[CAnet - news] Green IT solutuions: energy efficiency versus purchasing renewable power?
"Bill St. Arnaud" <[email protected]> Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:04:23 -0400
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.publications.news |
|---|---|
| Organization | CANARIE Inc |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
This is a multipart message in MIME format.
--===============2144987968==
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0112_01CA1F54.63396460"
Content-Language: en-us
This is a multipart message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_0112_01CA1F54.63396460
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
For more information on this item please visit my blog at
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/ or http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------------
[Once again we are seeing several reports that energy efficiency is the way
to reduce to the carbon footprint of IT, computing, cyber-infrastructure and
other energy consuming activities. While energy efficiency is meritorious
it will only have token impact on reducing the carbon footprint, especially
that of IT. The continued growth in demand for new services and applications
will quickly outpace many of the gains of energy efficiency, which because
of all the legacy equipment amounts to only a few percent per year. If an
individual or organization is truly and genuinely concerned about the
environment and reducing their carbon footprint purchasing RECs (renewable
energy credits) or renewable energy resale from a reputable ESCO is a much
more direct and guaranteed way of becoming zero carbon. All the energy
efficiency claims in the world will never be able to come close to reducing
your carbon footprint as much or as quickly as purchasing renewable power.
And better still as your demand for IT and cyber-infrastructure grows, as it
inevitably will, you can still maintain a zero footprint if all your energy
comes through RECs.
Of course, the big problem with RECs, or renewable energy resale is its
cost. It can be substantially more expensive than dirty power. So
purchasing RECs is really an indicator of an IT organization's true
commitment to becoming green. An alternative approach is to acquire your
own renewable power is by building windmills on site or relocating IT
equipment to a renewable energy sites. For example ecotricity
(www.ecotricity.uk) in the UK has a novel business plan where they will
build a windmill at a data center at their cost, in return for a long term
contract for the power delivered from the windmill. Other organizations such
as MIT and UoMassachusetts are looking to relocate their computing and
cyber-infrastructure equipment to remote data centers powered by local hydro
electric dams and/or windmills. The challenge with this scenario is the
reliability of power. How can you build a reliable IT infrastructure when
you have intermittent power sources such as wind mills, solar panels, etc?
This is where clouds, grids and virtualization connected with high speed
networks can play a critical role. Computing and data jobs can quickly be
moved from site to site depending on the availability of local renewable
power. This is the essence of CANARIE's Green IT program. And as
illustrated by the recent paper from researchers at MIT and CMU can save up
to 40% on energy costs alone.
Even for consumers, using renewable power can be much simpler way of
reducing their footprint than through buying energy efficient devices.
According to the IEA, consumer IT devices use more power in aggregate than
all traditional appliances combined in many homes. A lot of this power
consumption is taken up by "vampire" loads when devices are in standby mode
such as wall chargers, TVs, set top boxes, etc. A simple solution would be
for the consumer to install a small solar panel and/or wind turbine and
power all these vampire loads with a "multiplexed power" system using the
existing household copper wiring. A vampire power network could use
something like a 400 Hz power frequency which would be filtered out by
traditional AC devices but could easily power appropriately modified AC/DC
converters, chargers, switching power supplies, etc - BSA]
[ IMHO some misleading examples of comments on energy efficiency]
Google policy blog: The vast potential of energy efficiency
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/08/vast-potential-of-energy-effi
ciency.html
international Science Grid Week
How Green is my Grid
http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1001940
-------------------------------------
To subscribe or unsubscribe send e-mail to [email protected]
These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those of the CANARIE board or management.
------
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
------=_NextPart_000_0112_01CA1F54.63396460
Content-Type: text/html;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<html xmlns:v=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" =
xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" =
xmlns:w=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" =
xmlns:x=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" =
xmlns:p=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:powerpoint" =
xmlns:a=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:access" =
xmlns:dt=3D"uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" =
xmlns:s=3D"uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" =
xmlns:rs=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z=3D"#RowsetSchema" =
xmlns:b=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:publisher" =
xmlns:ss=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" =
xmlns:c=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:component:spreadsheet" =
xmlns:odc=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:odc" =
xmlns:oa=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:activation" =
xmlns:html=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40" =
xmlns:q=3D"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" =
xmlns:rtc=3D"http://microsoft.com/officenet/conferencing" =
xmlns:D=3D"DAV:" xmlns:Repl=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/repl/" =
xmlns:mt=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/meetings/" =
xmlns:x2=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/excel/2003/xml" =
xmlns:ppda=3D"http://www.passport.com/NameSpace.xsd" =
xmlns:ois=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/ois/" =
xmlns:dir=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/directory/" =
xmlns:ds=3D"http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" =
xmlns:dsp=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" =
xmlns:udc=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc" =
xmlns:xsd=3D"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" =
xmlns:sub=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/2002/1/alerts/"=
xmlns:ec=3D"http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#" =
xmlns:sp=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" =
xmlns:sps=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/" =
xmlns:xsi=3D"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" =
xmlns:udcs=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/soap" =
xmlns:udcxf=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/xmlfile" =
xmlns:udcp2p=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/parttopart" =
xmlns:wf=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/workflow/" =
xmlns:dsss=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/digsig-setup" =
xmlns:dssi=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/digsig" =
xmlns:mdssi=3D"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/digital-sig=
nature" =
