play a major role in alleviating problems caused by any of several energy crises that we face, but if so, this will not take place as commonly
expected.

[..]

New Al Gore presentation on climate change on TED

[For those who have never discovered TED, I highly recommend taking a look. A wealth of thought provoking video seminars from recognized experts and leaders around the world, such as Al Gore's new presentation - most of which can be downloaded in HD for free.

I concur with Al Gore that we need a carbon tax - but I argue that it should be structured as a carbon "reward" where consumers get free eProducts and eServices in exchange for reducing their carbon footprint in their day to day activities. eProducts and eServices have virtually no carbon footprint. Since consumers control or influence 60% of all CO2 emissions, I think immediate rewards, rather than nebulous taxes will provide a much greater incentive. The danger with carbon taxes, although supposedly revenue neutral, is they create an addiction for governments, much like thy are currently addicted to lottery, gasoline, alcohol and tobacco taxes. My 2 cents worth. See my blog http:/green-broadband.blogspot.com for more details -- BSA]


http://blog.ted.com/2008/04/new_thinking_on.php

In Al Gore's brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.

Iceland Woos Data Centers As Power Costs Soar

[Some excerpts From Slashdot Frontpage article from BusinessWeek. Northern countries like Canada and the Nordic countries are well positioned to capture some of this data center business. In the past these countries used to lobby hard for large energy consuming industries like aluminum smelters - now the opportunity is with the much cleaner data centers and high tech jobs. High speed optical networks are the key for attracting data centers. There still remains an abundance of tapped renewable power which is uneconomic to ship to more populous areas because of the cost of transmission lines etc. But this power is ideal for date centers, because rather than shipping the power to the data center, with optical networks we can bring the data center to the power. In essence the data gets almost free renewable power because no other industry can access it. See http:/green-broadband.blogpsot for more information--BSA]

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_13/b4077060400752.htm

It's Too Darn Hot
The huge cost of powering—and cooling—data centers has the tech industry scrambling for energy efficiency [...] Haflioason works for Invest in Iceland, a government agency. He's pitching the desolate spot outside of Grindavik as a site for data centers, the sprawling facilities chock-full of computers that tech companies build to handle the swelling oceans of digital information.

It's a testament to the challenges companies face in operating data centers that Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Microsoft (MSFT) have all checked out this remote corner of the world (although none has made a commitment so far). The reason: Iceland has a rare combination of vacant land, cheap geothermal energy, and chilly climate that makes cooling a data center nearly free.

The tech industry is facing an energy crisis. The cost of power consumption by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2006, to $4.5 billion, and could double again by 2011, according to the U.S. government. With energy prices spiking, the challenge of powering and cooling these SUVs of the tech world has become a major issue for corporations and utilities. "The digital economy is pervasive," says Andy Karsner, Assistant U.S. Energy Secretary for energy efficiency. "The demands for computing will grow exponentially, but electric consumption can't grow the same way."


[...]
Little wonder, perhaps: In the future, the competition between Google and Microsoft in the Web search business might be determined as much by data center energy efficiency as by which company writes the best search algorithm.

Think of the data center as the factory for the info economy. Every day, in thousands of nondescript buildings in the hinterlands or in the basements of office towers, trillions of chunks of information coded in ones and zeros are moved, stored, and assembled into new shapes. Those electronic packets include millions of e-mails, Facebook pages, blog entries, and YouTube (GOOG) videos; vast quantities of electronic transactions; plus an ever-expanding universe of data that needs to be stored, sliced, diced, and analyzed.

[...]
Energy consumption in data centers emerged as a major issue in the past couple of years. According to a January survey of its members by AFCOM, an association of data center managers, 88.5% of them described energy consumption as a serious or very serious concern, up from 36.1% five years ago. "You're realizing the cost of all that power. You look for opportunities to reduce costs, but now the cost of power is soaring," says Sal Cefalu, a vice-president for data center operations at telecom giant Verizon (VZ), which has 18 data centers nationwide. These days, for every $1 spent on computing equipment in data centers, an additional 50 cents is spent each year to power and cool them. About half of the energy is for air conditioning.

Since then, Microsoft has spent more than $2 billion building four gigantic facilities—in Chicago, Dublin, San Antonio, and Quincy, Wash. Now it's looking at locations overseas, including Iceland and Siberia. Its computing needs have doubled each year for the past three years, and Microsoft expects them to continue doubling each year for the foreseeable future.

Energy consumption is a major factor in Microsoft's planning. The company has created what it calls a "heat map" of the globe that takes into account 35 factors in site selection, including cost and availability of power. A group of scientists studies the latest advances in data center design and computing efficiency. And Manos looks for local resources he can take advantage of—such as water from a waste-treatment system that cools computers at the new data center in San Antonio.

