June 2009 Archives
Monday News Roundup
• Office Depot announces the re-launch of its environmental initiatives website, featuring content on the company’s vision to buy green and sell green.
• The Tech Garden business incubator in Syracuse has won a $1.5 million grant to assist startup companies in the field of renewable energy and clean technology.
• IBM has created the Green Sigma Coalition, an industry alliance that includes metering, monitoring, automation, data communications and software to integrate their products.
• It was a busy week for IBM in general, which also announced plans to build a water-cooled supercomputer, new research into rechargeable batteries, building scaleable data centers, and more.
• Core Services Corporation, an Oracle Certified Partner, has implemented steps to reduce the environmental impact of its data centers.
• Eaton Corporation announces the release of Eaton Power Xpert Reporting Software that helps IT managers benchmark energy usage in their data centers, allowing energy and cost savings opportunities to be quickly identified and implemented.
• A new study commissioned by Microsoft suggests that only 44 percent of IT decision makers feel that green technology is a factor in final decisions regarding data centers.
• The Wikimedia Foundation (yes, of Wikipedia fame) has selected EvoSwitch, a CO2-neutral data center in Amsterdam, to operate its hub in Europe.
• Fairmont Hotels and Resorts announces its Green IT strategy.
Late yesterday afternoon the Waxman-Markey energy bill, ACES, passed the House of Representatives. It was a narrow 7 vote margin, but there's no difference in the outcome -- the bill passed. In its final version, the 1200-page bill mandates that 15% of the country's energy will come from renewable sources by 2020, cap greenhouse gas emissions (85% of which are carbon dioxide) by 17% of their 2005 levels by 2020, and by 83% by 2050. It's an incredibly important bill, and even though many compromises were reached with utility providers, the auto industry, and farmers, the core components of the bill (especially cap and trade) are intact.
Much ink has been spilled over the costs and benefits of this bill. Opponents (mainly Republicans, but some Democrats as well) worry that the bill will add costs to businesses (it will) that the economy can't take in a recession, and increase costs for consumers (it may). The Congressional Budget Office predicts the costs to be minimal, and earlier this week the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) predicted that the bill would actually save a typical household $1050 in energy costs by 2020 and $4400 by 2030. Much of the predicted savings come from reduced energy use.
The bill is huge and there's a lot to digest, but one area that has received very little attention is trade retaliation against countries that don't cap greenhouse emissions (such as China). Global warming is a global problem, and many opponents of the bill argued that capping emissions for U.S. industries, while foreign competitors face no such restrictions, would be unfair. Secretary Energy Chu has mentioned the possibility of tariffs against countries that don't cap emissions (a statement I blogged about a few months ago), and now that possibility is part of the ACES bill. Only the Wall Street Journal picked up the story -- a last minute addition to the bill that would impose tariffs and fees on certain imports from countries that don't limit emissions by 2020.
The bill must now pass the Senate, which won't consider it until the fall. There's no way to predict whether it will pass, but if I was placing bets I'd say it will pass. By the fall, Al Franken will be seated in the Senate after his election battle with Norm Coleman, so the Democrats will have the filibuster-proof 60 seats they need. There will undoubtedly be more changes to the bill, and I'll continue to track them, especially as they relate to IT, right here.
in case you didn't know, ICANN is meeting this week in Sydney (did they get the memo that it's winter there?). Tantalizing topics on the schedule include "Prohibiting Redirection and Synthesized DNS Responses" and "ccNSO Structure and Background Information." The really big news from ICANN, of course, is the launch of new generic top level domains (gTLD) next year. Depending on your perspective, the proliferation of any number of imaginable TLD's could be a golden marketing opportunity or a real nightmare.
One of the proposed gTLDs is ".eco". Presumably, sites that end with .eco have something to do with being green and environmentally conscious. In order to maintain some level of control and trust that .eco means environmentally friendly, however, a registry will have to control the TLD (much like .edu domains are currently controlled). This week two companies announced plans to bid for .eco.
