The Green IT Review

Electricity Demand Response programmes are growing, but still mostly in the US

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:33:00 +0000

According to a report from Navigant Research, there are at least 1,342 Demand Response (DR) programmes underway worldwide. These are programmes aimed at achieving stability on the electricity grid by ensuring that demand does not exceed supply. While in the last ten years, utilities and grid operators have adopted new technologies and practices for DR schemes, the vast majority - 95% - are in North America.

“Demand response continues to exhibit strong growth in North America, but it is also showing increasing adoption in other regions, particularly in Europe and Asia Pacific,” said senior research analyst Marianne Hedin. “A growing number of utilities and grid operators, in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, Japan and South Korea, have actively taken steps to implement or expand their DR offerings.”

The Navigant report - Demand Response Tracker 2Q13 - looks at four different market models of demand response, each addressing different objectives: capacity, economic programmes, ancillary services, and energy trading. The report provides data on the different types of DR programmes, such as direct load control, interruptible load, critical peak pricing, real-time pricing, time-of-us and demand bidding or day-ahead bidding schemes.

Review: The Navigant report goes into detail about the various DR methods and programmes, but it’s worth noting that much of it relies on ICT, which will have an increasingly important role. Smart grids, combined with technology in the home that manages electrical devices automatically and/or under direct user control, can make a huge difference to electricity generation requirements.

Electricity demand can fluctuate significantly within a very short time. In the UK, for example, peaks have been measured at the end of particularly popular televisions shows as viewers switch the kettle on for a cup of tea. Suppliers have been forced to cope with these peaks by keeping power stations running on standby, ready to generate at short notice.

To date, most demand management (at least in the UK) has relied on moving device usage to pre-set low-peak times, specifically overnight. But using technology the reductions in power use can be a lot more subtle and flexible. For example, fridge temperatures could be allowed to increase slightly for a time, or tumble dryers switched turned to lower temperatures.

With smart grids, DR programmes are likely to be far more complex, with differential tariffs, and quickly respond to changes in generation levels, a must if a significant part of the power mix comes from renewable energy that relies on sun, wind, waves, etc. With the help of ICT, consumer devices – connected via home energy management systems (HEMS) over home area networks (HANs) – can be pre-programmed to respond to short-term increases in electricity costs, or consumers could manage devices remotely via smart phones.

It’s still some way off yet, though (at least in the UK). Much of the impetus behind smart meters is that the information on usage will help consumers to reduce their consumption of electricity. But it seems to me that not until we get smart grids with differential energy tariffs and consumers have the means to quickly and easily adjust their usage will we really see household consumption drop, and that’s very much down to ICT.

Kyocera uses ‘Green Curtains’ to make buildings more energy efficient

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:23:00 +0000

As part of its long term sustainability activities, every spring Japanese electronics company Kyocera plants what it calls ‘Green Curtains’ at its sites in Japan and some other parts of the world. These provide shade the buildings, lowering inside room temperatures by around 2^oC, which helps reduce energy consumption from air conditioners.

The curtains are made of foliage grown on trellises in front of office windows and walls. In Japan, plants grown include morning glory vines, cucumbers, peas and goya, a traditional summer vegetable known, as bitter gourd, which helps prevent fatigue in the hot summers. These vegetables end up in special dishes served in employee cafeterias.

The green curtains also absorb CO₂ emissions - one square metre of foliage takes in approximately 3.5kg of CO₂ per year. In 2012, the 830 metres of Green Curtains grown by Kyocera, covering an area equivalent to 13 tennis courts, helped to meet regional energy saving targets in Japan.

There are now 28 sites growing Green Curtains, including Kyocera facilities in Japan, China, Thailand and Brazil. On its Website about Green Curtain activities, Kyocera encourages individuals and businesses to adopt the practice by providing photos and illustrations that show the materials used, as well as instructions for making Green Curtains at work or home.

Review: One of the interesting things about the whole subject of sustainability is that there is never just one answer on how to achieve it. For example, looking inside buildings can reveal many ways to make them more energy efficient, which was what my last post, on simulating energy use in new buildings, was all about. But Kyocera shows what can also be done outside.