Solutions to tech's energy crisis won't come easily. The largest data centers can cost more than $200 million to construct and are expensive to upgrade to the latest energy-saving technology.



Although more progress is needed, there have been some major advances in data center energy conservation. In each case, the breakthroughs were the result of scientists and others questioning the conventional wisdom in their industries.

Even the traditionally slow-moving utility industry is showing signs of surprising change. Take PG&E. Two years ago, after Bramfitt was handed the job of designing conservation incentives for Northern California's tech companies, he came up with a creative solution. He decided to provide financial incentives to companies that decide to use what's known as virtualization software. Without the software, each server computer typically handles only one program at a time, and only a fraction of the capacity is used. With virtualization software, many programs can be run on a single computer.

The result is that managers can pack more programs onto each server, thus burning less electricity and reducing the number of computers needed. Under Bramfitt's incentive program, PG&E pays customers for every kilowatt-hour of energy they save using the software.

Environmnetal Impact of Fiber to the Home

[Here is an excellent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the European Fiber to the Home council of the environmental benefits of FTTh, taking into account all the CO2 emissions that are produced in the construction and deployment of the fiber, measured against the savings of only two potential applications - tele-commuting and tele-medicine. No surprise, that the greatest amount of CO2 emissions is digging up the ground to bury the fiber. All the more reason to have shared conduit (or poles where available). I suspect the CO2 savings will be significantly greater if they looked at wider range of applications, especially those that promoted the trading of "bits and bandwidth for carbon". The reality is that carbon offsets of tele-commuting and tele-medicine are relatively quite small in the great scheme of things. Since consumers are directly responsible or influence 60% of all CO2 emissions, network applications that enable or encourage consumers to reduce their carbon footprint in these other walks of life will pay much bigger dividends. Thanks to Joeri Van Bogaert for this pointer -- BSA]

http://www.ftthcouncil.eu/documents/Blog%20documents/Christian%20Ollivry%20and%20Philippe%20Osset.pdf

-As a main quantitative finding, the environmental impact of the deployment of a typical FTTH network will be positive in less than 14 years considering only the three selected services • Additional either existing or developing applications will further emphasize these results • Beyond its environmental-friendly aspects, FTTH solutions offer additional social and economical benefits

-If further physical barriers are reduced (ducts access in particular), and full range of services are developing, contributions will be far bigger

50 Environmentally Friendly Apps, Hosts and Resources

[Here is an excellent site listing various zero carbon (and carbon neutral) hosting sites, as well as tools to measure the carbon impact of your blog and/or computer. Thanks to Amy Quinn for this pointer--BSA]


http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/greendev-50-environmentally-friendly-apps-hosts-and-resources/

$50 million initiative for Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming

[I am very pleased to have contributed my small part to this initiative. As I have long argued there are significant innovation and economic opportunities to use ICT to address the challenge of global warming. Countries and business that are first movers in this field will be the big winners. As such I am pleased to see the participation of some of Canada's largest ICT companies. Some excerpts from the original article from TechMedia -- BSA]

Prompt Inc
http://www.promptquebec.com/index_en.html

Telecom giants support federal bid to study zero-carbon Internet http://www.techmediareports.ca/reports/node/23265

Ericsson, Nortel Networks and Bell Canada Enterprises are among the companies supporting an industry-led plan to promote development of a carbon-neutral Internet. Led by the Quebec-based organization PROMPT Inc., the “Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming” research project has already lined up $8 million in industry contributions and $6 million from the Quebec government. It is now looking to the federal government for an additional $7.5 million to make the initiative national.

“This will be a $15 million program to start … with long-term plans to grow to $50 million,” says Charles Despins, president and CEO of PROMPT (Partenariats de Recherche Orientée en Microélectronique, Photonique et Télécommunications). “It will involve both hardware and software, with wireless playing a huge part. There will be a lot of optical work and a number of new applications.”

[...]

How green was my fiber?

[Olivier Jerphagnon has an excellent blog on ICT and green technologies. As he points out in his most recent posting with the new 100G optical technology and FTTH he state that "fiber optics is a very “green” technology compared to semiconductor electronics. When you look at it more closely, it dissipates a lot less energy than copper based cables and it saves a lot of materials: one single strand of glass can carry as much data as many thousands of copper cables, and it can do over a longer distance without using electronic equipment to regenerate it."

As I mentioned in past postings, I expect future network utilization will be measured on a "bits per carbon" basis rather than "bits per second". With the new 100G wavelength technology, dramatic over provisioning will be the basic design principle. Not only will this make network management much easier, it will also significantly reduce carbon footprint of networks.--BSA]

Olivier Jerphagnon's blog http://greenfrog.typepad.com/weblog/2008/02/fiber-is-green.html


Also there is a new newsletter on Green Data Centers and Internet Business http://www.igigroup.com/nl/pages/business.html

As the demand for datacenter space continues to grow in the foreseeable future, the force for "greening" these datacenters will become stronger. This dynamic market offers great opportunities to companies that offer products that enable this "green" revolution.