The first is Dot Eco LLC. Dot Eco LLC aims to provide .eco registrations for free to non-profits, and to provide a common standard for companies, organizations, and individuals with information on the environment to present. Over 50% of Dot Eco LLC's profits are to be donated to environmental causes. The company released a short film today featuring Al Gore supporting its efforts, which you can see on its website.
The second contender is Big Room, a Canadian company. Big Room believes it should be picked as the registry because:
In addition to being lifelong tree-huggers, we are experienced at building consensus for global sustainability issues. Big Room's Co-founders, advisors and partners have a long history of working globally with technology and communities to build sustainable development solutions.For example, in 2005 we worked as part of an international team to create the Principles for Responsible Investment, a global alliance of investors committed to integrating environmental, social and governance issues into their investment decisions.
Big Room has launched a pretty tech-savvy website and a series of videos to explain their goal. At this stage it's pretty hard to tell the differences between the two efforts, but it does appear that ICANN has a task to select the best registry for .eco, and hopefully the winner will be serious about maintaining the integrity of the TLD so that it's trustworthy.
Headlines on health-care reform have dominated the news cycle this week, but climate legislation is also making some pretty important progress. Two items are especially noteworthy.
First, the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan and independent group, has released a report on the estimated cost of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (also known as the climate cap and trade bill). Taking into account the higher energy prices that would result, as well as the impact on corporate profits, behavioral changes, and the costs of offsets and permits, the CBO estimates that the total cost of the bill in 2020 (note, this is the total cost, not the annual cost) is $175 per household.
This estimate is far below what opponents of the bill have been claiming. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) had claimed the bill would cost $3128 per household in 2018, while conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation pegged the bill at $4300 per year. Needless to say, the CBO's numbers are being attacked and defended vigorously.
Still, this is incredibly good news for supporters of the bill. Most Americans are concerned about climate change, but are worried about the costs associated with tackling the problem. Given the choice of spending $175 or facing global apocalypse, most would choose to spend the money. And it looks like they will be given the choice soon. Agricultural issues had threatened the bill earlier this week, but it now looks like those issues have been resolved while preserving the core of cap-and-trade. House leaders are confident enough of getting to 218 votes that they have scheduled a floor vote of the bill this Friday. Even I am a little bit surprised that the Democrats have been able to deliver the bill on schedule (the original goal was to have a floor vote by July 4 recess). If the bill does come to the floor, and if it passes, it will be momentous.
For I.T. techs and planners, the day of counting carbon emissions and (potentially) buying carbon permits to run data centers (or selling them for a profit) has taken several important inches closer.
News Roundup
• Hosted Solutions, a provider of IT Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas), announces a $12 million green expansion of its Raleigh data center.
• Digital Realty Trust, a wholesale data center provider, has earned a LEED Gold rating for its Santa Clara data warehousing facility, a first in the city.
• Wyse Technology, a provider of thin clients and cloud computing, announces cloud-friendly versions of its Unix and Windows software.
• Plug and Play Tech Center, a community of 200 early-stage technology start-ups, will host its first annual CleanPlay conference to showcase clean-tech start-ups to venture capitalists and green-tech enthusiasts on June 25.
• In a ratherr dubious move to save the environment by going without for a day, HP announces it has signed up Microsoft and Intel for Power IT Down day on August 27, 2009. 123 people have signed up.
• Entuity announces a Green IT Calculator.
Those of you living in New York City or visiting the Big Apple may be interested in the Deutsche Bank/MIT real-time carbon counter clock, a 70-feet tall digital display outside Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. At the unveiling yesterday the clock showed 3.64 trillion tonnes of "long lived" greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and rising by 800 million metric tonnes a second. If you like this display, you can put it on your (or client) computer desktop through a free widget.
It seems like a pretty cool idea, and obviously calls to mind the National Debt Clock, a less-impressive but nonetheless landmark feature also in New York City. However, I wonder if most viewers will be able to understand, let alone relate to, the 3.64 trillion number. I can understand "national debt" and "your family's share," but long-lived greenhouse gasses that increase by 800 million metric tonnes a second? I hear crickets, and they're not outside my office window.
