Greening It
How Greener IT Can Form a Solid Base For a Low-Carbon Society
EDITORS: ADRIAN T. SOBOTTA IRENE N. SOBOTTA JOHN GØTZE
Copyright 2009 The GreeningIT Initiative CCAttribution Non-CommercialShareAlike
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License v3.0. To view a copy of this license visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode.
ISBN 13: 978-87-91936-02-9 ISBN 10: 87-91936-02-0
Printed in the World
Draft First edition (Published online): Draft Second edition (Published online): First edition:
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2 December 2009 31 January 2010 31 May 2010
Contents
Acknowledgements iv
Disclosure v
Foreword – By Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action vi
1 Prologue 1
2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia 4
3 Climate Change and the Low Carbon Society – by Irene N. Sobotta 16
4 Why Green IT Is Hard – An Economic Perspective – by Rien Dijkstra 29
5 Cloud Computing – by Adrian Sobotta 65
6 Thin Client Computing – by Sean Whetstone 89
7 Smart Grid – by Adrian Sobotta 110
8 How IT Contributes to the Greening of the Grid – by Dr. George W. Arnold 125
9 The Green IT Industry Ecosystem – by Ariane Rüdiger 140
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Contents
10 Out of The Box Ways IT Can Help to Preserve Nature and Reduce CO2 - by Flavio Souza 165
11 From KPIs to the Business Case – Return on Investment on Green IT? – by Dominique C. Brack 176
12 Computing Energy Efficiency – An Introduction – by Bianca Wirth 217
13 A Future View: Biomimicry + Technology – by Bianca Wirth 232 14 Greening Supply Chains – The Role of Information Tech-
nologies – by Hans Moonen 15 Epilogue References Index
244 261 263 270
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Acknowledgements
The editors sincerely thank the international group of hard working contributors who took part in this book. All of them are committed to Green IT in their professional lives – setting an example for all of us. Thank you for your support and great efforts in contributing to the book; it would not have been possible without your dedication.
Thanks go out to the The League of Movable Type (http://www. theleagueofmoveabletype.com) for their efforts to start a true open typographic community and for making the fonts available which are used on the front cover of this book. We also extend thanks to Roberto Cecchi’s for creating and subsequently releasing his Aier- bazzi font which is also used on the front cover. All fonts used on the front cover are released under the SIL Open Font License (http: //scripts.sil.org/OFL).
We also extend thanks and gratitude to Leonard Fintelman who assisted in the task of proof reading, Tripta Prashar (Director of UK based independent Green IT consultancy firm Giving Time and Solu- tions Ltd), Laurent Liscia, Sean Whetstone, Ariane Rüdiger and every- one else who have been instrumental in promoting the book.
Finally we would like to thank all those who contacted us during the books evolution to voice their support and offer their feedback.
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Disclosure
This book represents a collection of works from contributors spanning the globe. Where necessary, permission was sought and granted to contributors from their respective employers to take part. All contrib- utors were motivated by a personal desire to examine how IT can help build a low-carbon society. The views, concepts and conclusions put forth by the contributors do not necessarily reflect those of their em- ployers and may not be endorsed by them.
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Foreword By Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action
Bringing climate change under control is one of the great historic challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. To succeed, the interna- tional community must reach an ambitious and comprehensive global agreement that provides the framework for worldwide action to keep global warming below dangerous levels.
The most convincing leadership the European Union can provide is to become the most climate friendly region in the world. My goal is to make this happen over the next five years. It is emphatically in Eu- rope’s interest: it will stimulate greener economic growth, create new jobs and reduce our dependence on imported energy.
The EU has already committed unilaterally to cutting our green- house gas emissions to at least 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and we are now analysing the practical options for moving beyond that over the same period. The European Commission will then develop its vision for completing Europe’s transition to a low carbon economy by 2050 including the necessary scenarios for 2030. This will require emission reductions of 80-95% by mid-century.
