Green IT/Broadband and Cyber-Infrastructure

Google's Best Bet: Organzing Energy Use to reduce CO2 emissions

2008-10-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

[Great article in Gigaom on how companies like Google can make money on the energy market. I have long argued that this is where future business opportunities lie with “gCommerce” – green Commerce.

The energy market is orders of magnitude larger than Internet market or click advertising. It is also a market limited by resource scarcity, which ultimately means increased costs and larger opportunities for revenue growth ( this is how the oil companies have become so rich). The internet and “e”Commerce on the other hand are markets of abundance where is scarcity is only an artifact created by the carriers. In markets of abundance, costs will inevitably go down, as will revenue opportunities. What we need to do is create revenue opportunities in markets of scarcity in exchange for offering free services in markets of abundance. For some examples please see http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/

Google and other companies don’t have to wait for smart meters and smart grids in order to realize revenue from the energy market. There already exists a trillion dollar market in energy resale –where you don’t have to make single investment in infrastructure or equipment. The only cost to get in, is a license fee of a couple thousand dollars per state or province. Unfortunately that low entry fee and huge revenue potential has attracted a lot of unsavory companies and the energy re-sale market today is characterized by shady business practices and millions of customer complaints.

If companies like Google entered the market they could use their “click advertising” skills to quickly drive down costs and also provide an aura of credibility and respectability to the industry. Companies like Google could also be big drivers in gCommerce to help consumers reduce their CO2 footprint by offering virtual products and services in exchanging for the consumer purchasing renewable power at a premium to conventional dirty power. Some excerpts from the GigaOm article–BSA]

http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/googles-best-energy-bet-organizing-energy-usage/

Google’s Best Energy Bet: Organizing Energy Usage

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information — be it via search, email, online maps or mobile apps — but it could someday help you manage your daily energy consumption, too. At a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that as part of its recently announced collaboration with GE, the search engine giant is currently looking at designing tools to help consumers understand their energy consumption. Google has also been actively looking at utilities’ smart meter projects, he said, and at using its strong connection with consumers to play a role in consumer energy management.

Helping consumers, even utilities, manage energy data is a perfect fit for Google. The power grid in its current form won’t be able to support the loads — inefficient and unintelligent, it has yet to benefit from the technologies of the information age. Meanwhile, at the edges of the grid, consumers know very little about their energy use; monthly electricity bills have an appalling lack of transparency and options compared to industries like cell phones.

That said, there probably isn’t a company that has changed consumer behavior online more than Google. It has not only shaped how consumers access information. So Google is wise to be looking into online tools, or even a wireless home networking product, that could help consumers change their energy consumption behavior. They’re clearly headed in that direction: “It seems obvious to me that if you give [energy] information to end users they behave smartly,” Schmidt said in his speech. “So we are working on that.” It could ultimately be the most important contribution Google makes to fighting climate change. As Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency notes, advanced technology deployments will take several decades and a lot of capital. Simple tools that can affect the behavior of the average consumer’s energy usage will be more cost-effective and can be implemented now.

How Cyber-infrastructure and research networks can help reduce CO2 footprint

2008-10-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

[There are a couple of upcoming meetings-workshops on how cyber-infrastructure and research networks can help universities and research networks reduce their carbon footprint and possibly even earn carbon offset dollars.

The first meeting will be the California-Canada summit to be held in Montreal October 26-27. This is an invitation only event which will involve leading carbon accounting firms, industry players and academia from Canada and California where we will be exploring possibility of some collaborative initiatives between Canada and California on how research networks and cyber-infrastructure can help reduce the carbon footprint at our respective institutions. Dr Larry Smarr, Harry E. Gruber Prof, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California, San Diego and myself will be co-chairs of this event. If you have expertise in carbon accounting and GHG life cycle measurements with respect to ICT (ISO 14062 and ISO 14064), in particular research networks and cyber-infrastructure, you may be interested in attending this event. Please contact Lisa Stockley (Lisa.Stockley@international.gc.ca) about a possible invitation.

The second meeting is being sponsored by PROMPT Inc on October 28th and will be a continuation of the California-Canada summit but with a focus on Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming (G-NGI) http://www.promptinc.org/documents/atelier_ngi_ang.pdf. This workshop will focus on the development of new computing and Internet architectures to reduce global warming as well as the establishment of ISO 14064 testbeds in order to baseline emission measurements in order for network researchers and campus CIOs to potentially qualify for carbon offsets. This workshop is also invitation only, so please contact Jacques McNeill if you are interested in attending ( JMcNeill@promptinc.org).