A recent article on ServerWatch looks at some green legislation that seems good on the surface but may not be so great underneath:
... the new European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) standard, which contains provisions outlawing lead in motherboards and a host of commercial and consumer electronic equipment. All very high sounding — lead is poisonous, protecting the individual, and so on. Yet the replacement of lead with pure tin directly is not without its own problems: It leads to much higher incidences of unreliability.
What do you think? Is the environmental gain significant enough to warrant the business risk?
In addition, here are some articles that recently ran on internetnews that may be of interest:
It's Not Easy Being Green (Tech): Even in the best economic times, green technologies face challenges. Can the chip industry help?
Samsung Pitches Green Memory for Datacenters: Solid state drives, denser memory sticks, and other technologies will help enterprises solve the datacenter crisis.
It's been a busy week on Capitol Hill. Most of the attention has been on the economy and the President's proposals to overhaul regulatory agencies that oversee banks and consumer financial products. A couple of bills we have been tracking, however, inched closer towards law this week. In fact, one of them, the cash for clunkers program, is all but a done deal.
First, the climate bill (aka Waxman-Markey and also aka cap-and-trade). This week, several Midwest congresspersons from both parties raised some pretty strong objections to the bill. The objections were raised during a House Agricultural Committee meeting reviewing the bill, and come on the heels of concessions given to the coal, steel and auto industries for free carbon allowances in the initial years of implementation. Farmers would like some of those free allowances too. Further signs of farmers' apprehensions showed up in the EPA funding bill last night, when lawmakers inserted provisions into the bill that would prohibit the EPA from requiring factory farms to report their greenhouse gas emissions and exempting livestock operations from any future carbon regulations. The bill is headed for a floor vote next week, and as of today it's still unclear if it has enough votes, particularly from those Midwest representatives, to pass. The negotiations will likely continue until the last minute.
The cash-for-clunkers bill did much better this week, winning passage in the Senate yesterday in spite of a last-minute Republican effort to strip it away from the war funding bill, where it has been inserted. The Department of Transportation now has 30 days to publish guidelines and rules for the program, so expect the program to be "live" by August. The government estimates the program will result in more than 600,000 incremental new vehicle sales as consumers trade in older gas guzzlers for a new fuel-efficient vehicle and up to a $4500 credit. An FAQ on how the program will work can be found here.
Have a great weekend!
One of the defining moments in the 2008 Presidential race, for me, was watching Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin respond to questions about global warming. The talking point for Republicans has been, and still is, that if climate change is occurring it is not created by humans and therefore there is not much that humans can do about it. Today the Obama administration released a new report on climate change that shows just how dramatically different the Obama position is.
The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, is co-sponsored by the Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Department of State, Department of Transportation, Department of Health and Human Services, NASA, National Science Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, USAID, Department of Agriculture, and EPA. Among the report's 10 key findings: climate change is "unequivocal" and "human-induced," climate change is happening now in the U.S., the impacts of climate change will increase, and threats to human health will increase.
It appears that the scientists are now firmly in charge of the government's response to climate change, a marked departure from the previous administration which was more concerned with business impacts. The report will add further pressure on Congress to pass the Waxman-Markey energy bill, including the carbon cap and trade provisions. After reading the report, including the assessments on water safety, coastal erosion, and human health, you'll probably want to jump in and do what you can to slow global warming as well.
If you're planning a new data center or renovating one, a reflective white roof should be a part of your planning.
In a recent speech, Energy Secretary Steven Chu suggested that global warming could be slowed by reflective white roofs. Dark roofs absorb more than 80% of solar energy, while white roofs can reflect up to 75% of solar energy away. A Washington Post article expands on Secretary Chu's speech, and on some of the legal requirements:
Because of that energy savings, California has since 2005 required most flat-roofed buildings to have white tops, and Walmart has installed them on about 75 percent of its U.S. stores. In January, the District [of Columbia] will require new flat roofs on commercial buildings to be covered in vegetation or a reflective material.
How many roofs need to be white, and how much effect will it have? According to Secretary Chu's research (he's a Nobel laureate after all), if 63 percent of the roofs in 100 temperate-climate cities worldwide were painted reflective white, it would provide the same climate benefits as taking the world's cars off the roads for 10 years. Yes, that's all the cars in the world, for 10 years.