The Green Data Centers & Internet Business Newsletter, published monthly, covers the rapid developments in the areas of Green IT, Green Data Centers, Carrier Hotels, Colocation, Web Hosting, Virtualization, and New Internet Business Models. The following topics will be addressed in each issue: Government Regulations, EPA Requirements, New Energy-saving Measures and Technologies, Vendor Initiatives, RFPs, Partnerships and Alliances, Contracts, and New Products. The newsletter provides the necessary marketing and technology information to keep you abreast of new developments and opportunities.

To download a sample issue, visit http://www.igigroup.com/nl/pages/business.html

Green Data Centers - the scary facts

[At this weeks NANOG there was an excellent presentation on the challenges of the electrical power consumption and cooling for modern data centers. Some very scary data and you can see why the ICT industry carbon footprint will easily exceed that of aviation industry -- BSA]

http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0802/presentations/Snowhorn-Power.pdf

By 2008, 50% of today’s Data Centers will have insufficient power and cooling;

By 2010, half of all (Enterprise) Data Centers will have to relocate or outsource applications to another facility.

Some organizations are in the unenviable position of paying more to power and cool a rack a servers than they paid for the rack and the servers themselves.

The Bottleneck of the Internet is the Colo!

ICT and Global Warming - Opportunities for Innovation and Economic Growth

[A draft of my paper on how Information, Computation and Telecommunication (ICT) solutions to mitigate against Global Warming can create opportunities for innovation and economic growth is now available. All comments, suggestions, changes and criticisms most welcome--BSA]

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgbgjrct_2767dxpbdvcf

There has been considerable interest recently about how ICT (Information, Computer, Telecommunications) technologies and how they can address the global challenges of protecting the environment and supporting sustainable development. The subject of ICT and the environment covers a wide range of fields such as sustainable development, using ICT to improve practices in agriculture and forestry, monitoring atmospheric and water pollution, waste management and recycling, improved energy efficiency and, of course ICT as a source of toxic waste in its own right. Although these are all important areas of scientific research and public policy the intent of this report is not to address the various areas on how ICT can address global environment challenges such as the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Instead the purpose of this brief report is to focus on the opportunities for innovation and economic growth that might arise through the use of ICT to address the challenge of GHG emissions.


To date most approaches for using ICT to reduce GHG emissions have focused on "sackcloth and ashes" approach of reducing energy consumption or emission abatement techniques such as tele-commuting, tele-presence, etc. Various industry consortia and government programs have been set up to promote innovation in these areas. Although these may be worthwhile endeavours, they have been in existence for some time and so far, have made little progress in reducing energy consumption or GHG emissions. Rather than focusing on energy efficiency or abatement techniques this document will hopefully demonstrate that ICT can provide much greater opportunities for innovation and economic growth through a strategy of "zero carbon" for the ICT industry itself and using ICT e-products and e-services as a reward mechanism to encourage consumers and businesses to reduce their overall carbon footprint including heating, transportation, etc

[..]

Consumers control or influence 60% of CO2 emissions

[I highly recommend a report by Confederation of British Industry titled "Climate Change: Everyone's Business". There is a number of excellent statistics and charts on GHG (Green House Gas) emissions. But the one that struck me the most significant is the fact that consumers control or influence 60% of CO2 emissions. Emissions under direct consumer control such as home heating, private car transportation and personal electric consumption constitute 35%. Consumer influenced sectors such as retail, food and drink, agriculture etc constitute another 25%.

Finding ways to encourage consumers to reduce their carbon footprint will have a dramatic impact on overall global GHG emissions. Past attempts at such a strategy have focused on efforts like smart meters, tele-commuting or tele-presence. Although these continue to be worthwhile initiatives, they suffer in their appeal due to externalities such as basic inconvenience, insufficient broadband bandwidth and lack of incentive to counter the clearly inferior technique of interacting with colleagues and workers.

On the other hand, one of the outstanding success of the Internet over the past decade has been the growth in electronic products and services such as music, film, advertising , photography on line searches and so on. Many business processes are also moving to the Internet through such applications as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 applications. The portion of the economy dedicated to e-products and e-services is expected to grow significantly over the coming years. Already multi-billion companies have been built around this business model such as Google, Apple iTunes, etc


Therefore, as I have argued in the past, one area of possible innovation and economic opportunity is to "mash up" these two separate economies and business models to see if new applications and services can be developed to encourage consumers to reduce their own GHG emissions. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Amazon, and eBay, with their close consumer relationships could possibly have a significant impact on CO2 emissions through exchanging their e-products and e-services for consumer reduction in carbon. This is not "pie in the sky" thinking but a common marketing tool that already exists with resale gas and electric companies. But surprisingly the concept has not been taken up or implemented by the Internet industry. -- BSA]

Climate Change: Everyone's Business http://www.avtclient.co.uk/climatereport/

Greater energy efficiency may increase CO2 emissions

[I highly recommend a recent a report by Jeff Rubin of CIBC World Markets who documents the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate, also known as the Jevons Paradox where greater energy efficiency may result in increased energy consumption and resultant Green House Gas emissions.

