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Cloud Energy Consumption: Google, Twitter and the Systems Vendors

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Yesterday Tom posed a question: just how green is cloud computing? We have been frankly disappointed by Cloud computing providers reticence to start publishing numbers on energy consumption. We know for sure that energy is a big deal when it comes to the huge data centers the likes of Facebook are building- these firms are siting data centers next to rivers to take advantage of hydro-electric power, and in Google’s case are even looking at building their own wind turbine farms.

Some of you may remember the huge fuss when Alex Wissner Gross, a researcher from Harvard University estimated how much energy the net consumed, which became a Sunday Times story about Google Searches in terms of kettles boiled. The story claimed:

performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle” or about 7g of CO2 per search

Perhaps surprisingly, Google responded, to debunk the news story:

In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2.

The story petered out- which is somewhat of a shame. A real, open debate, with shared figures, bringing in all of the main players, would clearly benefit us all. With that in mind I was pleased to see that one of Raffi Krikorian, tech lead of the Twitter API team, chose to talk about power/tweet at the company’s Chirp developer conference last week:

In summary, Raffi estimated that energy consumed is around 100 Joules per tweet.

Before jumping to a conclusion that Twitter is more efficient than Google its important to note that Raffi’s estimates, unlike Google’s, don’t include the power of the PC in the equation. You should also watch the video of his presentation – for the simple reason that Raffi seems to channel Jay-Z in his presenting: the guy’s body language is straight out of a hip hop video.

I discussed Twitter’s “disclosure” with my colleague Tom this morning. He questioned its value because its an estimate, rather than a measurement. He has a point. It may be however that Raffi is just the man to take this debate to the next level. He is clearly deeply technical, can think at the level of the isolated API – and is finally a Sustainability advocate of note- I first heard of him through his seminal How Valentine’s Day Causes Global Warming riff.

We need to encourage competition on the basis of power efficiency.

I’d like to close with a call to action. Surely its time for the major web players to get together with Dell, HP and IBM in order to agree standards so we can move from estimates to measurements of Cloud energy consumption, perhaps using AMEE ($client) as a back end for standard benchmarks. You can’t have sustainability through obscurity. Open data is key to working through the toughest environmental challenges.

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Just how green is cloud computing?

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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.

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Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 03/26/2010

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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.

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Rich Lechner talks about Smart Buildings and a Smarter Urban Infrastructure

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I had a great chat about Smart Buildings the other day with IBM’s VP Energy and Environment, Rich Lechner.

Why are smart buildings important? Well, as Rich says, in the US buildings are responsible for about 70% of the energy consumption and for about 40% of the greenhouse gases emitted.

When you combine that with the fact that 3.5bn people are living in cities today and that that number is rapidly increasing you start to see why making buildings smarter needs to be a very high priority.

The chat with Rich was great because, as with all my interviews, it was unscripted and Rich talked knowledgeably and compellingly about the kinds of ways we can make buildings smarter, and gave the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas as a case study of what can be achieved.

The interview was so good, I split it in two rather than cutting any of it out – here’s part 2:

[Disclosure] – These videos were sponsored by IBM.

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Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 02/12/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

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

  • Iberdrola Renovables Buys Spain?s Largest Wind Park (Update1) – BusinessWeek

    Iberdrola Renovables SA, the world?s largest operator of wind parks, agreed to buy Spain?s largest wind farm from Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica SA.

    Renovables, based in Valencia, paid Gamesa 320 million euros ($441 million) for 244 megawatts of power capacity in Andevalo, Spain

    tags: iberdrola, iberdrola renovables, gamesa, Wind farm, greennumbers

  • Ten board level energy saving and environmental issues CIOs must address – In-Depth – CIO UK Magazine

    IBM recently ran a ‘Jam’ – an online discussion – on environmental sustainability and why it is important for CIOs, CEOs and CFOs to address it. The Jam involved thousands of practitioners and subject matter experts from some 200 organisations. It focused primarily on business issues and practical actions.

    Take a look at the check list below and it becomes rapidly apparent, C-level management need to tackle the issue before it is foisted upon them.

    IBM’s Institute for Business Value will fully analyse the 2080 Jam contributions, but this is the essential CIO checklist derived from comments made during the Eco-Jam.

    tags: ibm, ecojam, eco jam, cio, greennumbers

  • HP Opens it’s First 100% Air-Cooled Data Center

    Data centers are, thankfully, getting a lot of attention when it comes to making them more efficient. Considering that roughly 60% of the electricity used at a data center goes to keeping the servers cool, focusing on smart cooling tactics is essential. HP has taken this to heart and has opened it’s first wind-cooled data center, and it’s the company’s most efficient data center to date.