White paint alone is not enough to do it, and white roofs can be expensive. There are critics to the idea as well, but the carbon benefits do seem very significant. Perhaps it's time a white reflective roof should become part of every new data center's plans?
• Software maker Verdiem releases Sustainability Dashboard, to monitor and measure PC energy and carbon emissions costs.
• Network World discusses the results of Symantec’s survey last week revealing “Going Green” is an essential strategy for most enterprise IT organizations.
• Coca-Cola is launching its PlantBottle, made in part with molasses and sugar cane, at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
• The Planet will open its eighth data center, in Plano TX, on Tuesday. The facility features green technology such as modular water cooling.
• The city of Holyoke, Cisco, EMC, MIT, and UMass have teamed up to establish a $100 million green data center.
A couple years ago there was a small panic wave in the IT community when a new federal law changed the dates of daylight savings time, starting it earlier in the spring and ending it later in the fall. Even Microsoft was caught flat-footed, having to release a hasty patch to permit client PCs and servers to catch up with the change. A little-noticed provision in that same law also took aim at the humble incandescent light bulb, essentially outlawing it in the coming few years.
Incandescent bulbs currently enjoy 80% market share in the U.S. market, but are incredibly inefficient, generating 90% heat and only 10% light. Under the 2007 energy bill, by January 2012 100 watt incandescent bulbs will be outlawed, and by January 2014, 40 watt light bulbs will be history too. If you have a light fixture that only works with incandescent bulbs (in terms of size and shape, for example), now may be the time to start stocking up!
Replacing incandescent bulbs are halogen, compact fluorescent (CFL), and LED bulbs. Each of these technologies have their drawbacks. Halogens, for example, require special handling and are nearly as inefficient as incandescent. CFLs don't play nicely with dimmers and can cast very harsh lights, especially undesirable in residential applications. And LED bulbs are just very costly and have several design challenges. Each of these technologies are also more expensive than traditional incandescent bulbs, a real consideration in a severe recession.
A recent article in the WSJ explores these alternatives. The really interesting technology is LED, traditionally used in consumer toys and commercial applications such as traffic lights. From the article:
Wal-Mart Stores has started selling a consumer LED bulb that uses just seven watts of electricity and claims to last for more than 13 years. It costs around $35 -- a daunting price tag for a light bulb. "We're kind of testing the waters," says Rand Waddoups, Wal-Mart's senior director of strategy and sustainability. "This is a behavior change, and that requires some work."
I recently bought one of these Wal-Mart LEDs (made by GE), and I love it. I leave it on all day and all night in an outside light fixture to light up the patio for security, and given that it costs literally pennies in electricity costs, I don't feel bad about leaving it on. Sure, it's pricey for now, but as incandescents begin to phase out, I suspect we'll see a battle royale between CFL and LED technology. Technologically speaking, LED appears to be the winner. Hopefully we'll start to see bulbs such as these in the U.S. soon. What type of bulbs will your data center use in the future?
I've been following the cash for clunkers bill with some interest in this blog, as it seems to be an interesting way for the government to goose the economy, especially the beaten-down auto industry. Yesterday the House easily passed the bill by a vote of 298-119. The bill now heads to the Senate, where passage seems reasonably assured. The President has already said that he will sign the bill, so for about 650,000 Americans, a new car or truck subsidized by the federal government seems to be on its way.
Before you start dreaming about turning in your vehicle, keep in mind that there are some real restrictions on the program. The point of the program is remove old gas-guzzling vehicles from the street, not newer models, so your late-model Camry or Accord won't qualify. The target of the program is any vehicle built after 1984, owned and insured by the owner at least one year before the trade-in (this provision is to prevent you from going to the junkyard to find a clunker that qualifies for the cash), and has a value less than $4500 or $3500 (the maximum amount of cash available). Different rules apply to cars and SUVs/trucks, so be sure to check out the details. Cars and trucks that are traded in must be sent to scrap yard where their drivetrains will be destroyed, ensuring they can't go back on the road to pollute.
