post

Just how green is cloud computing?

by

Clouds

Photo credit tipiro

Cloud computing may not be as Green as you think.

I mentioned previously that I gave a keynote presentation at the Green IT Summit in Dublin last week.

In the question and answers session after the talk, Sean Baker asked about cloud computing and whether I thought companies using cloud computing weren’t simply outsourcing their emissions.

As Gordon Smith picked up in a piece for SiliconRepublic.com, I replied that I

was ?quite sceptical? about this issue. ?None of the cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft or IBM are publishing metrics at all. Intuitively you have to think that because you?re outsourcing that to someone of that scale that they?re being more efficient but we?ve no way of knowing. Frankly, that?s worrisome. I don?t know why they?re not publishing it and I wish they would,?

This is no sudden realisation on my part. In fact, I have been concerned about Cloud Computing’s Green credentials for some time now as you can see from a series of Tweets (here, here and here, for instance) I posted on this issue in early to mid 2009.

It is vital that cloud providers start publishing their energy metrics for a number of reasons. For one, it is a competitive differentiator. But perhaps more importantly, in the absence of any provider numbers, one has to start wondering if cloud computing is in fact Green at all.

IBM, for example, are not known for being shy when given an opportunity to talk up their Green initiatives. However, on cloud, they are conspicuously silent. The same is true for Amazon, Microsoft, SalesForce and Google.

I’m not sure why cloud providers are not publishing their energy metrics but if I had to guess I would say it is related to concerns around competitive intelligence. However this is not a sustainable position (if you’ll pardon the pun).

As the regulatory landscape around emissions reporting alters and as organisations RFP’s are tending to demand more details on emissions, cloud providers who refuse to provide energy-related numbers will find themselves increasingly marginalised.

So is cloud computing Green?

I put that question toSimon Wardley, cloud strategist for Canonical in this video I recorded with him last year and he said no, cloud computing is very definitely not Green.

To be honest, until cloud providers start becoming more transparent around their utilisation and consumption numbers there is really no way of knowing whether cloud computing is in any way Green at all.

You should follow me on twitter here.

post

The Amsterdam Smart City project talks to GreenMonk

by

While at the Smart Grids Europe conference last week, I had a talk with Joost Brinkman of the Amsterdam Smart City project.

We talked about the project, which is still very much in the planning stages yet, but has the lofty ambition to help Amsterdam reduce its CO2 emissions 40% below its 1990 baseline by 2025!

post

Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 03/19/2010

by

Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

post

IBM Eco Jam kicks off later today with an impressive line-up

by

Jam

Photo credit justmakeit

The IBM Global Eco Efficiency Jam kicks off this afternoon (January 27th) at 9am EST (14:00 GMT, 15:00 here in CEST) and continues right on through until Friday afternoon.

According to the IBM site the Jam is

a web-based event which will provide an unrivalled opportunity for thousands of public and private sector sustainability leaders, from medium to large organizations around the world, to pool their knowledge and experiences through a series of focused discussions and exchanges of best practices with each other, with practitioners and influencers and with acknowledged subject matter experts.

The objective of this jam is to enable senior representatives from organizations of all sizes to cooperatively determine the best actions that can be taken to meet our goals for a sustainable future for our organizations, our customers, our suppliers, our stakeholders and society at large

There are almost 1000 companies from 45 countries around the world (ranging from Argentia to Brazil to Finland to Hungary to India to Malaysia to Peru to Slovakia to UK to USA to Vietnam) signed up to participate. Typically in IBM Jams several reps from each company participate. The types of roles who have signed up for this Jam include: CIO, Chief Sustainability Officer, COO, Facilities Manager, CFO, Manufacturing Operations, Environmental Affairs, Fleet Manager, Real estate and site operations, IT manager, data center manager, and city planner.