Finally there will be session on Green Cyber-Infrastructure and research networking at the CANARIE-ORION summit on November 4 in Toronto which will also involve leading carbon accounting firms such as ZeroFootPrint and Climate-Check where they will explain the various standards and processes for measuring CO2 baseline emissions and how to possibly qualify for carbon offsets. http://www.orioncanariesummit.ca/greenit.html

Abstract:

Increasingly it is being recognized that Climate Change is an issue that we all have a responsibility to address. Its solely not a problem restricted to coal burning power plants or drivers of SUVs. It will also have a major impact on how we carry out research and teaching at our universities. Most significantly cyber-infrastructure and IT may now be one of the major contributors to Green House Gas (GHG) emissions at our universities and research centers. Fortunately, although cyber-infrastructure and IT may be part of the problem, it is also part of the solution.

Many universities throughout North America are adopting carbon neutral strategies either on a voluntary basis, or as part of a government mandate. This workshop/seminar will help inform university IT departments, CIOs and researchers the necessary steps on how to reduce the institution’s carbon footprint

This workshop will show how to collect GHG life cycle data (ISO 14062) for their respective cyber-infrastructure and IT hardware vendors and how to establish ISO 14064 baseline data as soon as possible for their respective campus and wide area networks and IT equipment, from which future GHG reductions will be measured (and this potentially eligible for carbon offset dollars). Finally new network and distributed computing architectures will be discussed that may allow institutions to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of their current cyber-infrastructure and networks.]

Carbon credits instead of carbon taxes

2008-09-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

[Although it is recognized by economists that carbon taxes are probably the best approach in terms of providing the right incentives to get consumers to reduce their carbon footprint, they are almost an impossible political sell in North America.

However, some experts have argued that instead of carbon taxes we need carbon rewards or credits. Carbon rewards or credits work the same way as taxes in that you pay a surcharge on carbon emitting products such as gasoline, etc. But rather than having the money fall into the hands of government the money flows back directly into the hands of consumers in terms of credits. Consumers can use these credits to purchase “virtualized” zero carbon products and services. This is where broadband networks can play a critical role, as virtualized products can only be delivered over true broadband networks. In fact I argue the networks themselves should be paid for through carbon credits as in our proposed free fiber to the home business model (http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/)

Ron Dembo of ZeroFootPrint has written a great paper on the concept of carbon credits which was recently covered in the Globe and Mail:

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080908.RREGULY08/TPStory/Business/

To read the entire paper please see http://www.zerofootprint.net/pdf/zerofootprint-green-credits.pdf

The ZeroFootPrint web site also has excellent articles explaining the intricacies of carbon offsets and developing a detailed carbon accounting plan in line with ISO 14064 and related standards – BSA]

A plea to the computing and telecommunications industry - ISO 14064 certification

2008-09-22T16:29:00.001-07:00

[We have been hearing a lot lately about the benefits of ICT to reducing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Several studies indicate that ICT may reduce GHG emissions by as much as 15%.

At the same time many industries have announced plans to be carbon neutral such as Dell, Cisco, Google etc. Academia and government are also moving in this direction with voluntary and, in some cases, mandatory carbon neutrality targets.

We all believe that optical networks, clouds, virtualization, grids, SOA, broadband etc can play a critical role in achieving our respective carbon neutrality objectives. But in order to use ICT technologies to achieve carbon neutrality an institution must demonstrate that the actual carbon savings are real, verifiable and auditable. Vendor’s claims of increased energy efficiency, or reduced travel, are meaningless and worthless without ISO 14064 compliance.

Compliance with ISO 14064 is necessary to demonstrate genuine carbon reduction and it may also lead to the possibility of earning carbon offset dollars from various trusts like the Pacific Carbon Trust and ultimately maybe even real dollars from large carbon exchanges in Chicago, Montreal etc.

What we desperately need from equipment vendors and telecommunication supplier is actual examples or implementation of how an ICT product or service reduced GHG emissions through the rigorous process of ISO 14064 certification. As pressure for carbon neutrality mounts, vendors and suppliers who can demonstrate solutions with ISO 14064 are the only ones who will win new business.