    In this piece, HP claims that their data center is the world’s first wind-cooled data center – I’m not sure just how valid this is as I have heard BT only do wind-cooled data centers!

    tags: hp, bt, data center, datacenter, wind cooled, air cooled, greennumbers

  • Branson warns of oil crunch within five years | Business | The Guardian

    “Sir Richard Branson and fellow leading businessmen will warn ministers this week that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years.

    The founder of the Virgin group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, will say that the ?coming crisis could be even more serious than the credit crunch.

    “The next five years will see us face another crunch ? the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well,” Branson will say.”

    tags: richard branson, oil crunch, peak oil, virgin, greennumbers

  • Topsoil could vanish in 60 years, says study – 04 Feb 2010 – BusinessGreen.com

    “Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished making it much harder to grow crops around the world, according to a study by the University of Sydney.

    The study, reported in The Daily Telegraph, claims bad soil mismanagement, climate change and rising populations are leading to a decline in suitable farming soil.

    An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world’s farming land “moderately or severely eroded”, the report found.

    Soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes, in Europe 17 times faster and in America 10 times faster.

    The study said all suitable farming soil could vanish within 60 years if quick action was not taken, leading to a global food crisis.”

    tags: greennumbers, soil, topsoil, soil fertility

  • Chevron hires twelve public relations firms to discredit indigenous Indians in Ecuador

    In response to an environmental lawsuit filed against the oil giant, Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador. According to them, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, causing damages assessed at more than $27 billion.

    tags: chevron, ecuador, greennumbers, amazon rainforest, amazon, toxic waste, pollution

  • Joint venture plans 13GW renewables project in India

    Indian mobile phone and commodity export firm Airvoice Group has formed a joint venture with public sector body Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam to build 13GW of solar and wind capacity in a sparsely populated part of Karnataka district in south west India.

    The joint venture is budgeting to invest $50 billion over a period of 10 years, claiming it to be the largest single renewable energy project in the world.

    tags: greennumbers, india, airvoice, solar, wind, renewables, karnataka, renewable energy

  • Each Ton of CO2 Worth $40 in Health Costs : CleanTechnica

    Using coal for electricity produces CO2, and climate policy aims to prevent greenhouse gases from hurting our habitat. But it also produces SOx and NOx and particulate matter that have immediate health dangers.

    A University of Wisconsin study was able to put an economic value on just the immediate health benefits of enacting climate policy. Implications of incorporating air-quality co-benefits into climate change policymaking found coal is really costing us about $40 per each ton of CO2.

    tags: greennumbers, coal, sox, nox, particulate matter, greenhouse gases, health

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

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IBM’s Global EcoJam analysed!

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IBM EcoJam Themes tag cloud
Photo credit Tom Raftery

I participated in last week’s IBM Global Eco Jam.

As you can see from above, the event generated 2080 posts from a total of 3987 logins.

I mentioned previously that the quality of the participants in the jam was really impressive, but what were attendees most interested in talking about during the jam?

The screenshot above is a tag cloud of the themes discussed during the jam. And while it gives some idea of the relative importance of topics explored during the jam, I decided to see if I could dig a little deeper into the numbers.

Doing a View Source of this page tells me the pixel size of each of the terms – see below:

12px – air
12px – business_case
12px – city
12px – collaboration_tools
12px – cooling
12px – electricity
12px – energy_savings
12px – improve_energy efficient efficiency
12px – public_transportation
12px – reporting
12px – software
18px – business_processes
18px – carbon_footprint
18px – climate_change
18px – efficient
18px – energy_management
18px – energy_usage
18px – goals
18px – incentives
18px – mobility
18px – smart_grid
18px – solar
18px – working_home
22px – buildings
22px – cities
22px – data_centers
22px – energy_consumption
22px – energy_efficiency
22px – green
22px – power
22px – reduce_energy
22px – supply_chain
22px – sustainability
22px – water
22px – workplace

Unfortunately they only seem to fall into three sizes – 12px, 18px and 22px – so not hugely granular, still it is something.

Clicking on the tags to see the posts doesn’t give an immediate indication of why some are larger than others unfortunately. All of the 22px tags contain 10 posts but so do the 18px and the 12px! Nor does it appear to refer to the number of replies to posts.

It is equally unclear how the tags were arrived at in the first place, apart from this explanation on the site – “A special text-mining tool has identified themes across all of the discussions in Global Eco-efficiency Jam. The theme cloud below illustrates major concepts based on frequency of word use”.

When creating a new post, or replying to previous posts there was no option to tag your responses.

35 posts were identified as being “Hot Ideas” – no idea how or why they were identified as such. It appears to have been a manual process. The hot ideas which generated the most responses (those with >30 replies) were, in decreasing order:

Getting Around – Mobility Services? – 79 replies
Cultural barriers to online collaboration – 58 replies
Greening Your Business Processes for Innovation – 47 replies
Green IT & Cloud Computing – 39 replies
Citizen engagement – 33 replies
Real world customer examples – 32 replies
IT’s Central Role In Managing Energy & Carbon – 32 replies
Integration to improve energy and eco-efficiency – 31 replies

Some of the Hot Ideas had as few as two responses, so the Hot Ideas designation doesn’t appear to come from response number!