More than 250 subject matter experts from IBM, Green Sigma Coalition partners, industry analysts, energy & environment experts, and leading edge companies are taking part. Some of the non-IBM experts who have signed up to share their expertise are:

  • Dian M. Grueneich, Commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission
  • Joel Makower, Chairman/Executive Editor, Greener World Media, Inc.; Senior Strategist, GreenOrder; and Co-founder and Principal, Clean Edge, Inc.
  • Dan Esty, author of Green to Gold
  • James Watson, Managing Editor, Industry and Management Research, Economist Intelligence Unit
  • Clay Nesler, Vice President, Global Energy and Sustainability, Johnson Controls
  • Andreas Schiernbeck, President & CEO, Building Automation, Siemens AG
  • Patricia Calkins, Vice President, Environment, Health and Safety, Xerox Corporation
  • Amit Chatterjee, CEO, Hara
  • Chris Lloyd, Executive Director, Public Policy and Strategic Alliances, Verizon
  • Jim Sinopoli, Managing Principle, Smart Buildings
  • Kamal Meattle, ?Fresh Air? activist and CEO, Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park, New Delhi, India
  • Dr. Terry Yosie, President & CEO, World Environment Center
  • Carl Gaurdino, President and CEO, Silicon Valley Leadership Group
  • Carol Baroudi, Green & Sustainability Research Director, Aberdeen Group, and author of Green IT for Dummies
  • Andrew Winston, founder of Winston Eco-Strategies and co-author of Green to Gold
  • Tom Raftery, analyst and blogger, GreenMonk/RedMonk
  • Chris Mines, Senior Vice President, Research Director, Forrester
  • Simon Mingay, Research VP, Gartner
  • Vernon Turner, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Computing Research, IDC

To learn more about the Eco Jam check out the Eco Jam page on the IBM website or request an invite by sending an email to: [email protected].

I wonder how this will affect the number of people tuning into Apple’s big announcement later on today, not to mention President Obama’s State of the Union 2.0 address!

post

There’s gold in them thar bills!

by

Graph of power consumption

Photo credit Urban Jacksonville

The output from smart meters is incredibly granular. Far more so than is obvious from the smart meter output graph above.

In conversations with Dr Monica Sturm (Director of Siemen’s Center of Competence, Metering Services) last November (2008) she confirmed to me that it is possible to identify individual devices in someone’s home down to make, model and year of manufacture by looking at their energy profile – the output of their smart meter.

This kind of information is absolute gold and don’t think the utility companies aren’t starting to wake up to the fact. They are, and they are not alone. Why else do you think Google have jumped into this space with their PowerMeter offering. Not to be outdone, Microsoft have also stepped in with their Hohm product.

It won’t be long before Apple joins the fray with a sleekier, sexier iHome application!

For the utilities themselves, there are data protection issues to be worked through but once they are (and they will be), the utilities will use this data to help make up for the earnings lost as customers become more energy efficient (consuming less expensive energy).

One revenue model you will start to see emerge is utility companies selling appliances (and possibly even cars!). How will it work?

Because the utility company will have full visibility of our energy consumption, they will see when your devices are inefficient/faulty. I can very easily envisage receiving a communication from my utility company in the not-too-distant future along the lines of:

Dear Mr Raftery (actually, as I am based in Spain it would be more likely to be Estimado Sr. Raftery but let’s stick with the English version),

We notice from your energy profile that you own a 2004 Indesit BAN12NFS fridge freezer. Our records show that in the last 3 months the compressor in that freezer has become much less efficient and it is now costing you €25 a month just to run that one appliance.

We have partnerships with service companies who could try to repair the compressor in that fridge freezer for you, or alternatively, we have a special offer this month on new energy efficient fridge freezers.

We can have a brand new fridge freezer installed in your home before the end of the week. We can take away your old one for responsible disposition. And all this will won’t cost you a penny, in fact it will save you €10* per month off your current bill!

So, to summerize, if you call our hotline now on 555-123 4567 you can save €10 off your monthly bill, have a brand new fridge-freezer installed free and reduce your CO2 emissions by 12kg a year.

What are you waiting for?

*We charge you €15 per month for the new fridge thus saving you €10 per month off your current bill. Terms and conditions apply.

That’s just one possible scenario of how the utility companies will make use of smart meter data to generate alternative revenue streams for themselves – can you think of others?

post

Fufitsu’s 0 Watt PC really does draw 0 Watts when shut down!

by

I have been creating a series of little videos on the energy efficiency of various items you might find around the home or office (computers, mobile phone chargers, games consoles, printers, and a microwave oven for example). The video of the computer was particularly revealing because even when the computer was shut down (note completely shut down, not put to sleep, not hibernating) it was still drawing 3W of electricity.