A good example is the recent Google-GE announcement, for Google to earn carbon offsets in its goal to achieve carbon neutrality. Climate-check (www.climate-check.com) and Green House Gas Services (http://www.ghgs.com/ ) developed the ISO 14064 protocol for this project. – BSA]

The new Industrial Imperative - building a zero carbon economy

2008-09-22T16:25:00.001-07:00

[As many long suffering reader of this list well know, I have long argued that moving to a zero carbon economy is one of the great fundamental opportunities of a generation for innovation and economic growth. Reducing our carbon footprint is not all about sacrifice and lowering our standard of living, but much more about new business opportunities, wealth creation and an entire new economic models. That is why I am not a big fan of carbon taxes. Taxes of any kind are an inefficient way of implementing public policy. They will hurt our consumers and reduce our competitiveness against nations who do not implement similar policies. We need to move a zero carbon economy as quickly as possible. That is where the real opportunities lie. Here is some relevant pointers on the topic. Thanks to Kevin Moss and Frank Coluccio on Gordon Cooks list for these pointers --BSA]

http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/08/08/howard-climate-group-face-markets-cx_je_0808autofacescan01.html

....historians call “basic innovation”: fundamental changes in technology and organization that create new industries, transform existing ones, and, over time, reshape societies. Basic innovations — including electrification, the automobile, commercial air travel, digital computing, and, most recently, the Internet — involve not just a single new technology but a collection of new inventions, practices, distribution networks, businesses and business models, and shifts in personal and organizational thinking that combine to transform the way business is conducted, technology is deployed, and people are engaged.
...
Over the past few years, as the implications of global climate change have become clearer, a new wave of basic innovation has begun. Much of it is occurring in household-name companies.
...
Learning to live outside the industrial age bubble — will require basic innovations of a scale and speed never seen before.
...
As in the original Industrial Revolution, business must play a critical role: Businesspeople can apply their skills in management, entrepreneurship, and economic acumen to galvanize a collective shift.

ICTs, Innovation and the Challenge of Climate Change
http://www.iisd.org/publications/pub.aspx?id=973

Kevin Moss's excellent blog
http://mosske.blogspot.com/

Building a winner in a low carbon economy
http://www.wwf.se/source.php/1183710/identifying_the_1st_billion_tonnes_ict.pdf

SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age
http://www.theclimategroup.org/index.php/news_and_events/news_and_comment/smart2020pressrelease/

Dell Claims Carbon Neutrality 5 months ahead of schedule
http://greenmonk.net/dell-claims-carbon-neutrality-5-months-ahead-of-schedule/

Big business shows politicians how the planet can be saved
http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org/blog/?p=13

carbon footprint tool is an Android winner

2008-09-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Richard Ackerman for this pointer

http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/2008/09/carbon-footprin.html

The dirty secret of renewable energy - transmission line capacity

2008-08-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

[The Internet and ICT industries have a big advantage over other sectors of society in terms of using renewable energy. There is no reason why computers, databases, cyber-infrastructure needs to be located in cities where it is difficult to access renewable power. Instead of bringing power to the computers, why not move the computers to the source of power and connect them with optical networks? Optical networks are a lot cheaper to deploy than electrical transmission lines and far less disruptive to the environment. Besides building out the necessary transmission line capacity to support the various renewable energy sites will take decades. The other big advantage of relocating ICT to renewable energy sites is the low cost and long term certainty of the price of power at these sites and independence from electrical grid operators and their usurious “wheeling” charges. The electrical utility industry makes the telephone companies look like paragons of entrepreneurialism in comparison. The Internet and ICT industry is also virtually the only industry sector that can tolerate unreliable and intermittent energy that is common with many renewable sources. From its very initial design, the Internet has in place the routing protocols to allow quick re-routing of traffic and data in the event of network outages, whether its from an apocryphal nuclear war or intermittent renewable energy. If the Internet and ICT consume anywhere from 2-6% of the nation’s energy relocating this industry to renewable energy sites will go a long way to achieving energy independent. Excerpts from NY Time – BSA]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/business/27grid.html

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.

Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.

“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.

California - Canada summit on Green IT and Next Generation Internet

2008-08-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

“The Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership (CCSIP) Initiative is an informal process of collaboration and exchange between the two jurisdictions involving academic, private sector, financial and public sector organizations. It champions the development of new models of cooperation and specific projects in innovation-intensive areas that are priorities in both jurisdictions.

Canada and California have very strong relationships, including $36.9 billion in bilateral trade, and share many complementary strengths. They also share common concerns in areas like public health, energy and transportation. Canada is a leading country in higher-education Research and Development (R&D) intensity, and California represents one of the most dynamic innovation systems on the planet. To sustain Canada’s and California’s position as global leaders in this era of Research, Development and Delivery (RD&D), stakeholders in both jurisdictions have decided to establish the CCSIP Initiative.”
Of particular interest is the upcoming California-Canada summit in Montreal of which one of the themes will be Green IT and Next Generation Internet. California and Canada recognize that research and technology development into the future Internet and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) will play a critical role in addressing the greatest challenge facing the planet, namely global climate change. More importantly it plays to our respective strengths in ICT, cyber-infrastructure entertainment and renewable energy and will hopefully will lay the foundation for the future zero carbon economy. It is recognized that businesses and research institutions that are first to adopt a zero carbon strategy will be the global winners of this century.