xmlns:mver=3D"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006=
" xmlns:m=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" =
xmlns:mrels=3D"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/relationshi=
ps" xmlns:spwp=3D"http://microsoft.com/sharepoint/webpartpages" =
xmlns:ex12t=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"=
=
xmlns:ex12m=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messag=
es" =
xmlns:pptsl=3D"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/SlideLibrary/=
" =
xmlns:spsl=3D"http://microsoft.com/webservices/SharePointPortalServer/Pub=
lishedLinksService" xmlns:Z=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:" =
xmlns:st=3D"" xmlns=3D"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; =
charset=3Dus-ascii">
<meta name=3DGenerator content=3D"Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)">
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Consolas;
panose-1:2 11 6 9 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
p.MsoPlainText, li.MsoPlainText, div.MsoPlainText
{mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-link:"Plain Text Char";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:10.5pt;
font-family:Consolas;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:windowtext;}
span.PlainTextChar
{mso-style-name:"Plain Text Char";
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-link:"Plain Text";
font-family:Consolas;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-size:10.0pt;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
</style>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext=3D"edit" spidmax=3D"1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext=3D"edit">
<o:idmap v:ext=3D"edit" data=3D"1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]-->
</head>
<body lang=3DEN-US link=3Dblue vlink=3Dpurple>
<div class=3DSection1>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText>For more information on this item please visit =
my blog at
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><a =
href=3D"http://green-broadband.blogspot.com/">http://green-broadband.blog=
spot.com/</a>
or <a =
href=3D"http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com">http://billstarnaud.blogspot.co=
m</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p =
class=3DMsoPlainText>-------------------------------------------<o:p></o:=
p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal> [Once again we are seeing several reports =
that energy
efficiency is the way to reduce to the carbon footprint of IT, =
computing,
cyber-infrastructure and other energy consuming activities. While =
energy
efficiency is meritorious it will only have token impact on reducing the =
carbon
footprint, especially that of IT. The continued growth in demand for new
services and applications will quickly outpace many of the gains of =
energy
efficiency, which because of all the legacy equipment amounts to only a =
few
percent per year. If an individual or organization is truly and =
genuinely
concerned about the environment and reducing their carbon footprint =
purchasing
RECs (renewable energy credits) or renewable energy resale from a =
reputable
ESCO is a much more direct and guaranteed way of becoming zero carbon. =
All the
energy efficiency claims in the world will never be able to come close =
to
reducing your carbon footprint as much or as quickly as purchasing =
renewable
power. And better still as your demand for IT and cyber-infrastructure =
grows,
as it inevitably will, you can still maintain a zero footprint if all =
your
energy comes through RECs.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>Of course, the big problem with RECs, or renewable =
energy
resale is its cost. It can be substantially more expensive than =
dirty
power. So purchasing RECs is really an indicator of an IT =
organization’s
true commitment to becoming green. An alternative approach is to =
acquire
your own renewable power is by building windmills on site or relocating =
IT
equipment to a renewable energy sites. For example ecotricity (<a
href=3D"http://www.ecotricity.uk">www.ecotricity.uk</a>) in the UK has a =
novel
business plan where they will build a windmill at a data center at their =
cost,
in return for a long term contract for the power delivered from the =
windmill.
Other organizations such as MIT and UoMassachusetts are looking to =
relocate their
computing and cyber-infrastructure equipment to remote data centers =
powered by
local hydro electric dams and/or windmills. The challenge with =
this
scenario is the reliability of power. How can you build a reliable IT
infrastructure when you have intermittent power sources such as wind =
mills,
solar panels, etc? This is where clouds, grids and virtualization
connected with high speed networks can play a critical role. Computing =
and data
jobs can quickly be moved from site to site depending on the =
availability of
local renewable power. This is the essence of CANARIE’s =
Green IT
program. And as illustrated by the recent paper from researchers =
at MIT
and CMU can save up to 40% on energy costs alone.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>Even for consumers, using renewable power can be =
much
simpler way of reducing their footprint than through buying energy =
efficient
devices. According to the IEA, consumer IT devices use more power in =
aggregate
than all traditional appliances combined in many homes. A lot of this =
power
consumption is taken up by “vampire” loads when devices are =
in
standby mode such as wall chargers, TVs, set top boxes, etc. A simple =
solution would
be for the consumer to install a small solar panel and/or wind turbine =
and
power all these vampire loads with a “multiplexed power” =
system
using the existing household copper wiring. A vampire power network =
could use
something like a 400 Hz power frequency which would be filtered out by
traditional AC devices but could easily power appropriately modified =
AC/DC
converters, chargers, switching power supplies, etc – =
BSA]<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>[ IMHO some misleading examples of comments on =
energy
efficiency]<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>Google policy blog: The vast potential of energy =
efficiency<o:p></o:p></p>
<p =
class=3DMsoNormal>http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/08/vast-pot=
ential-of-energy-efficiency.html<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>international Science Grid Week<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>How Green is my Grid<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=3D1001940<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText> =
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p =
class=3DMsoPlainText>-------------------------------------<o:p></o:p></p>=
<p class=3DMsoPlainText>To subscribe or unsubscribe send e-mail to <a
href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a><o=
:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText>These news items and comments are mine alone and =
do not
necessarily reflect those of the CANARIE board or =
management.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoPlainText><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>------<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>[email protected]<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>[email protected]<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal>http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
------=_NextPart_000_0112_01CA1F54.63396460--
--===============2144987968==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
_______________________________________________
news mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.canarie.ca/mailman/listinfo/news
--===============2144987968==--