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Foreword – By Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action
All sectors of the economy will need to contribute as fully as pos- sible, and it is clear that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have a key role to play. ICTs are increasingly recognised as im- portant enablers of the low-carbon transition. They offer significant potential – much of it presently untapped – to mitigate our emissions. This book focuses on this fundamental role which ICTs play in the tran- sition to a low-carbon society. They can empower energy users and create completely new business opportunities.
ICTs are already transforming the way we live and work, for in- stance by opening up possibilities for teleworking and videoconferenc- ing. They make it possible to use energy more efficiently, for example in smart buildings where heating, ventilation, air conditioning, light- ing and use of electrical and electronic devices are optimised. They are essential for creating the smart grids that will form the backbone of the low-carbon electricity system of the future.
But ICTs have a carbon footprint too. Around 8% of the EU’s elec- tricity use and some 2% of its carbon emissions come from the ICT equipment and services and household electronics sector. So ICTs need to be ‘greened’ if they are to be part of the solution and not exacerbate the problem.
The EU has legislation in place to improve the overall environ- mental performance of energy using products such as TVs, personal computers and other consumer electronics. We are setting minimum standards under the EU’s “Ecodesign Directive” that will make a wide range of products marketed in Europe more energy efficient.
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Foreword – By Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action
But top-down legislation for specific products can be only part of the solution. The most promising way forward would be for the ICT sector to take the lead in greening itself. This is also likely to be the most economically efficient approach. Some companies are setting the example already and getting a head start.
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Connie Hedegaard
CHAPTER 1
Prologue
This book started out as two people’s commitment to save the planet, and one guy crazy enough to suggest that a book was the way to do it. All three of us can now call ourselves the editors of this exciting, inter- nationally collaborative, and non-profit (Creative Commons licensed) project. Allow us to introduce ourselves: Irene & Adrian Sobotta and John Gøtze.
Personally committed to contribute to solving human’s impact on global warming, Irene and Adrian wanted to apply their professional fields of Environmental Politics and Information Technology to in- crease awareness of Green IT solutions. Using John’s knowledge and experience in collaborative bookwriting, the Greening IT project was born.
Our common underlying assumption is that there is something wrong with the world today! We perceive Climate Change and Global Warming as the effects of unsustainable consumption patterns in an industrialised world. In an effort to contribute to solving the prob- lem, we look into the great potential of Information Technology (IT). The overall goal is to communicate to a large audience how IT can be leveraged to transform today’s society into one characterised by low emissions of greenhouse gases.
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Chapter 1 Prologue
Although we strongly believe that IT is part of the solution, we must emphasise that we also do not believe in silver bullets and technical fixes. As such, the problem and indeed the solution, is at the end of the day a question of human, social, cultural and political commitment.
From the outset, the project was dependent on contributions from other committed souls around the globe. Thus, the book has been writ- ten as an internationally collaborative effort resulting in a compendium of works with a loose common thread, being Green IT. This approach allowed us to bring in expertise in various fields of Green IT and the environment, thus allowing for different approaches and perspectives on the potential of Green IT.
The contributors are situated in Denmark, United Kingdom, Ger- many, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA, Japan and Australia – a truly diverse team, which despite their geographical dispersion and cultural diversity, has communicated a unified message. That message being that IT is a strong and signficant enabler to transform our societies into those characterised by low-carbon footprints.
The aim of the book is to look into how Information Technology can support society in reducing CO2 emissions, saving energy and op- timising resource utilisation – thus becoming greener and developing towards a low-carbon society. The book seeks to cover the general po- tential of Green IT, as well as the potential of a number of specific tech-
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Chapter 1 Prologue
nologies, such as Smart Grid and Cloud Computing. May the book fulfill its intentions and help lead us to the Low-
Carbon Society. Enjoy! Adrian, Irene and John
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CHAPTER 2
Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time
One of the initiating questions for this internationally collaborative book was: how green has the IT industry been so far?
From where I stand, that’s the easiest one to answer, because we happen to have historical data. The answer is: not at all. Let me illus- trate by telling my own story as a Web entrepreneur.