Examples of such a strategy are research initiatives like GreenLight, Optiputer and CineGrid in California and PROMPT’s Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming (G-NGI) in Canada. On the Industry side a good example of collaboration in Green IT is the partnership between SUN and Mitel to develop low carbon footprint unified IP client called Sunray which won the Best of Interop Award in 2008. Products like the Mitel-SUN Sunray will be critical for businesses and universities to meet the very stringent carbon reduction targets of our respective jurisdictions.

The California-Canada summit on Green IT and Next Generation Internet is an invitation only event. But if you are a researcher or company that interested in California-Canada collaboration in the area of Green IT you may want to contact one of the people listed below. A preliminary planning meeting is being arranged in Palo Alto at HP headquarters on September 19th.

California Canada Strategic Innovation Partnership
http://www.ccsip.org/

California - Canada summit on Green IT and Next Generation Internet
http://www.ccsip.org/workshops.html

More information on GreenLight and G-NGI
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/2008/07/impact-of-climate-change-on-academic.html

Mitel and Sun Sunray
http://www.mitel.com/DocController?documentId=27874

Individuals to Contact for possible participation in the Summit

Lisa Stockley: Lisa.Stockley@international.gc.ca
Thiery Weissenburger: Thierry.Weissenburger@international.gc.ca
Dominic Jean dominic.jean@ccsip.org

Free green power for Canadian government IT

2008-08-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

Free green power for Canadian government IT

http://www.intergovworld.com/article/ea8b24e9c0a8000601bf43f0838b4196/pg0.htm

By: Rosie Lombardi, InterGovWorld.com(Aug 22, 2008 09:00:00)
Many provincial governments are setting the wheels in motion to move their IT processing to greener IT data centres that are powered by renewable hydro-electricity.
[...]

New low Carbon Notebooks to connect to the Internet

2008-07-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

[Here is a good article on how I think the PC industry will evolve in order for consumers to reduce their carbon footprint -- BSA]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/technology/21pc.html
The personal computer industry is poised to sell tens of
millions of small, energy-efficient Internet-centric devices.
The new computers, often called netbooks, have scant onboard memory. They
use energy-sipping computer chips. They are intended largely for surfing Web
sites and checking e-mail. The price is small too, with some selling for as
little as $300.
The companies that pioneered the category were small too, like Asus and
Everex, both of Taiwan.
Several makers are taking the low-powered PCs one step further. In the
coming months, they are expected to introduce "net-tops," low-cost versions
of desktop computers intended for Internet access.
A Silicon Valley start-up called CherryPal says it will challenge the idea
that big onboard power is required to allow basic computing functions in the
Internet age. On Monday it plans to introduce a $240 desktop PC that is the
size of a paperback and uses two watts of power compared with the 100 watts
of some desktops.
It wants to take advantage of the trend toward "cloud computing," in which
data is managed and stored in distant servers, not on the actual machine.
Industry analysts say that the emergence of this new class of low-cost,
cloud-centric machines could threaten titans like Microsoft and Intel, or
even H.P. and Dell, because the giants have built their companies on the
notion that consumers want more power and functions built into their next
computer.

It is a market that caught the major computer companies - both hardware and
software - by surprise after Asus, entered the market last year with the
$300 Eee PC. The company thought the device would essentially appeal to the
education market, or as a starter laptop for adolescents, but the interest
has turned out to be broader.
With an emphasis not in on-board applications (like word processing), but
Internet-based ones like Google Docs, the Linux-based Eee PC sold out its
350,000 global inventory. It has been in short supply ever since, said
Jackie Hsu, president of the American division of Asus. Everex has sold
around 20,000 of its CloudBook, which sells for about $350.

The impact of Climate Change on Academic Research

2008-07-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

The impact of Climate Change on Academic Research

Cyber-Infrastructure is part of the problem, but it is also part of the
solution.

NSF GreenLight at CAL-IT2 and PROMPT G-NGI initiatives to reduce Greenhouse
Gas (GHG) impact of academic research.



