Carbon Disclosure Project Archives

Don’t forget – where your cloud apps are hosted helps determine their carbon footprint

December 20, 2011 by Tom Raftery

Back in July of this year (2011), the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), in conjunction with Verdantix, released a report titled Cloud Computing – The IT Solution for the 21st Century [PDF warning] which erroneously claims Cloud Computing is Green. Shortly after it was released, I wrote a long post outlining exactly where the report was flawed. I also contacted the CDP directly outlining my concerns to them and pointing them to the blog post.

Then, a couple of weeks back, when preparing my slides for my Cloud Computing’s Green Potential talk for the Cepis and Hepis Green IT conference in Athens, I discovered that Verdantix and the CDP had published

a new report [PDF] on the business and environmental benefits of cloud computing in France and the UK

Unfortunately, not only does the new report make the same mistakes as the original one, but it further compounds those errors with an even more fundamental one.

Let me explain.

In the key assumptions section of the report it talks about the metric tons of CO2/kWh in both the UK and French electricity grids (0.000521 tonnes and 0.000088 tonnes respectively). It uses these figures to extrapolate the savings in both France and the UK for companies migrating their applications to cloud computing.

So? You say. Sounds reasonable to me.

Well, the issue is that they didn’t do any work to identify where applications migrated to the cloud would be hosted. The implication being that UK applications migrated to the cloud, will be hosted on UK cloud infrastructure and French IT applications will be migrated to French hosted cloud infrastructure. In fact this would be a highly unusual scenario.

A quick look at where most cloud hosting takes place shows that the vast majority of it is occurring in the US, with quite a lot happening in Singapore with a lesser amount in Europe (and that split between Ireland, Germany, UK, etc. but almost none in France – Ireland is underestimated in the list as it doesn’t include Microsoft which has a significant Cloud hosting facility in Dublin which it is now expanding or Google’s Dublin facility).

Ok, and what about the carbon intensity of electricity generation in these countries? If a cloud application is moved to somewhere with a lower carbon intensity for electricity generation, then there is a possibility of a carbon saving. However, with the vast majority of cloud hosting still being done in the US, that isn’t a likely scenario.

This table of CO2 emissions from electricity generation, by country shows that the US has one of the most carbon intensive electrical grids in the world. France, on the other hand, with its high concentration of nuclear power (78%) has one of the least carbon intensive electricity grids in the world. While the UK grid’s carbon intensiveness at 557kg CO2/mWeh sits just above the world average of 548kg CO2/mWeh.

While it is possible (though not probable) that UK IT applications outsourced to the cloud would be hosted in a country with a lower carbon intensity than the UK, the chances of a French IT application being hosted in a country with a lower carbon intensity than France are virtually nil.

Given this, the assertion by the CDP report that

large businesses in France and the UK can reduce CO2 emissions from their IT estate by 50% compared to a scenario where there was no cloud computing.

seems, at best, extremely improbable.

One problem with coming up with reports like this is the lack of transparency from cloud providers on their locations, their energy and carbon footprints. If all cloud providers reported these metrics, it would be a far simpler matter to decide whether cloud computing is green, or not. Without these data, there is absolutely no way to say whether moving to the cloud increases or decreases CO2 emissions.

If you are wondering why the Carbon Disclosure Project and Verdantix are so bullish in their assertions that Cloud Computing is Green – if you scroll to the bottom of the report, you’ll see this:

This study was supported by AT&T
For more information on AT&T Cloud Solutions go to …

The report was paid for by the Cloud Solutions division of AT&T. Enough said.

Photo credit fotdmike

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Carbon Disclosure Project’s emissions reduction claims for cloud computing are flawed

July 21, 2011 by Tom Raftery

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a not-for-profit organisation which takes in greenhouse gas emissions, water use and climate change strategy data from thousands of organisations globally. This data is voluntarily disclosed by these organisations and is CDP’s lifeblood.