Not only do the curtains reduce energy use, they also absorb CO₂, produce food for the company cafaterias and make the buildings look nicer, with a lush green and flowery decor. It somehow seems a more holistic and sustainable solution than many approaches. And its from a technology company, although Kyocera’s Japanese heritage gives it a head start in sustainability.

Microsoft helps develop a cloud-based energy efficiency simulation for new buildings

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:24:00 +0000

Microsoft Research Connections and the Royal Danish Academy, one of the world’s oldest schools of architecture, are working with an Italian start-up company called Green Prefab to develop a set of cloud-based architectural design tools that will simulate a future building’s energy consumption.

The energy efficiency of buildings is coming under increasing focus, both for private housing and businesses. Around the world – including the EU, Australia, China and US cities and states – there are various regulations making it mandatory to assess and disclose the energy performance of homes or commercial buildings. Even when not mandated, rating systems, such as LEED in the US, BREEAM in the UK and Nabers in Australia are widely used to demonstrate a building’s energy efficiency.

In order to construct buildings that reach the targeted levels of energy efficiency, it’s important to be able to predict how a building design will perform. That level of simulation is a tall order for most architecture firms at the moment, but that’s the challenge that Microsoft’s working on.

Green Prefab already has a library of pre-assembled green building components that will be at the heart of the cloud-based service. Architects will be able to access services to produce energy efficiency reports, conduct in-depth structural analysis and produce photo-realistic images of the building. The start-up is working with Microsoft to develop some of its first cloud computing tools, using Windows Azure.

The Institute of Architectural Technology of the Royal Danish Academy has been testing a prototype of the system. The institute found that the cloud-based solution achieved about twice the potential energy savings of a traditional PC-based approach (33% compared to 17%). Using the cloud also reduced the computing time. The architect was able to run 220,185 energy consumption simulations in the cloud in only three days – it would have taken an unrealistic 122 days with a PC.

Review: This is a good example of greening by IT. The ability to simulate the energy efficiency of buildings can help produce long-lasting savings in carbon emissions that are likely to be many times greater than the emissions used by the IT systems in doing the work. Also, by using the cloud, greater computing power can be brought to bear to achieve results that are not feasible using in-house resources, and, everything else being equal, the IT running the cloud-based systems can be expected to be more energy efficient.

None of this is certain, of course. There is always the danger that architects might run the system trying to achieve impossible results with bad designs. If simulations are that fast, it doesn’t matter if you do more than you really need. And a cloud-based solution may not necessarily be a greener option. But with sensible architects using a reasonably green IT services company (such as IBM) the environment will gain.

GreenTouch consortium shows how communications networks could reduce energy consumption by 90% by 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:06:00 +0000

GreenTouch, the global consortium dedicated to improving the energy efficiency of data and communications networks, has announced the findings of new research that shows the net energy consumption in overall networks could be reduced up to 90% by 2020.

GreenTouch was launched in early 2010 with the aim of delivering, by 2015, the architecture, specifications and roadmap — and demonstrate key components — needed to reduce communications energy consumption per user by a factor of 1000 from current levels. The consortium now comprises a group of 53 telecommunications vendors, service providers, universities and research organisations.

This latest research applied advanced modelling to better understand potential network operations in 2020, given the dramatic increases anticipated in communications traffic over the next decade. The research evaluated energy efficiencies in different types of networks, comparing those in 2010 with those incorporating the technologies and architectures the consortium has identified that could be in use by 2020.

Key findings include:

Mobile networks are the most inefficient but also the fastest growing, in terms of data volume, so would gain the most from energy efficiency efforts.
Mobile networks could potentially realise energy efficiency improvements of up to 1043 times.
Fixed line networks are relatively energy-efficient, so improvements will be less significant and much harder to achieve. Nonetheless, energy efficiencies could create potential improvements in fixed access networks of 449 times and improvements in the core network of 95 times.