To date most academic researchers have not been particularly concerned about
the impact of climate change on their academic research.  To many
researchers climate change only affects big polluters such as coal plants
and owners of SUVs. Surprisingly few members of the research community
appreciate the dramatic changes that will be required in the next couple of
years, if we hope to slow down the rate of temperature increase in the next
decade (never mind trying to stop or reverse climate change as result of GHG
emission).  Every aspect of our lives will be fundamentally altered as
society starts to recognize the severity of the problem, including, and
especially in the way we carry out academic research.

Governments around the world are already starting to impose carbon
neutrality on public sector institutions such as universities, schools and
hospitals. This strategy is becoming increasing popular with governments as
the public sector is a large part of the economy and therefore a major
contributor to GHG emissions. More importantly it avoids the anguish and
controversy of imposing carbon taxes on the voting public.

University researchers and funding agencies had better be prepared for these
developments. The concept of mandated carbon neutrality will spread like
wildfire once governments around the world discover its many benefits.

Fortunately the academic research community already has many the tools at
hand, not only to be carbon neutral, but perhaps even achieve zero carbon
sustainability.  It is becoming evident that one of the most important
scientific tools for research exploration at our universities is
cyber-infrastructure. Through the use of networks, grids, virtualization and
remote instrumentation and laboratories it is the one research tool that can
help reduce GHG emissions at our campus.

But currently cyber-infrastructure located "on campus" is part of the
problem. At many of our universities it is increasingly a major source of
GHG in its own right through the power it consumes. The beauty and power of
cyber-infrastructure is it removes the restriction that physical facilities
need to be located on campus. With high speed optical networks these same
facilities can be located at zero carbon data centers anywhere in the
country that have easy access to renewable energy. Relocating
cyber-infrastructure to renewable energy sites will be much cheaper than
trying to purchase renewable power locally on campuses in our cities, as the
university will be competing with businesses for that same power.

Two important initiatives are now underway which will help academic
researchers address the challenge of reducing their carbon footprint through
the use of cyber-infrastructure. The first is the PROMPT program for Next
Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming. This is an international
partnership being led by PROMPT in Montreal with partners from the world
including Australia, The Netherlands, United States, China etc. It is a
research and commercialization initiative to help carry out research and
commercialize the next generation Internet technologies being developed at
our universities such as wireless devices, sensors, instruments and networks
through the use of virtualization and SOA, etc.  The initiative is unique in
that rather than negotiating traditional licenses and royalties, payments
for companies who adopt the technology will be made through the purchase of
carbon credits. PROMPT will also work with universities in helping them
develop research practices and procedures in order to reduce their carbon
footprint.  PROMPT proposes to develop a set of testbeds in Canada and with
its international partners to develop the necessary protocols to test verify
and audit the actual carbon credits in compliance with ISO 14064 that will
be possible through the application of next generation Internet
technologies.

The second important initiative which is also important to the PROMPT
program is to actually measure the energy savings and CO2 reductions of
cyber-infrastructure equipment.  To this end the NSF has awarded a research
team at CAL-IT2 funding for a project called GreenLight. This project,
measures, monitors, and optimizes the energy consumption of large-scale
scientific applications from many different areas. The work enables
inter-disciplinary researchers to understand how to make "green" (i.e.,
energy efficient) decision for IT computation and storage, thus helping to
re-define fundamentals of systems engineering for a transformative concept,
that of green CyberInfrastructure .

Academic research is about to go through a major revolution in the way and
how it is carried out.  Cyber-infrastructure will play a critical role.
Researchers and institutions that are the first to adopt to these new way of
doing research will be the big winners in the future. --BSA]

For additional information:

The Impact of Climate Change on Academic Research
http://www.slideshare.net/bstarn/impact-of-climate-change-on-academic-resear
ch/