As I write this, I am using a tool, which in some remote sense is descended from the rocks and sticks our ancestors once used in the sa- vannah. It’s an IT tool, it’s connected to the ubiquitous network (which is helping me form the thoughts and acquire the data that will populate this piece), and it uses power brought to my home by Pacific Gas and Electric’s transmission and distributions lines. The power is generated at a power plant not too far from my home, and there is some power loss on the line due to electrical resistance. The data published on the network tells me that on average this loss is something like 7.5% of the power pumped through the Grid.
When I started my Web business back in 1997, I was proud of the fact that it was virtual business: the cool factor was certainly appeal- ing. We weren’t wasting money and resources on an office. We used
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Chapter 2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia
very little paper. We traded in grey matter only – or did we? Soon enough, as we grew, we needed an office. While a large portion of the business remained virtual, we needed a centralised team to code apps and deploy Web sites; a set of office servers and test beds on top of our co-located machines; and numerous trips back and forth on airplanes and in taxis or rental cars to sell our stuff or simply stay in touch. Hu- mans don’t do well if they can’t read each other’s facial expression and gestures, another legacy from the savannah. They can do business, but they can’t really build the kind of trust that makes a team more cohe- sive and effective.
Not only did our carbon footprint (which was not called that at the time) increase, but the city where we operated from, Ottawa, didn’t have a good recycling program for businesses. As it turned out we started using a lot of paper: brochures which nobody read, business cards, countless white papers and office memos, all kinds of adminis- trative paper destined to a drawer, contracts and the like. The Guten- berg paradigm, which propelled our species into the industrial age as surely as the steam engine, was and is very much alive. And a lot of our paper was ending up in waste bins.
Of course, being in Ottawa, we had to heat our offices for most of the year, and there was never a way to heat them just right: we erred on the side of too warm. We kept our neon sign on at night to remind the good people of Ottawa that we existed, and of course our machines, and some of our office lights were on 24/7. I learned that the machines we all used: the desktops, the big CRTs and even the laptops were electron guzzlers. Our IT staff advised us that it was best to leave our computers on all the time to minimise component wear and tear (wis- dom that today no longer holds true), another blow to conservation.
Meanwhile, global warming was taking centre stage as an issue. Kyoto was on everyone’s mind. The most energy intensive nation in the world, the United States, would not be a signatory to the treaty. That’s when I started thinking of IT’s carbon footprint as an industry,
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Chapter 2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia
and how thoroughly my illusions about IT and the Internet’s environ- mental benefits (which turned out to be a complete fantasy from the get-go) were shattered. I did some research and discovered that a typi- cal fab consumes tremendous amounts of energy1. It also goes through whole lakes of water, puts out vast amounts of byproduct gases, and even more troubling, is getting less power efficient over time because new equipment is more power-hungry2. As for the network, which some people have come to call the “Cloud”, it relies on huge data cen- ters that store thousands of power-hungry servers, using at least 1.5% of all US power3, and possibly 3% in another 2 years. This is more than all colour TVs combined. Speaking of which, there’s another area where IT has made its mark: flat panel TVs are now nearly indistin- guishable from computers – and as it turns out they use more energy than a conventional CRT.
And if that weren’t enough, what happens to our discarded IT equipment? There’s lots of that, given the very short product cycles. Printer cartridges are piling up in Chinese landfills, heavy metals and chemicals from batteries and screens take up more and more space in our own waste management facilities, old cell phones, iPods, laptops, desktops, keyboards and the like end up underground with the rest of our garbage. But you know this, because like me, you’ve thrown out your share of gadgets, and you too have squirmed in your ergonomic chair and wondered where it all goes.