Whatever its economic merits or demerits (and I think there are many demerits), there's no doubt in my mind that the program will be wildly popular and will significantly boost auto sales. I think there's a real chance that the program will therefore cost more than its estimated $4 billion price tag. As the program comes closer to fruition, though, consumers are going to have a lot of questions about what cars and trucks qualify, on both the trade-in end and the new-car end. A quick Google search for "cash for clunkers calculator" reveals that there is no web-based service (yet) that allows you to input what vehicle you have, and then generates a list of eligible vehicles you can buy and the varying cash rebates attached (and how about carbon footprint reduction too?). Sounds like a real business opportunity for those savvy web programmers out there!
If you run a data center, chances are really good that the electricity powering your servers and drives began when coal was burned. The United States produces more coal than any other country on Earth except for China, at about 1.1 billion tons of production per year. About half the electricity in the United States is generated by burning coal. It is abundant, it is cheap, and unlike wind or solar energy, can be stored and used on-demand to meet peak energy needs in the winter and summer. It also has the nasty habit of producing carbon dioxide when burned, and is thought to be a major contributor to global warming.
While energy legislation, if passed, will eventually raise the price of coal-fired electricity through a cap-and-trade program, that seems to be a few years away at least (the current legislation provides generous allowances to current coal producers). For the time being, then, coal appears to be the bedrock upon which electricity is generated in this country, powering everything in our home and work (including those ever-important data centers!).
So how much coal does the United States have? The answer turns out to be vexing, and is explored in an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Back in 1907, when the U.S. Geological Service first began estimating how much coal the U.S. has, the first estimate said that we had three trillion tons, enough to last 5,000 years. By the 1950's, equipped with more sophisticated data, the estimate was down dramatically to 500 billion tons. As recently as 2007, the government estimated that the United States has 240 years of economically recoverable coal.
Now, using more data and more sophisticated assumptions including the economic impact of climate legislation, some economists are arguing that the supply of coal is actually much less. From the article:
No one says the U.S. is facing a coal shortage. But the emerging ranks of "peak coal" theorists argue that current production levels may be unsustainable and, if anything, create a false sense of security. David Rutledge, an electrical-engineering professor at the California Institute of Technology who has studied global coal production, figures the U.S. has about half as much recoverable reserves as the government says, which would work out to about 120 years' worth.
If these estimates become the new official government estimate, the implications may be profound. Coal is non-renewable, and as the day the country runs out of coal draws ever nearer, the pressure on society to explore alternatives for energy generation are going to increase dramatically. Whether it happens in one or two or three generations, one thing is clear: The data centers run by our grandchildren are probably not going to be run by coal-fired electricity.
Monday News Roundup
• Upgrading IT systems is one of the five most effective ways of going green now, according to CFO magazine.
• Former SAP and Oracle executives have formed a new software service, Hara, designed to help firms reduce costs by managing natural resources.
• Active Power, a manufacturer of flywheel-based UPS systems, announces a $3 million private placement offering.
• HP expands its line of Eco Solutions hardware and software.
• The Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an international nonprofit whose founding partners include Google and Intel, announces a working group to tackle desktop and laptop power management challenges.
• Green technology is one of the top three themes driving the next generation of IT at Dell. As an example, Dell has helped one non-profit in Canada grown 100 percent while saving 90 percent on energy costs, and has helped another company, a home builder in Florida, reduce its energy bill by 51 percent.
In a twist on "name and shame" campaigns that have been utilized in the past to publicly identify sex offenders, drunk drivers, deadbeat dads, and others, Greenpeace has launched the Cool IT Challenge, which ranks CEOs of IT companies on what they do to deliver green technology versus what they could do. In other words, Greenpeace is ranking the companies on words versus action.
How'd they do? IBM's Palmisano and Sun's Schwartz tie for the top positions, but it's not much to write home about, with a score of 29 out of 100 possible points. Bringing up the bottom rankings are a slew of Japanese CEOs, including Sharps' Machida with 5 points and Toshiba's Nishida with 2 points.