PROMPT
www.promptinc.org

Greenlight
http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0821155

This project, developing an instrument called GreenLight, measures,
monitors, and optimizes the energy consumption of large-scale scientific
applications from many different areas. The work enables inter-disciplinary
researchers to understand how to make ?green? (i.e., energy efficient)
decision for IT computation and storage. Consequently, an experienced team
might be able to make deep and quantitative explorations in advanced
architecture, including alternative circuit fabrics such as Field
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), direct-graph execution machines, graphics
processors, solid-state disks, and photonic networking. The enabled
computing and systems research will yield new quantitative data to support
engineering judgments on comparative ?computational work per watt? across
full-scale applications running at-scale computing platforms, thus helping
to re-define fundamentals of systems engineering for a transformative
concept, that of green CyberInfrastructure (CI). Keeping in mind that the IT
industry consumes as much energy (same carbon footprint) as the airline
industry, this project enables five communities of application scientists,
drawn from metagenomics, ocean observing, microscopy, bioinformatics, and
the digital media, to understand how to measure and then minimize energy
consumption, to make use of novel energy/cooling sources, and employ
middleware that automates optimal choice of compute/power strategies. The
research issues addressed include studying the dynamic migration of
applications to virtual machines for power consumption reduction, studying
the migrations of virtual machines to physical machines to achieve network
locality, developing new power/thermal management policies (closed loop,
using feedback from sensors), classifying scientific algorithms in the
context of co-processing hardware such as GPUs and FPGAs, and developing
algorithms for resource sharing/scheduling in heterogeneous platforms. The
full-scale virtualized device, the GreenLight Instrument, will be developed
to measure, monitor, and make publicly available (via service oriented
architecture methodology), real-time sensor outputs, empowering researchers
anywhere to study the energy cost of at-scale scientific computing. Hence,
this work empowers domain application researchers to continue to exploit
exponential improvements in silicon technology, and to compete globally.
Although the IT industry has begun to develop strategies for ?greening?
traditional data centers, the physical reality of modern campus CI currently
involves a complex network of ad hoc and suboptimal energy environments in
departmental facilities. The number of these facilities increases extremely
fast creating campus-wide crisis of space, power, and cooling due to the
value of computational and data intensive approaches to research. This
project addresses these important issues offering the possibility to
improve. Broader Impacts: The project enables researchers to carry-out
quantitative explorations into energy efficient CyberInfrastructure (CI) and
to train the next generation of energy-aware scientists. It enlists graduate
students from five disciplinary projects, involves minority serving
institutions, and is likely to have direct impact on commercial components
of the nation?s CI.

Canada primed for Green Cloud computing

2008-07-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

[Some excerpts from Compute Canada article- BSA]

Canada primed for cloud computing: Gartner

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/07/06/canada-primed-cloud-computing-gar
tner

A Gartner analyst thinks Canada's natural resources and cooler temperature can help it take advantage of the growing cloud computing trend to provide services and Web applications.
He thinks the country's years of investment in hydro electric power facilities and ambient temperatures will enable data centres to be powered and subsequently cooled. And, he said, the concerns around power and cooling are only getting bigger as Web content grows with video sharing sites like YouTube. Therefore, the country can take its hydro electric infrastructure
to "another level" and extend it to the Web, said Hewitt.

Also facilitating green data center growth is the emergence of server technology like blades and mobile data centres in shipping containers, he noted.

The opportunity, said Hewitt, lies in the federal and provincial governments encouraging Canadian businesses to build data centres in areas where hydro electric power abounds and facilities can be cooled naturally with ambient air.

There's an economic advantage to this. Often, people tend to look to places like Iceland to build data centres that can grant adequate power and cooling, said Hewitt, but distance is a hurdle when undersea fiber cables need to be built. Canada can target the U.S., given its close proximity, as a "potentially large customer," said Hewitt.

Such partnerships with U.S.-based companies, he said, can help grow Canada's infrastructure, job market, and ultimately, its knowledge base around cloud-based computing infrastructure.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. has been growing its Web-based services primarily through search and content, but Hewitt believes there is the potential for other applications and services on the cloud. And what is more, the server market is going to grow regardless.

Hewitt doesn't anticipate fuelling data centees with natural resources will be a difficult concept for businesses to grasp. The country's investment in building out hydro electric facilities has been well received, and "I see that as a really good sign."

"Those kinds of initiatives take time and effort," said Hewitt, referring to initiatives in Brazil to build a fuel-independent infrastructure that today doesn't require the import of fossil fuels.

Governments, he said, can play a role and really drive such initiatives. "In the long run, [Canada] can build out a significant set of advantages in providing these services and offering a base for this kind of activity."

Internet & ICT may play a bigger role in reducing CO2 than carbon taxes

2008-06-24T06:33:00.001-07:00

[One of the greatest challenges facing the planet is global warming.
Governments around the world are wrestling with various strategies on how
to reduce our collective carbon footprint. Carbon taxes are seen as the
best solution, but are meeting with stiff political resistance
particularly with the recent dramatic increases in gasoline prices. Cap
and trade systems are the other preferred approach, but also have
significant uncertainties in terms of their actual ability to reduce CO2
emissions.

However, over the past couple of months a couple of new studies indicate
that the Internet and ICT can possibly have a bigger impact in reducing
CO2 than either carbon taxes and cap and trade systems.  There is no
question that the Internet and ICT will play an important role in reducing
CO2 emissions, but the surprising development is the degree to which the
Internet and ICT might contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases.