If I step back from this picture as a cultural observer, what would I be tempted to say? Not only has IT never been green, it’s horren- dously wasteful, it encourages people to discard and adopt the newest gadget in ever-shorter cycles of consumption and it pollutes as much as any other industry. It has also taken Schumpeter’s creative destruction model of capitalism to a new and disturbing height, and changed our expectations around growth, seed capital and return on investment. And as new as it is, it has already caused its share of pain besides the gains: the 2001 dot.com bubble. Forgive me for stating the obvious,
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Chapter 2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia
just beyond the rose-tinted glasses. What about the positives? That’s the easy part: we all know about
IT’s contributions to productivity, knowledge dissemination, scientific advances and therefore, our global lifestyle. I do mean global: while many populations are underserved from an IT standpoint, they still benefit from the technologies that IT has enabled. I would be hard- pressed, however, to identify a positive impact of the IT industry on the environment at this point in time, other than indirectly – again, as a tool that allows us to study changes in our environment with more accuracy.
In my capacity as Executive Director of the Organisation for the Ad- vancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a standards body, I was taught a superb lesson in just how dependent the IT in- dustry is on the power grid. Jon Bosak, best known for his eminent contributions to XML and also the Universal Business Language stan- dard (UBL), has taken an interest in Peak Oil theory and its impact on our industry. It’s still unclear when oil production will peak, but this event is not in our distant future, and possibly no farther than a half-century away. Because markets anticipate what happens down the road, we will feel the impact of this event well before it occurs – we already have. There will be more Oil crises, and chances are they will grow more severe each time. Because the network, both local and global, needs power, it’s not a stretch to imagine a time when our “free” communication devices of today become too expensive to use. So far, the network has absorbed the variations in utility prices via increased productivity and growth, but no one can beat the laws of thermody- namics, especially when they combine with economics. The only way out of this quandary would be to draw our energy from sources other than fossil fuels: renewable fuels, alternative energy, nuclear, and some forms that we have not been able to tap into yet, such as fusion. There are problems with each one of these options, and the underlying belief is that technology can save us as it has in the past.
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Chapter 2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia
Let me get back to that crucial point in a minute, but let’s just say right now that I view that belief as a fallacy, and simply a modern iter- ation of magical thinking.
Another question at the core of this book is: are we witnessing a greening of the IT industry?
At the current point in time, yes and no, or rather, no and yes. If the yardstick for “green” is reduction in carbon footprint, emissions and waste, then IT has not even begun to turn green – it will get “blacker” before it greens, just from sheer momentum. If the criteria, however, are adoption of sustainability practices, formulation of policies and pi- lot programs, then yes, the leaves are getting a green tinge at their edges. Some instances: data centers and hardware manufacturers have banded together to standardise the greening of their machines and fa- cilities; device makers are talking about reducing packaging (although we have yet to see this happen); more and more low-power chips are coming to market; the Energy Star program in the US is being adopted at a rapid clip, and this is making some IT devices more efficient. Sim- ilar programs have been implemented in Europe and are under way in Asia.
In my own sector: IT standards (which make it possible for software and devices to talk to each other), I’m happy to say that OASIS has been devoting a considerable amount of effort to bringing about the Smart Grid (see chapter 7). This new power grid will be much more frugal than our current, dilapidated one, by allowing homes, buildings and factories to constantly communicate with the power generation and distribution system to only get what they need, and even sell back the power that they in turn generate from alternative energy systems, such as solar or wind power, and in future, fuel cells. This will revolutionise the power market, reduce the number of brown and blackouts, and create significant energy savings – possibly up to 25% of what we are using now. OASIS, my organisation, is involved in developing some of the key standards for the Smart Grid.
Most of the “greening” we have been seeing, however, has nothing to do with the IT industry, or the goodwill of its executives. I would even argue that IT, when it comes to sustainability, is not anywhere near the forefront. The thought leadership is coming instead from a handful of visionary entrepreneurs such as Paul Hawken, academics like Jared Diamond, forward thinkers like Thomas Friedman and reg- ulators – yes, regulators! Europe is well ahead of Asia and the US in this regard. If you walk the streets of Paris and you see a car adver- tised on a billboard, you will immediately notice its carbon credit or debit in very visible letters. Not what Chrysler or GM need right now, I realise. Then again, I would challenge Dell, HP, Apple and others to tell us exactly what the carbon footprint of their gizmos is. Here’s a harmless prediction: Armageddon will come and go before we see that happen.