Yesterday the CDP launched a new study Cloud Computing ? The IT Solution for the 21st Century a very interesting report which

delves into the advantages and potential barriers to cloud computing adoption and gives insights from the multi-national firms that were interviewed

The study, produced by Verdantix, looks great on the surface. They have talked to 11 global firms that have been using cloud computing for over two years and they have lots of data on the financial savings made possible by cloud computing. There is even reference to other advantages of cloud computing – reduced time to market, capex to opex, flexibility, automation, etc.

However, when the report starts to reference the carbon reductions potential of cloud computing it makes a fundamental error. One which is highlighted by CDP Executive Chair Paul Dickinson in the Foreword when he says

allowing companies to maximize performance, drive down costs, reduce inefficiency and minimize energy use ? and therefore carbon emissions

[Emphasis added]

The mistake here is presuming a direct relationship between energy and carbon emissions. While this might seem like a logical assumption, it is not necessarily valid.

If I have a company whose energy retailer is selling me power generated primarily by nuclear or renewable sources for example, and I move my applications to a cloud provider whose power comes mostly from coal, then the move to cloud computing will increase, not decrease, my carbon emissions.

The report goes on to make some very aggressive claims about the carbon reduction potential of cloud computing. In the executive summary, it claims:

US businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 billion can cut CO2 emissions by 85.7 million metric tons annually by 2020

and

A typical food & beverage firm transitioning its human resources (HR) application from dedicated IT to a public cloud can reduce CO2 emissions by 30,000 metric tons over five years

But because these are founded on an invalid premise, the report could just as easily have claimed

US businesses with annual revenues of more than $1 billion can increase CO2 emissions by 85.7 million metric tons annually by 2020

and

A typical food & beverage firm transitioning its human resources (HR) application from dedicated IT to a public cloud can increase CO2 emissions by 30,000 metric tons over five years

This wouldn’t be an issue if the cloud computing providers disclosed their energy consumption and emissions information (something that the CDP should be agitating for anyway).

In fairness to the CDP, they do refer to this issue in a sidebar on a page of graphs when they say:

Two elements to be considered in evaluating the carbon impact of the cloud computing strategies of specific firms are the source of the energy being used to power the data center and energy efficiency efforts.

However, while this could be taken to imply that the CDP have taken data centers’ energy sources into account in their calculations, they have not. Instead they rely on models extrapolating from US datacenter PUE information [PDF] published by the EPA. Unfortunately the PUE metric which the EPA used, is itself controversial.

For a data centric organisation like the CDP to come out with baseless claims of carbon reduction benefits from cloud computing may be at least partly explained by the fact that the expert interviews carried out for the report were with HP, IBM, AT&T and CloudApps – all of whom are cloud computing vendors.

The main problem though, is that cloud computing providers still don’t publish their energy and emissions data. This is an issue I have highlighted on this blog many times in the last three years and until cloud providers become fully transparent with their energy and emissions information, it won’t be possible to state definitively that cloud computing can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Photo credit Tom Raftery

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Lockheed Martin Going Green!

January 12, 2011 by Tom Raftery

When you hear the name Lockheed Martin – you don’t immediately think “Ah, now there’s a Green company” – they are after all, among the very largest defence contractors in the world. In 2008 70% of Lockheed Martin’s revenues came from military sales.

However, after a recent discussion with Dr David Constable, Lockheed Martin’s VP for Energy, Environment, Safety and Health, my impression of the company’s Green credentials has definitely gone up a couple of notches.

Lockheed Martin started their Go Green program in 2008 partially out of a desire to ‘do the right thing’ according to Dr Constable but also in response to increasing concern on their customer’s part to sustainability.

Submarine launch of a Lockheed Trident missile

The US military, for example – America’s largest energy consumer, invested $2.7 billion last year to improve energy efficiency according to President Obama. The US Army’s Environmental Command (the US Army has an Environmental Command? Who knew?) has a comprehensive page of Sustainability Links to How-To Guides, Tools and relevant Green departments, facilities and organisations.

Similarly, the UK’s Ministry of Defence, and Royal Mail, two other large Lockheed Martin customers, both asked Lockheed Martin to participate in the Carbon Disclosure Project. According to Dr Constable, in their first year of disclosure, Lockheed Martin were amongst the top performers in their sector and, he said, this next year they aim to improve on that.