Currently the ICT industry is largely focused on energy efficiency as the primary mechanism for limiting the impact of ICT on global warming. I argue in an upcoming paper that this may be a wrong headed approach (draft copies of this paper are available on request). To avoid the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate it may be necessary for the ICT industry to focus on a "zero carbon" strategy as opposed to energy efficiency. It is my belief that the ICT has the technological ability to target a zero carbon strategy through the use of next generation optical Internet networks linking zero carbon data centers, hosting clouds and grids using latest Web 2.0 and SOA applications. -- BSA]

Does Energy Efficiency Save Energy? http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/snov07.pdf

"Much is being banked on the notion that
improvements in energy efficiency will be the
answer to both oil depletion and greenhouse
gas emissions. But is it a realistic economic
premise that technological change can
reduce energy usage, and by implication, its
carbon trail?

The OPEC oil shocks spawned huge
improvements in energy efficiency, particularly
insofar as oil was concerned. But three
decades later, we find that the net effect of
all of those efficiency initiatives has been to
increase the world’s appetite for crude. While
oil per unit of GDP has fallen impressively in
large energy-consuming economies like the
United States, total oil consumption, and
indeed, total energy consumption, continue
to grow by leaps and bounds. The increase
in energy usage has dwarfed the gains in
economic efficiency. Hence, instead of
capping energy demand, what we observe
is that improvements in energy efficiency
lead to ever and ever-greater levels of energy
usage.

Following the OPEC oil shocks, a few renegade
economists argued that improvements
in energy efficiency would perversely
lead to increases in energy demand. The
Khazzoom-Brookes postulate, as it has
come to be known, is based on the standard
substitution and income effects that result
from any change in the price of a good. The
standard theory of the consumer argues
that a reduction in energy costs (due to
improvements in energy efficiency) can
lead to an increase, not a decline, in energy
demand. Moreover, to the extent that
overall economic growth would benefit from
cheaper energy prices, there is an additional
macroeconomic stimulus to energy demand,
all contributing to a very powerful rebound
effect. The postulate suggests that energy
intensity targets, commonplace in most
countries’ energy strategies, are effectively
incapable of limiting future growth in
either energy-demand growth or carbon
emissions.

To date, there has only been one sure-fire
way of reducing energy consumption—
shrink the economy. But even small
reductions in the level of global GDP would
lever huge increases in human hardship.
But at the same time, reducing energy
consumption per unit of GDP has not been a
viable policy option. From gasoline demand
to the energy requirements of the average
American home, the legacy of energyefficiency
improvements is ever-greater
energy consumption (see pages 4-7).

In the past, the efficiency paradox has
been used as an argument against efforts
to promote greater energy efficiency and
conservation. That is not our intention here.
On the contrary, for a world facing the
twin challenges of oil depletion and global
climate change, there has never been a
more urgent need for both. But in order for
total efficiency to actually curb total energy
usage, as opposed to energy intensity,
consumers must be kept from reaping the
benefits of those initiatives in ever-greater
energy consumption. Otherwise, energy
usage will be the beneficiary of our best
efforts towards greater energy efficiency.
The road to hell is paved with good
intentions.

Upcoming Conferences and Studies on ICT and Global Warming

[Interest in ICT and its impact on global warming seems to have exploded in the last 6 months. There is a number of upcoming reports and conferences on the subject that I would highly recommend. Most of these events and studies are looking at energy efficiency and carbon abatement (tele-presence, tele-commuting, etc) as the primary mechanisms how ICT can mitigate effects of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. But I don't know how many of them are taking a systemic view and looking at issues of Jevons paradox or the issue of "zero carbon" versus "carbon neutrality". Also I don’t think any of these studies are addressing the new business and economic opportunities that may be possible with a zero carbon ICT strategy that may result in a virtuous feedback cycle to further stimulate GHG reductions in other sectors of society. It is my belief that there are huge economic and business opportunities with a zero carbon ICT strategy which will fundamentally reshape ICT industry, broadband, etc and create new wealth and employment to first mover countries and businesses--BSA]


http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/climatechange/call.html
Call for papers, speakers and contributions
ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change
Kyoto, Japan, 15-16 April 29008
London, UK, 17-18 June 2008
Deadline: 29 February 2008

Since 1970, the production of greenhouse gases has risen by more than 70 per cent, and this is having a global effect in warming the planet, causing changing weather patterns, rising sea-levels, desertification, shrinking ice cover and other worrying long-term effects. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) foresees a further rise in average global temperatures of between 1.4 and 5.8° centigrade by 2030.