Some of the new technologies, architectures and protocols included in the 2020 modelling are small cells-deployment in dense urban environments, infrastructure-sharing across operators, discontinuous transmissions during periods without traffic, dynamic allocation of resources and the GreenTouch-developed Bit Interleaved Passive Optical Network (Bi-PON) protocol

The study was conducted as part of GreenTouch’s Green Meter analysis, undertaken by the consortium to assess progress towards its goal. The findings will be made available to service providers for identifying technologies, architectures and protocols to improve network energy efficiency. There’s a web cast of the findings presentation here.

GreenTouch sees itself as a unique model for industry and academic collaboration. “It would be difficult—if not downright impossible—for this type of industry research and technology development to have been conducted by any single vendor or research entity,” said Thierry Van Landegem, chairman of GreenTouch. “We are proving that industry collaboration among all the stakeholders of the ICT value chain can and should drive understanding and innovation.”

Review: Well it’s very interesting and further establishes that GreenTouch’s targets can be met, but this is all about research, not about putting it into practice. It’s down to the consortium members to implement (or not) the research findings.

To be fair, GreenTouch has clearly demonstrated technologies that work. I’ve reported on a couple – see GreenTouch makes fibre-to-the-home 30 times more energy efficient and the demonstration that the radiated power consumption of a mobile mast could be significantly reduced as the number of antenna elements is increased.

But the real challenge is getting the results of all its research into use, not helped by the fact that not all of the industry is involved in GreenTouch. Noticeable by their absence from the consortium are Ericsson, Cisco Systems and Nokia Siemens Networks.

There is also my oft-quoted objection to several organisations developing standards and/or conducting research into similar aspects of ICT energy efficiency/reduction, in this case the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is working in similar areas. For example, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development was set up in 2010 by the ITU and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organisation (UNESCO) to look at ICT’s emissions, but is also putting its weight behind the view that ICT, supported by broadband communications, is an essential part of moving to a low-carbon economy. That might be a more practical approach until GreenTouch’s research finds it’s way to implementation.

UK delays smart meter roll-out

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:03:00 +0000

The UK government has announced that the completion date for the mass roll-out of smart meters across the country has been put back from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020.

According to a statement from the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), the government has been carrying out a review of the existing plan and timetable for smart meter implementation. The review included feedback on the experience of energy suppliers from their early smart meter deployments and from potential providers of the common data and communication infrastructure (the ‘DCC services’) that will support smart metering.

According to DECC, ‘The consistent message was that more time was needed if the mass roll-out was to get off to the best possible start and ensure a quality experience for consumers’. So the plan now is for suppliers to be ready to start their full scale roll-out by autumn 2015, supported by the DCC services.

The industry is expecting to roll out more than two million smart meters in the next two years of the ‘Foundation Stage’ of the roll out and the announcement included other requirements so that earlier implementations are not penalised. For instance, once installed a smart meter must stay installed even if a customer moves to a new supplier, and, subject to consultation, the customer should also continue to receive remote meter readings. DECC still expects the vast majority of smart meters to be in place by the original 2019 deadline.

An updated view of the Smart Meters delivery plan as a whole will be published later in 2013.

Review: The smart meter roll out is a vast and costly exercise. DECC has estimated that installing the 50 million smart electricity and gas meters will cost £11.3bn and deliver economic benefits of £18.6bn between 2011 and 2030, so the net benefit would be worth £7.3bn (although these benefits will now presumably be lower, given the later date for full implementation). But the National Audit Office (NAO), the UK government department that scrutinises public spending on behalf of Parliament, published a report - Preparations for the roll-out of smart meters – that highlights the uncertainties of consumer benefits, because of lack of evidence. There were also concerns about cost increases and delivery risks. (Search The Green IT Review for more details).

So it starts off as a controversial government programme even before the Big Brother concerns about our individual energy use being monitored, although this is less of an issue in the UK than in the US, for example.