Still, despite the lack of transparency around the process, it was an incredibly worthwhile event. I ended up contributing 45 posts (2% of the posts!) which received 46 responses. I learned loads and would definitely participate if IBM decide to hold another (hint, hint!).

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IBM Global Eco-Efficiency Jam Day 2

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IBM Eco Jam Screenshot

Today is the final day of IBM’s Global Eco-efficiency Jam (it finishes at 6pm CET today) and it has been awesome.

There have been hundreds of discussions on all manner of Eco-related topics – everything from LEED certification, to Green software engineering, to Energy Efficiency certificates to Smart cities and collaboration.

People have been asking questions like:

If environmental reporting and efficiency actions becomes the norm, what kinds of incentives and rebates are available to help improve the time to value and return on investments?

Currently this question has had 8 replies.

The question with the most replies (right now) is –

Would you use a mobility car service – like the bicycle rental scheme in Paris but with a small, probably electric vehicle – rather than public transportation or a taxi?

and so far it has had 78 responses!

Often answers to questions directly contradict one another – such as the following answers to the mobility question above:

Yes, I would. But more for fun or visiting a city. Visiting clients on e-bike wearing business dress is difficult

and

When Montreal introduced its version of V?lib, called Bixi, most people anticipated tourists would be the prime users. But looking around the city on a nice summer day, most the bikes are used by men and women in business suits, going from one building to the next. For short rides of 2-4 km, you needn’t even break a sweat.

These kind of contradictory answers are inevitable when the participants come from over 100 countries reflecting their country’s culture and infrastructure.

Other discussions were more straightforward

Looking beyond basic power policies on the operating system, do you have any form of PC power management operating on your PC at home or at work?

[UPDATE – this question came from @karolinashaw, Public Relations Manager 1E]

There is plenty of discussion on water as well with people discussing the merits of water metering, water harvesting and town/city water policies.

While I am contributing a bit to the discussions (I have added 39 posts and had 37 replies so far), I am learning a huge amount and coming into contact with participants I might never otherwise have met.

IBM should make this a regular event, no question.

[Disclosure] IBM asked me not to use the names of Jam participants in any blog posts I make here because IBM hadn’t sought their permission so I removed the names from the image above and didn’t credit people quoted above. If I have used your content and you are happy to have me credit you, let me know in the comments or by email ([email protected]) and I’m more than happy to do so.

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Can Apple make Home Energy Management sexy?

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Apple iPad

Will Apple move into home energy management, and if they do, can they make it sexy and front-of-mind for everyone?

I made this point in a reply to a post earlier on the IBM Global Eco Jam and I thought it could well do with being fleshed out to a full post here to see what others think.

In case you were hiding under a rock yesterday, to tremendous fanfare and hype, Apple launched their latest device, the iPad.

The extremely desirable tablet-like iPad is aimed squarely at the home user market, what with its base price of $499, its beautiful form-factor and its concentration on music, video, games, etc.

While you probably did hear about the iPad, you may not be aware that Apple has lodged a patent application for a Home Energy Management system, joining Google’s PowerMeter and Microsoft’s Hohm.

Apple’s application talks of using powerline communications to control appliances’ energy consumption around the house.

Unlike Google and Microsoft though, Apple have an amazing track record of making sexy devices/applications. If there is anyone who can make home energy management sexy, it would be Apple software running on the iPad.

Let’s hope they make it so – what are the chances?

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IBM Eco Jam – 1 day in!

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IBM Eco Jam Themes

Well, the IBM Global Eco Jam has been underway nearly 24 hours at this point – how is it going?

It has been incredibly active, I have to say. You can see from the screenshot I took earlier this morning that the number of posts was 987 at that point – I just checked now and the number has gone up to 1037! These are across many themes ranging, as you can see in the tag cloud above, from solar panels, through to energy efficiency and buildings.

I have been involved in some terrific discussions on KPI’s, the merits of aisle containment in data centers, the red herring that is phone charger unplugging and reasonably heated discussion on the place of IT in energy management in organisations!

What has really impressed me is the level of expertise of all the participants (except those arguing with me about the role of IT in Energy management 😉 ) and the amount of time people are dedicating to it. Many of the participants have contributed north of 10 posts.

This really is an international gathering of incredible energy mavens, selflessly collaborating (and simultaneously learning) for everyone’s mutual benefit.

It is amazing to be allowed to be part of such an event.

Btw, if you want to take part and your organization’s name is not listed, request an invitation by sending an e-mail to [email protected] with “RSVP” in the subject line.