Climate change is a concern for all of humanity and requires efforts on the part of all sectors of society, including the information and communication technologies (ICTs) sector. Although ICTs contribute only an estimated 2.5 per cent of total greenhouse gases, this share is set to grow as usage of ICTs expands globally, growing at a faster rate than the general economy. ICTs are thus part of the cause of global warming, but they can also be part of the solution, for instance through the promotion of carbon displacement technologies. ICTs are also vital in monitoring the spread of global warming.

As part of a major new initiative on the overall topic of ICTs and climate change, ITU is organizing two Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change. The first will be held in Kyoto, Japan 15-16 April 2008, hosted by MIC Japan, and the second in London, UK, on 17-18 June, hosted by BT. Initial proposals developed in Kyoto will be finalized in London. These symposia will bring together key specialists in the field, from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others.

To contribute to this work, you are invited to submit an abstract, of maximum 300 words, for a paper or presentation which is relevant to one of more of the topics below.



Canadian Green IT Forum: You, Me and Green IT Conference http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P16849

Apr 09-10, 2008
Toronto, Ontario Canada


Canadian Telecom Summit
Green IT
http://www.gstconferences.com/conference_program?



http://www.gesi.org/media/press-releases/new-global-climate-change-study-focuses-on-ict-industry.html

New Global Climate Change Study Focuses on ICT Industry

The ICT sector currently accounts for less than two per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, though this number could more than double by 2020. The independent research study will assess current carbon impacts of the ICT sector and analyse ICTs’ role in catalyzing transformation to a low-carbon economy.

The study will quantify the direct and indirect impacts of computing, telecoms, software and services, and assess business opportunities going forward to 2020. The study will commence in November 2007 and will report in March 2008.

In addition to identifying ways to limit direct impacts of the sector, the study will explore the opportunities for ICTs to drive efficiencies both in developed countries and in emerging economies, where growth of ICTs is over 10 per cent.

Steve Howard, CEO of The Climate Group says: “The ICT sector is rapidly growing and energy dependent. If the sector gets it right, it can achieve sustainable growth and deliver smart solutions that will help enable the low carbon economy.”

Luis Neves, Chair of the GeSI initiative, says: “IT and communications companies are looking for the best way to take responsibility for the future. This study will provide the definitive scientific evidence we need to choose the right course and play a positive role in climate change solutions. This is an excellent opportunity for the IT industry to examine how the application of IT can, not only deliver energy savings and carbon reduction, but do so in a way that drives even greater economic growth and productivity.”

Balancing the wider benefits against the direct impacts of the industry, covering both developed and emerging economies, the study aims to:

* Deliver the first globally comprehensive picture of direct and indirect carbon emissions of telecoms, computing, services and software.
* Define common themes and issues across the ICT lifecycle, identifying critical trends, scenarios and impact assessments for the ICT sector to 2020.
* Create a ‘road map’ to allow the ICT sector to act now on reducing global energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

More information

For more information contact:

Tom Howard-Vyse, The Climate Group
Head of Media, Europe
Dir: +44 (0) 207 960 2991, Mob: +44 (0) 7800 933831 thoward-vyse@theclimategroup.org

Joan Sherlock, Global e-Sustainability Initiative
Head of Communications
Dir: +1 650 948 2544, Mob: +1 650 400 1336
press@gesi.org

Conference on Green Cyber-infrastructure on Campus

[It is good to see that companies like Sun are starting to see the importance of dealing with CO2 footprint of the computational infrastructure on campus. There are now companies that offer offset dollars, as much as $1 million, to universities if they eliminate their cyber-infrastructure CO2 footprint through use of clouds and/or virtualization. The upcoming Canadian Telecom Conference will also have a entire day's track devoted to Green IT. Thanks to Michael Sims for this pointer--BSA]

Canadian Telecom Summit track on Green IT http://www.gstconferences.com/conference_program?

Sun Conference on Eco-computing http://www.events-at-sun.com/wwerc08/track2.html#speakers

WWERC Track #2:
Eco-Computing on Campus
As community participation on the network grows, so does its impact on the environment—and that affects the bottom line. Energy costs for universities have jumped 27% percent since 2005 as the campus datacenter faces heavier demands that are pushing the limits of power, space, and cooling. Meanwhile, institutions are also increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of their datacenters and are under pressure to reduce emissions, energy consumption and e-waste.