Some optimistic souls feel that the embryonic greening of the IT in- dustry can serve as a model for other industries. If the previous para- graph holds true, then the answer is: not at this point. Let’s face it: as an industry, we are like the glamorous but skinny models on the cover of fashion magazines. We’re so used to being sexy that we forgot we had an eating disorder. In our case, it’s energy bulimia.
That said, the perceived greening of IT is generating much punditry and anticipation, from CIO magazine4 to Futurity Media5. Why is that? The answer to that deceptively simple question is, I believe, what really lies at the heart of our debate (well at least I hope it’s a debate), and at the root of this book.
Let’s go back 200,000 years – 100 times longer than what we refer to rather chauvinistically as the Christian Era, and a mere blink in geo- logical terms. According to anthropological data6 all modern humans emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa around that time, as a diverse group with one remarkable characteristic: the ability to speak. Information technology was born. Using the brain as a repository, sounds became repeatable patterns, carrying predictable meanings. All other techni-
9
cal developments are rooted in our ability to associate symbols with sounds: the perfection of tools for hunting, the rise of agriculture, the alphabet, philosophy, science, the printing press, take your pick. A further argument can be made that all dramatic modern human ex- pansions and population growth spurts were supported by a technical innovation. Conversely, early declines in human colonies, as far back as 80,000 years ago, seem to have arisen from an inability to deal with local conditions, perhaps via the lack of appropriate tools.
In very broad terms, first we conquered the variability of the food supply through agriculture. The rise of agriculture, mostly in the Fer- tile Crescent, had side effects of its own: populations grew, creating an addiction to successful crops; because of labour division, city states emerged, whose first order of the day was to enslave, draft or other- wise oppress its farmers, with the inevitable consequences of organ- ised war, organised religion, epidemics and taxes. We recognise all the traits of our modern nations. For the most part, despite the cy- cles of famine and pandemics, there were never enough diebacks to halt the increase in our numbers. Even after the Black Plague, Euro- pean population bounced back in very short order. And World War II, the bloodiest conflict in recorded history, was a mere blip. While we perceive the 20th century as the most violent ever, in fact it was the safest, with a smaller percentage of humans dying a violent death than ever. Most deaths occurred locally from domestic conflict, starvation, accidents, illness and just plain criminality which was unimaginably rampant until the Industrial Revolution. In “Guns Germs and Steel”, Jared Diamond talks eloquently about the elaborate conflict avoidance rituals that still take place in Papua New Guinea because murder there is so commonplace.
And that was the second thing we did as a species: through indus- try, hygiene and medicine, we suddenly made our population growth exponential and nearly unstoppable. Notions that a super-virus or global conflict will wipe us out are misinformed. What’s amusing is
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Chapter 2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia
that 19th century thinkers did not believe that we had in fact broken the bounds of nature. Because the Irish Potato Famine was so spectacular, they thought that Nature would restore population balance through the economics of starvation. This had the following British theoretical manifestation: in one natural philosopher’s thinking, too many chil- dren and wages would dip so low that entire neighbourhoods would die off until there were not enough workers left to fuel the plunge, and wages would go up again, until the next cycle. That was Malthus of course, and it was as callous as it was asinine. While wages were controlled by industrialists, thereby guaranteeing the rise of Commu- nism as a nearly physical reaction to Industry, population kept growing through the relative prosperity created by new jobs.
This has not stopped for the past two centuries. Until now. In cauda venenum7 .
