Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down
I talked with Carbonetworks’ President and CEO, Michael Meehan, the other day. We discussed Carbonetworks’ Carbon platform, and how their application helps companies participate in global carbon markets.
Carbonetworks software helps companies understand whether their carbon is going to be an asset or liability to them today and in the future as and works with companies to roll out their carbon strategies.
The television image in the video is from videocrab
Fujitsu Siemens Computers announced recently that it was shipping 10,000 monitors and bare bones system chassis from China to Germany by train!
I thought this was simply a pr stunt to get some headlines until I read that transporting the goods by train is one-third faster than ocean freight, costs only one-quarter as much as air freight and yet produces less than 5% of the CO2 emissions of air freight!
Intrigued I invited Fujitsu Siemens senior director of global logistics, Hans Erbe to come on GreenMonk TV to discuss the shipment and to give us some hard numbers around money and CO2 saved!
You can foillow the progress of the shipment on the train’s blog at http://www.transeurasiablog.com/
I should also apologise for the quality of the audio in the podcast. We were connected via Skype and despite connecting several times, this was the best audio we could get 🙁
The television image in the video is from videocrab
Photo Credit <
Episode 4 of the GreenMonk Podcasts – 36 mins 28 secs
My guest on this podcast is Strato’s Executive Director for Information Technology and Innovation Rene Wienholtz.
Strato are Europe’s second largest hosting company and Strato are also carbon neutral! Amazingly they achieved this without buying any offsets. How did they do it?
Listen to René explain it.
Here are the questions I asked René and the approx. times I asked them:
Can you tell us something about your own background first and who are Strato? – 00:34
If I heard you correctly you are now the largest hosting company in Europe? – 02:28
You guys are a bit like RackSpace in the sense that you don’t do co-location, you rent space on your servers, id that right? – 02:38
You mentioned that you decided to re-architect the setup in Strato and reduce your carbon footprint, was this for environmental reasons or business reasons? – 03:34
Questions from readers:
Jiri Ludvik
what percentage in carbon reduction they achieved by each of the step you mention? – 05:48
Do you use underfloor plenums as well to direct the air to the cold aisles? – 21:47
Can you talk to us too about the energy savings you are getting from buying CO2 free energy? – 25:44
Have you negotiated a set price from your clean energy supplier for a set period? – 29:36
Can you tell me how long this price is guaranteed for? – 30:15
Have you had any independent 3rd party certify that you are carbon neutral? – 30:27
More questions from readers:
Jim Hughes
Has the carbon saving had a real cost benefit? Or have the lower power costs been exceeded by the premium for carbon neutral electricity? – 31:42Would you recommend other hosting providers take the same route? – 32:53
Do you think environmental awareness is an area where European hosting companies have a head start over the US? – 34:47
Download the entire interview here
(33.4mb mp3)
Photo Credit ogimogi
Episode 3 of the GreenMonk Podcasts – 42 mins 47 secs
My guest on this podcast is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Founder of Trilliant Bill Vogel. Trilliant are a company that
provides intelligent network solutions and software to utilities for advanced metering, demand response, and smart grid management. With more than twenty years experience solving meter communications needs, Trilliant focuses on the adoption of open standards-based technologies for electric, gas, and water utilities.
And Trilliant recently announced that it had closed a $40m funding round so I was interested to know how Bill felt smart grids could help reduce carbon footprints. I invited him to come on the show to discuss this and also to answer questions I solicited from readers of this site.
Here are the questions I asked Bill and the approx. times I asked them:
For anyone who is not sure what a Smart Grid is, can you give us a quick Smart Grid 101? – 0:18
How does that differ from the current grid infrastructure that we have? – 01:12
How does that work? – 02:22
And why would that be of benefit to consumers? – 03:48
Questions from readers:
Asa Hopkins
In the Trilliant vision of the future, what level of access will an individual consumer have to their own energy data, and with what time resolution? Will they be able to export raw data? Manipulate it through Trilliant software? Compare with neighbors? In the future will there be an open ecosystem of tools to allow individuals to learn more about their energy use and make their own efficiency gains? – 06:05
Are there intelligent enough systems right now to allow your smart meter communicate with your appliances, change your thermostat settings up or down based on energy pricing, that kind of thing, is that a reality yet or is that still a bit of a pipe dream? – 09:22
More questions from readers:
Jerry Sweeney
Trilliant sees its customers as large utility companies. Does Bill see any path where electrical grids could become more democratised. Where dynamic pricing could facilitate the sale and purchase of electricity by small consumers and producers depending on the current real time price. This could lead to huge growth in the production of distributed renewable energy and to the growth in demand response to pricing signals that suggested scarcity or abundance. How can the grid become more like eBay given the stranglehold that TSOs and Utility companies have over it. – 10:21
Are any of the utilities thinking of Demand Response in respect to demand stimulation and not just the traditional peak shaving? – 16:34
Still more questions from readers(!):
Andy
-Is there any evidence that information on its own is enough to change consumption? – 18:43
– Is multi-utility metering a real prospect/ has this been done by you? – 20:29
– Is there added value in a ‘Utility Data Channel’ that could be used for Security Systems, Water/Gas/BioHeat/Oil/Sub metering/ equipment control? – 21:47