So where is the green in green? At the 2008 ERC, you'll hear from leaders in industry, pioneers in education, and experts at Sun on why eco-computing is both important and beneficial to higher education, and the opportunities available today to make a difference.

Note: All speakers subject to change.

Speakers

* Dave Douglas, Vice President, Eco Responsibility, Sun Microsystems
* Paul Frankel, Director, Aquillian Investments
* Larry Penley, President, Colorado State University System

How Google can save the planet

[As many of you who have been following my Green Broadband Blog I have long argued that there are 2 approaches on how the Internet can help reduce global warming. The first and most obvious is reducing the direct energy consumption of the Internet and ICT (information, communications, technology) industry itself. There is a lot of good work in this area with more energy efficient computers, green grids, zero carbon data centers and so forth. Google and other companies like IBM are exemplary corporate citizens in this regard. But even if the entire Internet industry reduced its carbon footprint to zero, the impact would be fairly negligible on the overall global CO2 output.

The second and more important benefit of how companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Amazon, eBay, etc can have a significant impact on CO2 emissions is through trading "bits and bandwidth for carbon". This is not "pie in the sky" thinking but a common marketing tool that already exists with resale gas and electric companies. But surprisingly the concept has not been taken up or implemented by the Internet industry.

Many gas and electric resale companies have a number of product offerings where customers can get free hot water tanks, furnaces, appliances and other services if they sign up for long term contracts with a fixed price for their rate of energy consumption. Direct Energy for example offers 300 free minutes of long distance per month for those customers who sign up for a 5 year contract of a fixed guaranteed utilization price for gas and/or electricity. With a fixed price per utilization (e.g. 10 cents per kilowatt/hour) customers are free to reduce their overall energy consumption and yet still enjoy the benefits of the free service or product. As far as I know none of the electric gas resale companies have positioned these offerings as a way for consumers to reduce CO2 emissions.

Companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others have been focusing on the advertising market as their main source of Internet revenue through "click-ad" and products like Ad-Sense etc. While the innovations in this market have been spectacular, they do have limited total revenue potential. The entire advertising market - radio, TV, Internet - is very small part of the overall economy. Even with 100% capture of this market it will not enable the next billion dollars of revenues for companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, etc

But imagine if you could combine the power of click ads and on-line purchases with electric and gas re-sale products and services. Imagine a real time Internet service where customers could buy all sorts of products and services over the network where the cost of the product and/or service is included as part of their overall electric/gas utilization rate (but NOT consumption).

For example a customer could click on an iTunes song and rather than being billed on their credit card, the charge instead would be applied to their electric utilization rate increasing it for example from 10 cents per kilowatt/hour to 10.1 cents per kilowatt/hour for the next 5 days, or something to that effect.

Customers would be encouraged to reduce their energy consumption during that period, so that the net cost of such a purchase could very well end up being zero. The purveyors of the products and services, and the electric/gas resellers can protect and guarantee their profits from the sale of the product or service through forward purchases of energy or averaging out the base utilization rate.

The same marketing concept can be applied to automobiles as well where customers with leases or service plans agree to pay a "utilization" fee based on their mileage they put on the vehicle. Products and services such as music, cell phone charge, congestion charges, etc could be charged to this utilization fee. Again the less the consumer drives the car, the more they benefit in terms of effective zero next cost for the product and/or service.

In many ways trading of "Bits and bandwidth for carbon" is in effect a carbon tax. But rather than governments applying such a tax where there are no direct benefits to the consumer, this mechanism will have the same effect of encouraging consumers to reduce their carbon footprint, but where they are directly rewarded for this behaviour.

Internet companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon would have a new marketing tool and a potential source of significant new revenue. At the same time they can be leaders in addressing the biggest environmental challenge facing this planet.

Virtually anyone can become an electric/gas reseller. It is important to note that you DON'T have to be a utility to be an electric/gas reseller. The licensing costs imposed by most states and provinces are less than $2000.00. Throughout North America and the rest of the world there are wholesale energy markets where licensed resellers can purchase energy for resale to consumers and businesses. Most utilities are obligated by law to do the billing and customer collection on behalf of any licensed reseller and then remit monthly the energy charges to the reseller directly. This means that any small innovative Internet companies who want to institute "bits and bandwidth for carbon" marketing schemes can easily become energy resellers and get into the market without huge costs of billing and collection.

For more details see http://green-broadband.blogspot.com

Can the Internet save the Planet

[Some excerpts from excellent article in Information Week article. There are also some excellent pointers to other resources on ICT and global warming -- BSA]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601559&pgno=1&queryText=



Solar arrays and wind farms grab all the green technology attention, but the Internet is quietly providing ways to save energy.