However, Fujitsu sent me a PC to try out. The computer they sent me was one of their Esprimo P Series (model 7935) which is supposed to draw 0 Watts of powere on shutdown. They also sent me one of their P-Line Displays which is also, according to them 0 Watt rated.

I was unconvinced but decided to try it out.

As you can see in the video, the computer consumes a hefty 86W when in operation. This is not that unusual for a desktop but compared to my laptop, which only consumes 32W for example, it is quite high. When it is put to sleep, it consumes 1.7W which is quite good for a desktop in sleep mode. However, when I shut it down, the power draw from both the computert and monitor went completely to 0W. If you check out the mobile phone charger videos I posted, you can see that the sensitivity of the power meter I used was 0.1W

I have to admit to being really impressed by this. Still, just how likely is this to fly commercially?

The other computer I tested drew 3W when shut down. It is easy to say 3W but what direct impact does that have on people or businesses?

Well, the ESB in Ireland charge €0.16 (incl. VAT) per unit of electricity (where 1 unit = 1kWh = 1,000W for 1 hour)
So 3W for 1 hour = 3Wh
3W for 1 week = 168 hours x 3W = 504Wh
3W for 1 year = 504Wh x 52 = 26208Wh or 26.208kWh
26.208 units x €0.16 = €4.19 per annum

So if my maths are correct, a 3W trickle of electricity costs around €4.20 a year.

I don’t have any pricing information on the 0 Watt PC but I don’t imagine €4 per annum will swing a purchasing decision either way, even if it is a purchasing decision for several thousand devices. Where it may make a difference is if companies are interested in reducing their carbon emissions.

In the short term, this is a nifty way of reducing energy draw when computers are not in use. Longer term this problem will be resolved by offerings like Cisco’s Energywise whereby sockets can be powered off remotely, on a schedule or when an office is vacated, obviating the need for 0 Watt PCs.

On a larger scale the real problems with regard to energy production and heightened greenhouse gas emissions occur during the working day when computers are typically turned on. Reduce the amount of electricity a computer requires to run, as well as the amount of power it draws when shut down for the real win.

post

Make people responsible for their energy use to drive down consumption!

by

Joe Baguley wrote a fantastic post recently on the HomeCamp blog on monitoring energy use in the home. It is a really good read as Joe outlines how he first became interested in home energy monitoring and over time evolved into the “home energy enforcer” (!). He goes through the tools he employed to monitor his home energy use and how, as he evolved to more granular and network accessible information, he was able to make even greater savings on his electricity bills.

What is even better though is how the first comment on the post came from his father, who said:

Pity he did not do this for the 20 plus years he lived at our house, the only way he saved energy then was to lie on the settee and wach me mow the lawns! He neven opened his bedroom curtains as it was easier to reach out of bed and turn on the light.

So there are two very important lessons to be taken from this post:
1. The more information you have about your energy consumption, the easier it is to reduce it and
2. One of the greatest incentives to reducing your energy consumption is having to pay the bills.

Joe didn’t worry about saving electricity while living with his parents, but now that he is paying for his electricity himself, reducing his energy footprint (and by extension his carbon footprint) has taken on a whole new level of importance. As he said himself:

What drove me to do all this was not only a fascination with tech, but more importantly a fascination with not wasting money. Not saving the planet – saving cash. In my experience cash beats morality every time…

I wonder, within businesses, would the best way to reduce energy usage be to expose energy usage information to all the employees (broken down facility, by department and even by individual)? Then make energy reduction part of people’s KPI‘s.

By extension, when electricity information in the home is granular enough, would a good way to reduce it be to assign energy budgets to all the members of the house (especially the kids!)?

post

Carless cities at the European Future Energy Forum

by

Peter Sharratt speaking at the European Future Energy Forum

One of the more interesting sessions at the European Future Energy Forum was the one on Green building (in fact it was two back to back sessions, one titled Green building and the second was titled Energy Efficiency in Commercial and public spaces).

Not surprisingly, given their heavy involvement in the organisation of the event, both talks referenced the Masdar project.