– Is there interest in Smart Grids from makers of Electric Heating, Micro CHP, and Energy Storage Technologies? – 23:18
– Has electric heating been integrated with the operation of smart grids before? – 24:46
– Can such systems be modular and expandible? – 25:13
– Can open standards have a role in maintaining the long term value of smart metering infrastructure? – 26:00
– How can smart metering support markets in carbon reduction? – 27:45
– What happens if we do not do a form of advanced smart metering in Ireland, what is a worst case? – 29:39
– If Ireland is pioneering high levels of grid wind penetration, which other countries may follow? – 31:26
– How may energy prices impact on your business, is your technology a hedge against rising prices? – 32:28Mr Energy Rating
What is Trilliant’s definition of the minimum functionality required for a meter to become a smart meter? – 34:07How fat do the data pipes need to be between smart meters to have a real smart-grid? – 36:47
How do you overcome consumer rejection of Demand Response and avoid the situation in California where a major DR program had to be shelved because of a consumer backlash? – 38:35
You are heavily involved in the HydroOne project in Ontario – what have you learned from such a big project? – 39:50
Final question – you recently announced that you closed a $40m round of funding – what are you going to do with $40m? – 41:28
Download the entire interview here
(39.2mb mp3)
The IBM Green Data Center in Second Life
Episode 2 of the GreenMonk Podcasts – 27 mins 27 secs
My guest on this podcast is IBM’s Vik Chandra. According to IBM Vik
is currently responsible for Market Management and Strategy for IBM software offerings that enable organizations to reduce their energy consumption and environmental impact. IBM’s software group offers middleware from its Tivoli, Rational, WebSphere, Lotus and Information Management brands.
I was interested to know how Vik felt software could help companies reduce their carbon footprint so I invited him to come on the show to discuss this and also to answer questions I solicited from readers of this site.
Here are the questions I asked Vik and the approx. times I asked them:
It is easy to see how more efficient hardware can help drop a company’s energy use but how is software helping companies reduce their carbon footprint? – 00:20
Demand response – the ability to have devices adjust their settings dynamically in response to pricing signals from utilities etc is recently gaining a lot of attention. Is this something IBM are looking into? 03:23
Questions from readers:
Chris Dalby
Are there any plans to expand the current cost craze that has hit Hursley? With rising energy and utility costs in general, are there plans to help companies intelligently manage and automate their energy infrastructure using mqtt? – 05:57
Alan in Belfast
As CPU/core speeds increase, software has become more and more processor hungry, driving up heat, fan, power etc. Energy efficient machines – even Eee PC 1000s! – start to alter the processor speed to keep power demands down. Are IBM serious about de-bloating their software to make it more light-weight? And do they have any feel for whether that could make a 1% difference or a 20% difference to desktop/laptop/server power usage? – 08:14Is it more efficient to build features into hardware or software? A lot of the enterprise monitoring software that gets installed to instrument PCs/servers runs continuously. Better to make lighter hardware modules to do the same? Is there a day when a Linux-on-a-chip (etc) will be embedded in PCs/servers as a more energy-efficient method of performing these tasks? (Bring back the PIC chip!) – 10:28
Jim Spath
We’re moving toward more virtualization, currently running IBM AIX on Power5 LPARs, starting to run virtual CPUs, memory, storage and I/O. What are the limiting factors for software licensing in such a landscape? It seems we save money on hardware but pay more for software that could run in different frames.
I think Linux is a partial answer, but there are corporate concerns with having multiple OS images, not to mention uneasiness about GNU and BSD license models. – 14:23Jim Hughes
I see plenty of power management software going into desktop and laptop PCs (clock slowing, fans that run only when necessary etc.), but precious little into servers.As many enterprises appear to be shuffling ever more equipment into noisy, over heating server rooms, surely power (and noise) management should be a big issue here.
Are IBM ignoring servers because they’re hidden away from all but the long suffering sys admins? – 17:01
Ed Gemmell
Of the $1 billion IBM said they would invest in Green IT. How much has already been invested (can we see it in the financials?) and how much has been in Software. What do you have to show for the $1billion so far? – 21:31Uldis Boj?rs
It would be interesting to learn more about what is IBM’s experience and lessons learned in enterprise use of new social media and collaboration tools such as microblogging and virtual 3D worlds. – 25:58
Download the entire interview here
(25.1mb mp3)
Photo Credit shutterhack
Episode 1 of the GreenMonk Podcasts – 08 mins 28 secs
We have been thinking of starting a podcast here on GreenMonk for some time so when I read that Nortel is going to be the official Network Infrastructure Provider for the London 2012 Olympics I decided that would be a great story to start with.
My guest on this podcast is Nortel’s Dave Johnson. Dave is the General Manager, Olympic Programs for Nortel and I figured if anyone could tell us what went on behind the scenes in this process, it’d be Dave.
Dave graciously agreed to come on the show and he explained how Nortel’s Green credentials were paramount to their winning the bid. According to Dave “sustainability was one of the key focuses for LOCOG (the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games) and when they say sustainability, Green is one of the key pillars of that sustainability”.
We are seeing more and more Green credentials being a factor in purchasing processes and this is just one of the more public examples.
If your company isn’t considering going Green for reducing your costs, you may well want to consider doing so to maintain your sales!!!
Download the entire interview here
(7.7mb mp3)