By Richard Martin
InformationWeek
January 12, 2008 12:01 AM (From the January 14, 2008 issue)

Last October, environmentally conscious Netheads everywhere got some excellent news. The pervasive use of broadband Internet connections and the tools and practices they enable could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by some 1 billion tons over the next decade, according to the American Consumer Institute. Widespread adoption of broadband in the United States alone would cut energy use by the equivalent of 11% of annual oil imports, the group says.

Clearly, though, when it comes to energy use, the Web is both a crusader and a culprit. Server farms and data centers burn mountains of CO2, much of it to keep machines cool. But now a new crop of companies and thinkers is trying to make the Internet "carbon neutral" and find ways to use Web-based technologies to reduce worldwide energy consumption through "demand-response" schemes that give energy consumers more direct control over their energy use.

Internet-enabled capabilities like telecommuting, e-commerce, teleconferencing, and distance learning that have been around for decades are expected to play an increasing role in cutting energy consumption--reducing air travel and the need for warehouses, trips to the mall, and even malls themselves. The American Consumer Institute projects that telecommuting alone will cut CO2 emissions by more than a half million tons over the next decade. Overall, the Internet economy could help reduce growth in greenhouse gas output by 67% over the next several years, the study says, citing data from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

[..]
St. Arnaud believes that Internet companies can slow global warming in two ways: by reducing the energy use of the routers and servers that make up the Internet's backbone, and by "bits-and-bandwidth for carbon" trading schemes that would provide incentives for individuals and companies to reduce their carbon footprints in return for free or reduced-rate broadband connections or downloadable music and films.

Legendary Silicon Valley investors like John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and Vinod Khosla, who made their fortunes from Internet-based technology, are now focused on slowing global warming, channeling billions of dollars into technologies such as solar power and wind farms.

[..]
Couple the potential of Internet-related technologies with these investment engines and the optimists among us might foresee a significant dent in the energy crisis. But such pronouncements mask the inconvenient truth that the Internet hogs a great deal of power, particularly for big server farms on Google- and Amazon-like scales.

[..]

Zero Carbon Data Centers being deployed by Google and others

[There has been a number of recent announcements of companies planning to deploy zero carbon data centers. Previously I mentioned the initiative in Iceland in partnership with Hibernia cable

http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-undersea-cable-to-iceland-to-enable.html

Here is an excellent presentation by Bastion Host which is planning on deploying a renewable energy data center in rural Nova Scotia which will also take advantage of Hibernia Cable and the much shorter great circle route between North America and Europe. The other advantage of locating a data center in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland is the close proximity to US markets. But, as well, being in Canada enterprise customers are largely protected from the prying eyes of the US Patriot Act.

http://www.bastionhost.com/BHslides/BHweb_edit.html


Google considers data center in Lithuania http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSL0767120020080107

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Web search company Google Inc. is considering building a data center in Lithuania, business daily Verslo zinios reported on Monday.

The government has proposed locating the centre near a hydro power plant in Kaisiadoriu district, central Lithuania, and the negotiations over investment were to be closed soon, the paper said. [...]

Thanks to viboons for his posting on Internet evolution http://www.internetevolution.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=179239&piddl_msgid=152647#msg_152647

--BSA]

Infrastructure as a web service to reduce carbon emissions

[I received several interesting responses on my recent posting on Internet Evolution on Infrastructure as a web service (IaaS). Enabling the IT infrastructure as a Web service allows administrators to virtualize not only computing resources but also a variety of LAN and WAN network hardware and storage devices including routers, switches, application servers, etc.

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=506&doc_id=142359

As Paul Whyte reports in his response "there is a company in Indianapolis who are pioneering efforts in this direction:http://www.bluelock.com). Going through their website makes interesting reading as they catalogue the financial, technical and business benefits of IaaS."

Eoin Kenney from Heanet comments that "infrastructure as web service ..is happening from a whole bunch of different directions. For example, Amazon have already provide infrastructure web services and you can build your own APN [Articulated Private Network] using Amazon web services as
building blocks.... Putting all these web services together, storage, bandwidth etc and you get your own APN. Its only a matter of time before some student starts providing a simple little GUI that will do all of this for you.

Alan Judge of Amazon gave a great presentation at the recent HEAnet conference on how researchers and educators can use Amazon Ec2/S3 in IaaS applications. A good example is the UC Santa Barbara program: Scalable Internet Services. Course materials, lessons learned, and projects all available online: http://courses.voneicken.com/ucsb-cs290f-fa06

Finally the New Scientist article " Can we stop the internet destroying our planet?" brings this all together by pointing out the new "Green Grid" initiative which is a partnership of Microsoft, IBM, Sun and Dell to explore how data centres can be made more energy efficient to support these new IaaS applications and services.