Registered users are encouraged to email and tweet the CEOs to increase public pressure on them to do more to deliver environmentally friendly solutions. To see more on the criteria Greenpeace uses, and the results, head over to the Cool IT Challenge website. We'll see if public shaming (and praise) has any effect on these tech titans.
As debate in Washington rages about how the U.S. can contribute towards carbon regulation, it's sometimes worth remembering the goal here is nothing less than the continued existence of the planet. The movement towards carbon reduction is grounded ultimately not on tree-hugging environmentalism, but on a scientific belief that life itself is at grave risk without those reductions.
Twenty Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, economics, peace in literature recently signed the Saint James Palace Memorandum. According to the memorandum, the world must start reducing carbon emissions by 2015 in order to have a chance at reducing dangerous climate change. A two degree (Celsius) temperature rise is the most the world can take, as anything more will create "unmanageable" climate risks. In order to keep the climate rise down to 2 degrees or lower, the Copenhagen summit later this year (the successor to Kyoto) must agree to reduce global carbon emissions by 50% by 2050.
In other words, according to these very smart men and women, carbon emissions must peak by 2015 at the latest, at which time they must begin a reduction or we will face a catastrophe similar to nuclear war. The effects of global warming are already starting to manifest themselves. According to the a newly-released U.N. report, global warming currently kills 300,000 people a year. The vast majority of those deaths occur in developing countries, which contribute far fewer carbon emissions than developed countries. In some parts of the world such as the Carteret Islands near Papua New Guinea, some islands are literally bisected in half by rising sea waters. The tiny island nation of the Maldives (7 feet above sea level) is so concerned about climate change that its President is making plans to relocate all his citizens to other countries.
So as IT goes through sometimes-difficult steps to reduce carbon emission and energy use, it's worth keeping in mind that the goal here is awfully important, no matter how painful the transition may be.
Even though it's just June, there's nothing like the smell of a burning fireplace in early fall to evoke fond memories of winter walks and holiday parties. If you've ever been to a bonfire or huddled around a campfire to stay warm, you know that burning wood is an excellent source of heat and energy. What you may not know, however, is that burning wood and plants may also one day power your data center or client PC.
If the energy bill passes, utilities will be under a mandate to generate 20% of their electricity using renewable energy by 2020. Solar and wind are excellent candidates, but as I've blogged before, solar and wind face a whole host of problems in generating electricity for the heavily-populated Northeast, such as transmission and storage. As this Wall Street Journal article today explains, biomass may be an alternative. Current forecasts call for biomass to generate 4.5% of the U.S. electricity supply by 2030, more than wind or solar.
Doesn't burning wood and plants create carbon? It obviously does, but apparently, it's all right! From the article:
While greenhouse gas is released when biomass is burned, the process is considered nearly carbon neutral because the plants only emit the carbon they absorbed while they were growing. The plants would release the same amount of greenhouse gas if they died naturally and decomposed. The burning of coal, by contrast, releases carbon that otherwise never would have been sent into the atmosphere.
So the next time you feel tempted to burn firewood, by all means do so realizing that it is in fact, a carbon neutral action!
• Is Green IT legislation important to your organization? HP seems to think so. It spent $840 million on lobbying efforts in Q1, more than double what it spent last year. At least part of that effort went into the EPA’s release of rules for green data centers.
• Can gambling be green? The Canadians think so. Smaller lottery tickets and Silver LEED for its Brantford casino – all part of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation’s efforts to go green.
• APC, Microsoft, and NetApp invite you to their half-day “Go Green and Stop the Red” series, which examines how advances in data center applications and architecture can save money and the environment.
• High tech professionals with fewer skills could land more IT jobs than those with specific tech training, according to Network World. Knowledge of green technology, however, remains an attractive feature.
• The Denver Post chronicles two big data centers in Colorado on the leading edge of the Green IT movement.
• Symantec releases a survey indicating that IT executives are reporting a significant increase in Green IT spending.
• The ink is barely dry on the new Energy Star rating for computer servers, and computer manufacturers are already embracing the standard. Boston high performance computer SiCortex is one of them.
• Syracuse University and IBM have broken ground on a new $12.4 million date center claimed to be one of the most energy-efficient in the world.