With it’s Go Green initiative, Lockheed Martin set itself a goal of reducing its carbon footprint, water footprint and waste-to-landfill footprint by 25% in absolute terms (i.e. not tied to sales revenue) compared to its 2007 baseline, by 2012. For a company with 136,000 employees, 572 facilities in 500 cities and 46 states throughout the U.S. and business locations in 75 nations and territories – this is an ambitious undertaking.

According to Dr Constable though, Lockheed Martin have already met their aim to reduce their water footprint by 25%, they are at 24% waste-to-landfill reduction and 15% carbon emissions reduction. “By definition, being sustainable is a lower cost option”, said Dr Constable, “and the biggest opportunity is in carbon reduction.”

Lockheed have taken a very comprehensive approach to energy efficiency and conservation. Part of it comes from strategic purchasing decisions – buying servers, routers, etc. which are more energy efficient and also purchasing renewable energy – Lockheed Martin are in the top 50 purchasers of renewable power in the US. Lockheed are also using video conferencing technologies more to reduce emissions associated with travel.

With a large portfolio of buildings on its books, LEED certification also plays a large part of Lockheed’s efforts. In fact, Lockheed have a corporate functional procedure (a written policy) in place which mandates that all new construction and renovation above $5 million has to achieve LEED Silver status. Lockheed currently have 19 LEED certified buildings and ‘a lot more in the works’.

Lockheed’s biggest challenges in its Go Green program, according to Dr Constable are getting to grips with the global supply chain – he is currently working with his Global Supply Chain Operations team to address that and they are looking at tools to help them understand the impacts of supply chains.

It remains to be seen if Lockheed Martin will achieve their aim of a 25% reduction in their carbon emissions by 2012 – but to-date they have made a very good start and we have a saying in Irish Tosach maith, leath no hoibre – (a good start is half the work).

And if defence contractors are starting to go Green – that’s reason to be optimistic, right there.

F-22A Photo credit Ronnie Macdonald

SAP Sustainability Report 3rd quarter updates

December 1, 2010 by Tom Raftery

I have posted here in the past on just how way ahead of the pack SAP’s 2009 Sustainability Report is, however having gone through it in detail when it came out, I didn’t revisit it much until the other day.

Why did I go back to visit the Sustainability Report again recently? Because I was on a call with SAP’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Peter Graf who was telling me about the updates to the report.

SAP's CSO, Peter Graf

“Updates to a Sustainability Report?” I hear you say – yes, SAP are publishing quarterly updates on their Sustainability Report site – one of the advantages of having their report on a website, as opposed to a PDF, is the ability to update it regularly (another advantage is to be able to use website analytics software to see what aspects of the report are generating the most interest).

Anyway, I digress! While chatting to Peter on the call I realised that SAP have been populating the the updates, not just with data but also with SAP Sustainability news stories, many of which I had missed during the year! In case you have too – here’s a quick rundown of them:

SAP was named as the highest ranking software company in the 2010 Dow Jones Sustainability Index – this is the fourth consecutive year SAP has been in the number one spot here.
SAP Americas headquarters achieved a LEED Platinum certification – this is the highest rating given by the US Green Building Council (USGBC) for low impact buildings
SAP released version 5.0 of its Carbon Impact OnDemand software. The latest version includes language support for more than 50 countries, automated data collection and strategies for energy and emissions reduction
The Carbon Disclosure Project announced a new service – the CDP Reporter Service. This consists of an emissions reporting tool (a light version of SAP Carbon Impact OnDemand) to collate and prepare emissions data for disclosure and verification as well as an enhanced analytics tool (based on SAP software) “to maximise the value of CDP?s global climate change data set for benchmarking purposes.

and finally

SAP has published a version of their Sustainability Report in Spanish. According to Peter, Spanish was the foreign language most in demand by SAP’s customers and more languages are coming soon.

Some great news there – and another good reason to keep checking back on the SAP Sustainability Report!

Photo credits Tom Raftery