The first indication of the new found importance of the Internet and ICT
in reducing CO2 emissions was an economic modeling study done by Dr Yuji
INOUE,  President & CEO The Japanese Telecommunication Technology
Committee, the results of which he presented at the ITU Summit on Green IT
in Kyoto this past April.

http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/06/0F/T060F0060080025PDFE.pdf.

Dr Inoue demonstrated that it is possible for Japan to reach 90% of its
Kyoto targets strictly through the application of ICT.   As with all
economic forecasting models there are lot of untested and unproven
assumptions, and this study is no different. But even if the application
of Dr Inoue’s models only result in 50%  or even 25% of the Kyoto targets,
this is still a very, very significant development, and means that ICT
will still have the biggest impact in reducing CO2 emissions compared to
any other conventional approach such as carbon taxes and cap and trade.

The other study that indicates the significance of Internet and ICT was
just published by the Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability
Initiative (GeSI)and states that "The Smarter technology use could reduce
global emissions by 15 per cent and save global industry $US 800 billion
in annual energy costs by 2020.


http://www.theclimategroup.org/news_and_events/news_and_comment/smart2020pressrelease

The report – SMART 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the
information age – is the world’s first comprehensive global study of the
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector’s growing
significance for the world’s climate.

The report’s supporting analysis, conducted independently by international
management consultants McKinsey & Company, shows that while ICT’s own
sector footprint - currently two per cent of global emissions - will
almost double by 2020, ICT’s unique ability to monitor and maximise energy
efficiency both within and outside of its own sector could cut CO2
emissions by
up to five times this amount. This represents a saving of 7.8 Giga-tonnes
of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2020 –greater than the current
annual emissions of either the US or China.

Although tele-working, video-conferencing, e-paper, and e-commerce are
increasingly commonplace, the report notes that replacing physical
products and services with their virtual equivalents (dematerialisation
and substitution) is only one part (six per cent) of the estimated low
carbon benefits the ICT sector can deliver."

One of the biggest contribution to reducing CO2 emissions by Internet and
ICT is through “virtualization” or “de-materialization” of existing
physical products and services.  For business and universities  this means
first virtualizing all their existing computers, databases and laboratory
equipment and using grids, clouds or  “virtual” instances of the same
equipment at zero carbon data centers located at distant renewable energy
sites. It also means adapting new business process and procedures that
eliminate as much as possible the manufacturing and shipping of goods as
well as employee or researcher travel.

For consumers, this means delivery of movies, music, books and other
products as electronic equivalents delivered over broadband networks. The
elimination of power hungry PCs and printers to be replaced by solar
powered PDAs or similar devices is also essential. It also means the
development of new incentive and reward programs using electronic products
and service to reward consumers to reduce their carbon footprint in other
aspects of their daily life from driving the car to heating or cooling
their home.

If we adopt these techniques now it might be possible to achieve 50-90% of
the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that is required by 2020 to keep
the global temperature increase under 2C.  For more details and other
detailed estimates  please see my blog at
htt://green-broad.blogspot.com--BSA]

Reducing CO2 - a new "for profit" service for telcos

2008-06-04T03:23:00.000-07:00

[Many telcos have undertaken initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint, both as a cost saving measure, and also to show themselves as being good corporate citizens. But some telcos are starting to realize that these measures to reduce their own carbon footprint can also be an attractive business offering for their corporate customers. Large corporations face the same challenges as telcos with the high cost of power and the insatiable demand from IT for additional energy to power their ever growing number of servers. Governments are also starting to mandate public sector organizations to become carbon neutral, and soon may mandate private companies to be carbon neutral as well which is being further spurred on with the advent of carbon taxes.

Telcos are well suited to deploy zero carbon data centers in remote locations with plenty of cheap renewable power connected by high speed optical networks. BT is a good example where they plan to build COs powered by on-site windmills. These sites will not only serve BT's needs, but are also ideal for hosting customer's IT equipment as well. More importantly the telco and customer can earn valuable carbon offset dollars which can defray most of the expensive of locating servers at these sites. Some telcos are also following the lead of companies like IBM and Fujitsu and arranging for the brokering of carbon offset dollars for their customers who relocate IT equipment to their zero carbon data centers.

Using local generated renewable power is lot a cheaper than "wheeling" green power from the utilities. It also guarantees the telco and their customers a long term supply of cheap power with no threat of disruption or cost increases by the local utility.