It’s not very clear why the implementation has been delayed, DECC’s only comment - that they needed to ‘ensure a quality experience for consumers’ - implies that this wasn’t a consideration in the original implementation plan. But there may be other issues, such as that reported by the Daily Telegraph last year, which said that British Gas would have to replace many of the 400,000 smart meters it had already installed in UK homes because they were not smart enough.

Anyway, it’s bad news. The whole point of smart meters is to give consumers better information on energy use, so that they can reduce consumption, and that’s now going to be delayed. Smart meters are also an integral part of various associated technology developments, particularly home area networks (HANs)and home energy management systems (HEMS), all designed to help manage energy use. The delay will have a knock on effect on green IT, but, more importantly, further delay the UK’s move to low carbon emissions.

In any case, smart meters are only an initial step towards smart grids, which will make energy supply more efficient and allow for the incorporation of renewable energy. Smart grids also give consumers much greater ability to not just monitor but actively reduce energy use through taking advantage of differential pricing, part of a smart grid’s demand response mechanism. But as yet there is no structure plan for the development of a smart grid in the UK.

Computer ‘radiators’ could heat homes

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 09 May 2013 09:13:00 +0000

Much of the focus on IT energy efficiency is based on minimising the cooling requirements in data centres. Much less attention has ben given to using that heat effectively, and even less to doing that outside a data centre. But French company Qarnot computing has come up with an innovative idea.

The Paris-based start-up, founded in 2010, has developed the means to provide distributed computing to its clients while at the same time providing free heating to the homes and offices where the processing units are placed.

The company has developed Q.rad, a radiator that uses high performance processors as a heat source. It connects to the internet to receive processing tasks from a central server. Using the Q.ware distribution platform, Qarnot computing distributes its clients’ workload on thousands of processors in the distributed Q.rads. There’s a built-in thermostat in each radiator so that the processor speed can be adjusted to match the required heat output.

Each Q.rad continuously records its energy use and computing consumption so that clients can be billed and Q.rad users can be reimbursed for the electricity they use. The processing services pay for the electricity, so the heating is free.

The first large-scale deployment is expected this summer, when Q.Rads will be deployed in hundreds of public housing in Paris.

Review: As GreenIT.fr points out, there are a few issues surrounding the whole process, the major one being data security. All data is encrypted and Q.Rads are designed to stop if anyone tries to open them up, but whether that will be enough reassurance for corporate IT departments remains to be seen.

There is also the issue of matching processing demand and heating requirements during changing seasons and fluctuating workloads. It’s relatively easy to maintain the heat output – the plan is that any slack can be taken up by making processing power available to universities and other scientific organisations. But not so easy to meet client demand for processing power during a heatwave, when the radiators will be turned down.

Nonetheless, it’s a great idea. More testing should help iron out issues of the different demands on the system. It seems to me that the best use might be alongside a data centre, so that there’s more flexibility where processing is done, while at the same time providing office heating. But under those circumstances there might be more efficient ways of distributing the heat than Q.Rads. It will be interesting to see how things develop.

Thanks to greenIT.fr.

The Green IT Review is looking for a new home

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:39:00 +0000

The blog provides news and views on the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the move to low carbon and sustainable business. It keeps readers up to date with green ICT technology and cleantech market trends while demonstrating the opportunities for CSR operations to make their organisations more sustainable.

The Green IT Review has been publishing for more than five years and has built up a loyal following. As well as online readers, there are regular email subscribers and Twitter followers (via @GreenITReview). Both the blog and Twitter feed are widely re-circulated/re-tweeted.

There is significant potential to grow the blog either as a broader, stand-alone information service or in support of an existing sustainable ICT/cleantech business. If you are interested in acquiring The Green IT Review and want to learn more, email me at info@thegreenitreport.com.

IT combines with mobile for smarter travel

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 07 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

In recent weeks there has been a couple of developments in the use of IT and mobile data to help improve personal travel which are worth noting:

1) According to various reports, IBM researchers in Dublin have used data from millions of mobile phone users in Africa to design more efficient public transport. The project was part of ‘Data for Development’ a research challenge from Orange in which the mobile phone company released 2.5 billion (anonymous) call records from five million cell phone users in Ivory Coast, West Africa.