Peter Sharratt (pictured above), the Global Director, Energy & Sustainability Services for WSP Environment, keynoted and gave a superb talk taking at first a very macro view and drilling down to some really good examples from completed projects.

One of the more interesting tidbits I took from Peter’s talk was around how Masdar will be an entirely carless city. There will be large car-parks at the entrances to the city where people will leave their cars. They will then use electric Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) vehicles to go to their destination moving around the underground of the city (below street level). I asked some of the Masdar representatives how deliveries to shops would be handled, for instance and he said they would have a flat-bed equivalent of the PRTs which would handle that.

Peter said that due to the lack of compressors and more especially the lack of traffic, Masdar would be the world’s quietest city. As someone who lives beside a heavily trafficked street in Seville, this resonates hugely with me!

Interestingly this was a theme also picked up at the sustainable transport session!

post

Energy efficiency in the Enterprise – Chris O’Connor’s Pulse keynote

by

Chris O’Connor is vice president of Strategy and Market Management for the Tivoli brand within IBM Software Group.

Chris gave a spectacular demo/presentation at Pulse 2009 on energy efficiency in the enterprise.

What set this presentation apart is that Chris gave some great stats (in 2007 data centers consumed 183bn kWh of energy, this cost $15.9bn, and 75% of enterprises have initiatives to reduce energy consumption).

Chris also demo’d some of the hugely effective ways that getting solid realtime metrics around energy utilisation in the enterprise helps reduce consumption, and finally at around 13:45 in the video, Chris tells a fascinating story about how their data center in Austin Texas was suffering from power spikes at 1am every morning, how they identified the cause and solved it.

IBM were good enough to give us a copy of his presentation for posting here.

[Disclosure – IBM paid my travel and expenses to attend Pulse]

Related articles by Zemanta
post

Cisco EnergyWise – turns networks into an Energy Efficiency platforms

by

As mentioned previously, buildings account for 38% of CO2 emissions in the United States, buildings consume 70% of the electricity load in the U.S and CO2 emissions from buildings are projected to grow faster than any other sector over the next 25 years.

Cisco has decided to tackle this problem, by turning its networking infrastructure kit into a platform for energy efficiency with its launch yesterday of Cisco EnergyWise!

Cisco EnergyWise is a technology for their Catalyst line of Switches which will be rolled out as a free software upgrade for existing switches and included in new Catalyst switches beginning in February 2009.

From the release:

Cisco EnergyWise will roll out in three phases to improve IT and building system energy utilization:

  • · In the first phase (February 2009), Network Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be supported on Catalyst switches and manage the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, video surveillance cameras and wireless access points.
  • · In the next phase (Summer 2009), IT Control, there will be expanded industry support of EnergyWise on devices such as personal computers (PCs), laptops and printers.
  • · In the final phase (Early 2010), Building Control, Cisco EnergyWise will be extended to the management of building system assets such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), elevators, lights, employee badge access systems, fire alarm systems and security systems

EnergyWise will allow companies to create event-based policies for energy reduction (i.e. turn off all lights in data center or hotel room unless someone swipes in – and turn off when they swipe out). It will also allow for control of the energy utilisation of everything from wireless access points, right the way up to building’s aircon systems. Policies can be grouped by tags, so you can control entire buildings campuses or geographies.

Cisco also announced the acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence Inc. to get access to the intelligent middleware to provide interoperability and integration between building infrastructure, IT applications and Cisco EnergyWise.

EnergyWise will also enable companies to report aggregated power consumption across an organisation, provide reports of current power conditions and suggests potential changes thereby reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Demand response programs will benefit hugely from systems like this being in place.

Superb to see RedMonk client company SolarWinds being signed up as the first network management partner for the program. SolarWinds told me they hope to have the integration with Cisco EnergyWise complete in 2009 and they told me that:

  • · EnergyWise policies and configurations will be managed by Orion Network Configuration Manager (NCM).
  • · Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) will show EnergyWise statistics and reports in its familiar web-based dashboard.
  • · We will also establish EnergyWise forums in thwack, to help support users as they roll out EnergyWise in their corporate environments.

Now, how long will it be before Juniper come out with a competitive offering, do you think? The more companies thinking this way and turning out products like this, the better for everyone.