Reduced carbon emissions is also a service that can offered to broadband residential customers, and is way of providing guaranteed revenue for the telco to pay for the fiber infrastructure that is necessary to support zero carbon applications. The telco is no longer dependent on the fickle revenues of triple play or the competitive threat of the "over top" players such as Google etc. Please see http://green-broadband.blogspot.com for details. Some excerpts from Converge Digest and Economist--BSA]

www.convergedigest.com

BT Plans 80% CO2 Reduction by 2020
BT announced a goal to cut its carbon emissions intensity by 80 percent across the globe by 2020 , setting one of the most aggressive corporate carbon reduction targets worldwide.

The company also published a new model for measuring and tracking carbon emissions – backed by the Carbon Disclosure Project. This represents an important step in measuring carbon emissions in a consistent way across the globe.

BT said it intends to meet the 80 percent reduction target through a continued combination of energy efficiency, on-site renewable generation (aiming for 25 per cent of its UK electricity to come from dedicated wind turbines by 2016) and purchased low-carbon electricity.

BT estimated that it has already reduced emissions in the UK by nearly 60 percent between 1996 and 2008.

The majority of worldwide CO2 emissions result from activities in the corporate sector, but up until now it has not been clear what targets an individual corporation needs to achieve to make its contribution to the international challenge. http://www.btplc.com 02-Jun-08

In October 2007, BT announced plans to develop wind farms aimed at generating up to 25% of its existing UK electricity requirements by 2016. The company expects to invest up to £250m in the project.

BT is one of Britain's biggest consumers of electricity, with an annual requirement of around 0.7% of the UK's entire consumption. The company said its wind farms could generate a total of 250MW of electricity – enough to meet the power needs of 122,000 homes or a city the size of Coventry.

BT is currently identifying high wind-yield sites on or adjacent to BT-owned land for development with the aim of generating power from 2012 onwards.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11413148

Down on the server farm

The real-world implications of the rise of internet computing

As computing becomes a utility, with services that can be consumed from everywhere and on any device, ever more thought is being put into where to put the infrastructure it needs.

Data centres are essential to nearly every industry and have become as vital to the functioning of society as power stations are. Lately, centres have been springing up in unexpected places: in old missile bunkers, in former shopping malls—even in Iceland. America alone has more than 7,000 data centres, according to IDC, a market-research firm. And each is housing ever more servers, the powerful computers that crunch and dish up data. In America the number of servers is expected to grow to 15.8m by 2010—three times as many as a decade earlier.

Companies have been packing ever more machines into data centres, both to increase their computing capacity and to comply with new data-retention rules.

As servers become more numerous, powerful and densely packed, more energy is needed to keep the data centres at room temperature. Often just as much power is needed for cooling as for computing. The largest data centres now rival aluminium smelters in the energy they consume. Microsoft's $500m new facility near Chicago, for instance, will need three electrical substations with a total capacity of 198 megawatts. As a result, finding a site for a large data centre is now, above all, about securing a cheap and reliable source of power, says Rich Miller of Data Center Knowledge, a website that chronicles the boom in data-centre construction.

And with demand for computing picking up in other parts of the world, the boom in data-centre construction is spreading to unexpected places. Microsoft is looking for a site in Siberia where its data can chill. Iceland has begun to market itself as a prime location for data centres, again for the cool climate, but also because of its abundant geothermal energy. Hitachi Data Systems and Data Islandia, a local company, are planning to build a huge data-storage facility. It will be underground, for security and to protect the natural landscape.

Yet it will not just be market economics that determines the shape of the clouds. Local governments give tax breaks in the hope that the presence of big data centres will attract other businesses (the computing plants themselves usually employ only a few dozen people

In future the geography of the cloud is likely to get even more complex. “Virtualisation” technology already allows the software running on individual servers to be moved from one data centre to another, mainly for back-up reasons. One day soon, these “virtual machines” may migrate to wherever computing power is cheapest, or energy is greenest. Then computing will have become a true utility—and it will no longer be apt to talk of computing clouds, so much as of a computing atmosphere.

Renewable Energy and the Future of the Internet datacenter

2008-05-29T10:04:00.001-07:00

[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

2008-05-28T07:27:00.002-07:00

[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

2008-05-28T07:27:00.001-07:00

[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

2008-05-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

[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

2008-05-14T09:40:00.001-07:00

[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

2008-05-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

[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

2008-05-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

[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

2008-05-08T11:36:00.002-07:00

[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

2008-05-08T11:36:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

[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

2008-04-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

[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