The phone data showed the locations of calls in Abidjan, the capital city, allowing IBM to model people’s movements. The city has around 540 large buses, 5,000 minibuses and 11,000 shared taxis to get people around the city. As a result of its research, IBM was able to suggest changes in bus routes that could potentially cut travel times by 10%.

The IBM project findings were presented at the Data for Development conference on 1 May, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

2) A new company has been launched that collects and processes personal data on mobility choices, such as methods of transport, and then sends them customised incentives to make them ‘move smarter’.

The company, formed in April and called Mobidot, is a spin-off from the SUNSET research and development project, which is itself part of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework program (FP7) Smart Cities & Sustainability.

Mobidot brings its services to travellers via apps on their smartphone and will also let people share their mobility data via social media and start competitive gaming on common mobility challenges.

The company was formed by four employees of Novay, a Netherlands-based research institute, and aims to be an ICT service provider to profit- and non-profit organisations interested in personal mobility data and traveller-centred behavioural change, such as municipalities, research institutes, transport companies and mobility service providers.

Review: The advantage of ‘smart travel’, which is what these IT/communications innovations are about, is that it makes life easier for travellers while also making more efficient use of transport systems and hence reducing carbon emissions. As the Smart 2020 report pointed out, ICT has a significant part to play in reducing emissions from transport. The updated Smarter 2020 report estimates that the use of ICT could help reduce emissions from the transportation sector by 1.9 GtCO₂e by 2020, almost a quarter of the expected level of emissions under a ‘business as usual’ scenario.

Smarter transport includes a range of approaches that any organisation can adopt and an area where CSR organisations can drive through change. It covers telecommuting and optimising logistics operations as well as less technology-based strategies such as eco-driving and using electric vehicles.

International Green IT Awareness Week is from June 1-7

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:37:00 +0000

International Green IT Awareness Week (IGITAW) is fast approaching - this year it runs from the 1-7 June.

This is a seven day, online event hosted by the Foundation for IT Sustainability (FFITS.ORG) that brings together Green IT professionals, including CIOs, CTOs, IT Managers, sustainability professionals, carbon managers, journalists, IT enthusiasts under one (virtual) roof.

FFITS.ORG promises to have over 30 live and pre-recorded learning sessions, international keynotes and Q&A panels aimed at those looking for greater sustainability performance and efficiency from their organisation and IT assets.

Event Manger of IGITAW, Tim Martin said, “Last year we had over 2200 of our industry peers join us at the largest, most comprehensive Green IT virtual conference in the world designed to showcase the latest on IT Sustainability, Green IT best practices, and the development of more sustainable technology alternatives. We are all using IT services at an ever-increasing rate, but what does the future hold for Green IT, and what services, new business and technological innovations can we expect in the next few years?”.

It’s a free event and you can learn from presentations from Green IT experts, network and chat directly with other attendees, speakers and sponsors. Presentations run across multiple time zones and can be viewed on demand. And all without leaving your desk.

For more information and to register, go to www.greenitweek.org/ – just try not to be put off by the collection of ‘Celebrity Ambassadors’ on the front page that no one outside Australia will have heard of (and why are they there anyway)!

European data centres are less energy efficient than you might think

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:03:00 +0000

Data centre solutions company Digital Realty has released the results of its latest annual survey of European data centres. The headline findings are that almost 90% of respondents are likely to expand their data centres in the next year or two, the main reasons being (in order of importance) the need for security, disaster recovery and power issues. While respondents reported that data centre planning revolves around the supply and reliability of power and its efficient use, it’s disappointing that the average reported Power Usage Effectiveness measure (PUE – the ratio of total data centre power to power used by the IT equipment) is above 2.5.

The web-based survey, conducted by Campos Research in January 2013, included 201 IT, Finance or Real Estate executives from companies with €500m/£500m revenue or 2,000+ employees. The survey was conducted in France, Germany, Spain, UK, Netherlands and Ireland (although more than half came from the UK and France).