The one clear lesson from the Neolithic is that human expansion has its cost in misery but also impacts in unpredictable ways the quality of our survival as a species. If we look around, both geographically and historically, we find plenty of cautionary tales, and we must turn to Jared Diamond again to unlock their meaning. In Collapse, he chron- icles the slow death of the Polynesian society that colonised Easter Is- land. They started out as a vibrant culture, one that had enough re- sources and know-how to carve those astonishing statues, that had abundant wood and farmlands, fresh water and space – until they grew too numerous. There came a day when they chopped down their last tree. Their crops were already failing, and their numbers had dwin- dled dramatically. It must have been a very ominous day. A few sur- vivors clung to the island until they too passed on. How could they not see this coming? How were they not able to evolve norms that would save them from the brink? Of course these are the superior thoughts of hindsight. I think you know where I am going with this: we’re doing the same, and yet, we have tons more information at our fingertips. We have our entire IT arsenal. More on this in a little bit.
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Chapter 2 Our Tools Will Not Save Us This Time – by Laurent Liscia
The desertification of the Fertile Crescent and the Sahara is an older but ongoing tale; and I suspect the growth of the inner Australian desert must have something to do with 40,000 years of human pres- ence. Worse, our billions upon billions have turned the entire world into an island, albeit one floating in space.
What I’m getting at is that global warming, environmental degra- dation, water shortages are all symptoms of that one underlying cause: our numbers have already spun out of control.
In our defence, no one has figured out a solution. Having travelled far and wide, I find claims that certain “wise” cultures have found ways to live in harmony with their environment somewhat hollow. As for animals, they are subject to the very boom and bust laws that Malthus described, compounded by our constant encroachment and pollution.
We humans only now understand how to address the problem. The Chinese, in a rather fascistic way, have imposed the one child ruled – but this would never fly in India, for instance, which needs it far worse. The West is seeing “natural” demographic declines; and if truth be told, this is happening everywhere prosperity is taking root and women are empowered to control reproduction. The latter factor is the more im- portant one: if women have jobs and are allowed to choose whether to get pregnant or not, they are much more likely to have fewer children. In that scenario, children are no longer a labour pool, and the relation- ship between children and parents turns into what we are used to in more prosperous societies.
Therefore, in one view, we could just wait for these values to spread worldwide and solve our problems – but do we have that kind of time? And can we sustain Asia’s demand for the same level of luxury that we have been used to? Then again, who are we to say “no” to the newly affluent populations?
We have reached an unprecedented point in our history: a planetary maturation event. If there were some galactic classification of civilisa-
Chapter 4 Why Green IT Is Hard – An Economic Perspective – by Rien Dijkstra
of solutions in current operational data centers may not always make sense. For some data centers, the cost savings from energy consump- tion may not justify the cost for renewing the site infrastructure. For other data centers, the criticality of their function to the business just prohibits downtime and inhibits facility managers from making major overhauls to realise energy-efficiency improvements. This makes it dif- ficult to continually optimise data centers in such a rapidly changing environment.
The software and the equipment for the IT and site infrastructure is delivered by a complex distribution system of Original Equipment Manufactures (OEM), Resellers, Value Added Resellers (VAR), System Integrators, etc. All these parties, with conflicting commercial inter- ests, are in some way involved in the decisions about energy efficient solutions. This conflict of interest can bring a coherent overall energy efficient solution in jeopardy if not properly managed.
In the short-term there is also the difficulty of determining whether a certain percentage increase in customer demands relates to an in- crease of IT infrastructure capacity. Therefore as an assurance, fre- quently an excess of devices are purchased to guarantee capacity in extreme IT load scenarios. Energy is not a concern in these decisions. Typically the IT department is unaware of the energy use since some- one else pays the energy bill. Also their primary concern and focus is to ensure that the IT infrastructure runs, not that the IT infrastructure is energy efficient. The consequence is increased energy usage from the IT infrastructure. The data center is a large drawer of power. Nowa- days the server hardware is no longer the primary cost component of a data center. The purchase price of a new (1U) server has been exceeded by the capital cost of power and cooling infrastructure to support that server and will soon be exceeded by the lifetime energy costs alone for that server (Program, 2007).