The New Scientist also reports that IBM "...pledged to invest $1 billion annually in a project called Big Green, which aims to double computing capacity at IBM's data centres without increasing energy consumption.
Like many members of the Green Grid, IBM is making virtualisation software a central part of its greening strategy... virtualisation is now seen as the low-hanging fruit in data centres' green transition."

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19726372.700-can-we-stop-the-internet-destroying-our-planet.html

The ultimate goal as I have reported in the past is to build zero carbon data centers in order to assist companies and individuals to relocate their energy consuming computers and servers to these facilities. More importantly zero carbon data centers will enable the next generation of high speed Internet applications that will be used to trade bits and bandwidth for carbon.

For more information please see my Green Broadband/IT blog at http://green-broadband.blogspot.com
--BSA]

How R&E optical networks can help reduce CO2 emissions

[I am prompted to write this blog by the recent decision of the BCnet board to adopt a Green Broadband strategy. As far as I know the British Columbia research and education optical network is the first in the world to adopt such a program as part and parcel of their disaster recovery and virtualization planning. Not only will this initiative have enormous benefits for the BC university research community it will also provide significant advantages to BC businesses and government.

BCnet and other optical R&E networks are starting to realize that they can play a critical role in helping mitigate the impact of CO2 emissions from cyber-infrastructure and other carbon intensive facilities on university campuses.

Many universities are spending millions of dollars on building new facilities to host the demand for new cyber-infrastructure equipment that is essential to the future of scientific discovery. A big part of the cost of such facilities is the new electrical and air conditioning systems required to power and cool these systems respectively, which of course has a large carbon footprint.

But rather than building carbon intensive data centers on campuses, some leading edge universities are starting to look at relocating these systems to zero carbon data centers which may be at distant sites off campus, or even sharing these facilities through grids across several campuses. Not only does this reduce the carbon impact of such systems, it also provides for disaster recovery in the event of major disruptions such as earthquakes, fires, etc

Many university computer clusters are often under utilized. But by sharing these facilities though grids and other means their carbon impact can be significantly reduced. And in some cases universities, Virtual Organizations or R&E networks can earn real dollars through carbon offsets, by sharing these facilities and increasing their overall utilization.

Of course, all of this is only possible, if the universities are attached to a high speed optical research network. Relocating or sharing cyber-infrastructure systems off campus only works if researchers and students can still have the same performance and throughput as if these facilities were located next door on campus. This can only be achieved by a high speed optical network.

And yet collaboration and sharing of cyber-infrastructure is often a tough sell to many researchers, even though many recognize it is the future of science and research. The inertia in the way they currently carry out their research can be a powerful disincentive to move to the world of cyber-infrastructure. But saving the climate may provide a more compelling moral incentive to these researchers to encourage collaborate and share these cyber-infrastructure facilities in the exciting new world of eScience and eResearch. So universities and research networks like BCnet who implement green broadband strategies can help accelerate their researchers to move to the world of cyber-infrastructure and leading edge science--BSA]

Future Internet could reduce todays PSTN CO2 emissions by 40%

[The ITU has put out an excellent report called ICTs and Climate Change. Highly recommended reading and further support to my belief that the ICT industry can reduce its own emissions to zero but also enable other traditional carbon heavy sectors of society to reduce their carbon footprint through "bits and bandwidth for carbon" trading schemes such as free fiber to the home, free mobile telephony, and other free eProducts and eServices. Some excerpts --BSA]

http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/newslog/PermaLink,guid,9ba8aa93-e90d-4e9b-859c-b94b6d57c424.aspx


Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are undoubtedly part of the cause of global warming as witnessed, for instance, by the millions of computer screens that are left switched on overnight in offices around the world.

But ICTs can also be part of a solution. This Technology Watch briefing report looks at the potential role that ICTs play at different stages of the process, from contributing to global warming (section 1), to monitoring it (2), to mitigating its impact on the most vulnerable parts of the globe (3), to developing long term solutions, both directly in the ICT sector and in other sectors like energy, transport, buildings etc (4). The final sections look at what ITU-T is already doing in this field (5) strategic options (6), and the campaign for a climate-neutral UN (7).

A major focus of ITU’s work in recent years has been on Next-Generation Networks (NGN), which are expected by some commentators to reduce energy consumption by 40 per cent compared to today’s PSTN

The telecommunications industry is currently undergoing a major revolution as it migrates from today’s separate networks (for voice, mobile, data etc) to a single, unified IP-based next-generation network . The savings will be achieved in a number of ways: • A significant decrease in the number of switching centres required. For instance, BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) will require only 100-120 metropolitan nodes compared with its current 3’000 locations; • More tolerant climatic range specifications for switching locations, which are raised from 35 degrees (between 5 and 40°C) to 50 degrees (between -5 and 45°C). As a result, the switching sites can be fresh-air cooled in most countries rather than requiring special air conditioning.