The finding that the average PUE is 2.53 comes as a surprise, at least for me – in fact the previous Digital Realty survey showed an average PUE of 2.61 in Europe, so this is actually an improvement. Other interesting data in the survey, including:

UK companies are the most likely to expand in 2013, particularly compared with those in France and Germany.
Most (68%) want to expand capacity in their own countries.
Security and connectivity are the main considerations in choosing a data centre site.

There’s much more in the survey report, with similar studies from Digital Realty covering the US and other markets around the world.

Review: Based on previous estimates you might expect the average PUE to be lower. For instance, a report to the US Congress from the US EPA back in 2008 predicted better values than that by 2011, as shown in the table. Similarly, In 2010 Energy Star produced it’s assessment of PUE ratios that showed an average of 1.91.

And just last year a survey by the Uptime Institute found that the average global, self-reported PUE was between 1.8 and 1.89

I talked to Rob Bath, VP Engineering at Digital Realty to get some insight into the high PUEs. The survey covers large companies that you would have expected to be better placed, and motivated, to address energy efficiency issues in their data centre, but it seems that the size of the data centres may actually be a contributing factor to the high PUEs.

According to Bath, “For large chilled water systems, which are most commonly deployed in the companies surveyed, the PUE will always be substantially higher if the utilisation of the data centre is low. That’s much more pronounced if the IT growth is small in comparison to incremental cooling infrastructure building blocks added to the system”. In other words small increases in IT infrastructure use may create a bigger jump in cooling energy use, bringing down the PUE. Capacity planning is important in order to match infrastructure deployment with the data centre space, so the smaller the available increments of IT growth the better the data centre will be able to reflect the levels of utilisation that give a better PUE.

Bath pointed out that using a greener data centre is very much on the agenda of these large companies. Apart from the corporate governance issues, energy represents 30-40% of the cost of running a data centre so a significant part of the equation. But it does seem to me that there are some significant data centre planning issues to be addressed if PUEs are to improve.

But does it matter anyway? The PUE is a fairly crude assessment of how green a facility is – efficiency doesn’t actually reflect the impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The Green Grid, which came up with the PUE metric, now has a Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) which more closely reflects the impact of a facility, reflecting the benefit of using renewable energy, for example.

The PUE lives on, though. Facebook recently started publishing real time PUE and WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) information on the web for its data centres at Prineville and Forest City in the US. At the time of writing, Prineville is running at a PUE of 1.06 and Forest City at 1.08. That’s the sort of level that big corporations in Europe should be aiming for.

Smart grids – Germany’s ‘biggest IT project of all time’

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:27:00 +0000

In a guest column in the German daily, Die Welt, T-Systems CEO Reinhard Clemens talks about the challenges involved in the shift toward alternative energy and explains why the industry is on the verge of Germany's biggest IT project.

Most people think of the shift toward alternative energy as withdrawal from nuclear power and building new power grids so that we can transport renewable energy from wind and solar parks to areas that don't have much wind or sun. They think of conserving energy, maybe even of putting a photovoltaic system on the roof of their house. Few people are aware of the aspects involving information and communications technology. We're talking about the biggest IT project of all time. How are utility companies going to generate and distribute energy in the future? And how will consumers want to use energy? Right now, the energy industry is busy talking about these two key questions. They are also discussing the costs of this shift toward alternative energy as well as the construction of new power grids. But the switch over to renewable energy will have much more extensive consequences for utility companies than just transferring or storing energy.

Today, it is still enough to send customers an annual invoice stating how much energy they have used. Most processes are not automated and customer knowledge does not play a role. However, with a legal framework in place that makes it possible to quickly switch providers digitally, companies are suddenly starting to focus on unknown customers. Comparison sites give consumers a list of the most affordable providers with just a click of the mouse as well as tips on how to quickly switch providers. And suddenly, everything's different.