At the current time there is mostly a qualitative knowledge and ap- preciation of energy usage of data centers, although there are some
34
r, that if you don’t get your perspective high enough, then you risk being like one of the blind men.
For this reason (and the fact that the paradigm is relatively young) it is very difficult to provide a meaningful definition of cloud comput- ing which is concise, meaningful, articulate and descriptive without being too specific as to define just one segment of cloud computing. All too often the definition of cloud computing provided defines just one aspect of the wider cloud computing universe. Therefore there is no alternative but to start with a high level definition and then dissect it into more specialised versions for each segment of cloud computing which is relevant for each unique perspective.
Based on this fact, the 30,000 feet definition of cloud computing de- veloped for this book is:
The outsourcing of IT hardware and software to centralised exter- nal third parties capable of providing IT capabilities as a service, leveraging the Internet [the cloud] and accessed via (potentially thin) clients that know not, nor care not, how the services are im- plemented, maintained or what infrastructure is used to support it.
You would be forgiven for thinking this really is not that revolution- ary and that we have been doing this for decades. It is certainly true that the concept is old, however what has changed is its size, its adop- tion by enterprises and individuals and its technical foundation. You could say modern cloud computing is a re-implementation of an old
During the 80s, the green movement was strong in Germany, and it influenced public discourse. Influenced by that spirit, one of the first projects ITG started was research on what IT and electronics could do for environmental protection and environmental science. The project resulted in three books, each several hundred pages thick, covering each and every aspect of the topic as it was seen at that time.
The most important themes then were environmental management of companies and landscapes as well as software to support this, expert
Internally, engagement with both management and employees is crucial to the program’s success. Once management accepts the busi- ness case and you know what your baseline looks like you need to make the commitment public – at least to your employees initially. Have executive management announce the high level targets e.g. 25% reduction in carbon emissions and saving of $xyz annually. Then im- plement an IT marketing program to both remind staff of the program you are undertaking and to show them how they can help.
The next step is setting up a working group composed of manage- ment, employees and IT. Implementing green IT changes are as equally related to organisational change as they are to technical change. As such you need to setup an influential working group that will support your activities.
Finally you need to assess and select the appropriate technologies and solutions. Many independent software vendors (ISVs) and hard- ware manufacturers offer their support to organisations through so- lutions designed to increase energy efficiency and also through their extensive partner networks and training. Taking advantage of all they
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269
Asymmetric information, 49
Biomimicry, 233 Biodegradable hardware, 241 Data Center, 235 Evolution, 233 Natural Silicon, 240 Nature, 233 Solar cells, 236 Three rules of nature, 239
Climate Change, 16 Adaptation, 18
Concentration of CO2, 17 Developing Countries, 21 Direct Effects, 26 Energy Consumption, 22 Energy Production, 22 Environment, 25 Evolution, 171
Extreme Weather Events, 18 Fossil Fuels, 17 Global Warming, 16 Green IT, 24
Greenhouse Gases, 17 High Carbon Feedback, 26 Indirect Effects, 26 Industrialisation, 17 Infrastructure, 26 IPCC, 17 Low Carbon Feedback, 26 Low Carbon Society, 22 Mitigation, 18 Ressource Efficiency, 22 Stabilisation, 20
Index
Sustainable Development, 20 Systemic Effects, 26 Temperature, 18
Cloud Computing, 65 As a Green IT Initiative, 76 Definition, 72 Direct Impact on Env., 84 Evolution of Info. Processing
Industry, 68 Evolution of Power Gen. In-
dustry, 66 Indirect Impact on Env., 85 Nikola Tesla, 67 Rackspace Survey, 83 Segments, 73 Systemic Impact on Env., 86
Computer Energy Consumption, 223
Computer Virtualization, 76 Cost of Not Using, 77 Explained, 79 Impacts of, 77
Computing Paradigms Client/Server, 69
Grid Computing, 70 Isolated PC, 69 Mainframe/Time-share, 68
Corporate Social Responsibility, 212
Data ceners Decision making, 35
Data centers Energy consumption, 33, 41 Energy costs, 31
270
Energy efficiency, 33 Investment decisions, 36 Power supply, 37 Responsibility, 35
Risk management, 58
Site location, 36 Dependency hell, 45 Design by committee, 45 Diffusion of innovation, 56
e-Waste Disposal, 197 EU policy, 201
Hazardous materials, 200 Recycling, 202 US policy, 202
Energy conservation, 47 Energy consumption
Data centers, 32, 41 Incoherency, 39 Inflexibility, 37 Servers, 29
Energy Efficiency, 217, 232 Computer Energy Consump-
tion, 223 Energy Use Policy, 219 Implementing an Energy Effi-
ciency Program, 225 Implementing Operational
Changes, 228 Overview, 218
Partnering Strategy, 227 Reviewing Purchasing Poli-
cies, 228 Solving The Energy Usage
Problem, 220 Energy efficiency, 33, 47
Barriers, 47 Costs, 54 Incentives, 53 IT infrastructure, 33 Risk appetite, 56 Switching costs, 55
Energy productivity, 47 Energy savings, 47 EPEAT, 195 Externality, 51
Index
271
Global Annual IT Spending, 77 Green IT, 25
Definition, 25, 165 Internet, 167 Resource Efficiency, 25 Supply Chains, 244
Green IT Business Case, 205 Carbon Offsets, 207 Green procurement, 190
Green Return on Investment (GROI), 209
Green Supply Chains, 247 Greenpeace’s Electronics Score-
card, 196 Greenwashing, 189
McDonalds, 190
Internet Amazon, 167
Behavioural change, 169 Education, 169 Electricity concumption, 170 Enviromental Protection, 167
Key Performance Indicators, see KPIs
KPIs, 176 Google, 180
Efficient Computing, 181 Green Buildings, 182 Green Employee Benefits,
184 RechargeIT, 183 Renewable Electricity, 182 Solar Panel Installation, 182
Quantifiable, 178 What Are KPIs?, 177
Labelling, 195 Lifecycle, 186, 188, 197
Market Failure, 51 Market optimum, 61
Organisation optimum, 60
Power Generation Infrastructure, 37
Problems with Fossil Fuel Energy Sources, 218
Problems with Renewable Energy Sources, 119
Rational decision making, 49 Recycling, 186 Risk management, 58
Service stack Interdependency, 39
Smart Grid, 8, 110 As a Green Societal Trans-
former, 118 Costs, 113
Cyber Security, 135 Definition, 114 Energy Security, 122 Enhancing Customer Choice,
121 Goals, 113, 128
Green Buildings, 122 Improving Grid Reliability,
121 In the US, 129
Plug-in Electrical Vehicle, 123 Problems, 38, 111 Reference Model, 132 Roadmap, 134
Specific Objectives, 114 Standards evolution, 136 Standards Framework, 130 Technical Drivers, 116
Social economic optimum, 62 Stovepipe enterprise, 45 Stovepipe systems, 45 Strategic behaviour, 49 Supply Chains, 244
Change of Scope, 251 Consumers, 248 Definition, 245 Improving, 254 Logistics, 247
New School, 254
Index
272
Old School, 254 Production paradigms, 249 Role of Information, 249 Transport, 247
Thin Client, 89 Browser Based Applications,
96 CentOS with Virt Manager,
105 Citrix, 95
Citrix Xen Desktop, 101 Cloud Computing, 97 Desktop Virtualization, 99 Environmental Impact, 98 Microsoft Hyper-V, 104 Microsoft Terminal Services,
95 Red Hat SolidICE VDI, 105 Reed Thin Client Case Study,
106 Software, 93
VMware View, 102 Thin Client Market, 92 Triple bottom line, 188 Triple Green, 173
Vendor lock in, 45 Virtual Desktop, 89 Virtual Power Plants, 119
Wolf ticket, 45
Uncatagorized