Former state-run telcos know what happens when customer loyalty disappears faster than new programmes to increase customer loyalty can work. Customers want everything to be fast, simple and practical. Other industries are familiar with this phenomenon as well. New online retailers for shoes, books, movies and everything that people used to buy at the department store or by mail order are doing business - from ordering to delivery, even returns - digitally and from one source. It is so easy, convenient and fast that mail-order companies had to throw in the towel right away. The energy industry is standing at these crossroads as well.

The shift toward alternative energy means investing billions of euros in systems and equipment that can coordinate wind and solar energy as well as traditional energy sources with fluctuating energy consumption. They are going to have to get closer to their customers as well, and in the age of smartphones and tablets, the only way to do that is by making sure that all of your business processes are well thought through all the way to the consumer's mobile end-device. Customer loyalty during the shift toward alternative energy will have to work via smartphones, or it won't work at all, if you will. That's why utility companies are restructuring, optimising and automating a large part of their business processes. They need to coordinate energy generation, logistics and consumption. Which means the industry is currently on the verge of what will be Germany's biggest IT project.

People who have photovoltaic systems on the roofs of their homes are open to technological innovation. They often turn to connected house concepts, are used to using apps on their smartphones and want to have this same level of convenience when it comes to the energy they generate themselves – using power themselves, feeding it into the grid or giving it to their neighbour, all with the push of a button. Smartphones have triggered a disruptive spurt of innovation in the energy industry. IDC analysts are expecting to see the largest and most dynamic growth on the entire IT market in this industry. Germany is on the verge of the biggest IT project of all time. Connected energy won't become a reality until it's over. And we won't find out who the winners and losers are in the battle for customers in the energy industry until then.

Reproduced with permission.

Review: Reinhard Clemens’ comments emphasise the importance of ICT in the move to renewable energy. New types of generation and delivery combined with much more demanding customers, all within an industry that has been traditionally slow moving, means there is a major IT challenge in making it all work. Without significant ICT investment this is one area of sustainability that would hardly get off the ground.

Curious, though, that Clemens never actually mentions smart grids or smart meters. Perhaps it’s a deliberate move to emphasise the need to make renewable energy work without raising the negative ‘big brother’ connotations associated, in some quarters, with smart meters.

SAP has introduced an easy-to-use car sharing application

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:06:00 +0000

SAP AG has introduced an application that companies can use to encourage their employees in share car rides to work. It means that employers can save money on company cars, parking infrastructure and travel expenses as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The TwoGo cloud application allows employees to be matched into car pools automatically according to their own preferences. Once a company licenses the solution, employees can sign up online and enter ride-sharing preferences such as area, arriving and departing times, length of diversions to pick up passengers, etc. Rides are instantly matched and communication is handled automatically via email or SMS. It also has added sophistication, such as ensuring that there is a car share available both to and from work, so that employees don’t get stranded at the end of the day.

TwoGo’s geographic capabilities are powered by HERE, Nokia’s location cloud, which delivers location capabilities across multiple screens and operating systems. TwoGo can be used on various mobile devices, via the web as well as through calendar applications.

“We’ve combined our mobile and cloud technologies into a carpooling solution to help provide immediate economic, environmental and social benefits to companies and their employees,” said Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer, SAP AG. “As such, we expect TwoGo to not only help people and businesses save money and greenhouse gas emissions, but to also connect people more closely with each other and with the company they work for. It has been designed around employees with one single objective in mind: create the most effective, intuitive and beautiful experience possible.”

TwoGo is aimed at companies of all sizes - organizations can even decide to allow employees to car pool with people working at neighbouring companies that use TwoGo. It can be used on the Web in English, German, Spanish or French and uses international time zones, maps and measurement units. The mobile app can also provide administrators with reports on employees’ commuting habits and usage trends. There’s more detail on the functionality and capabilities of the software in a video - “Overview: TwoGo by SAP.”

The application has been used by SAP since July 2011. The company estimates that TwoGo has generated more than $5m in value for the company, specifically by helping to save commuting costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by helping to eliminate 400,000 miles of driving and avoid 88 tons of greenhouse gases.

Review: There’s a lot that ICT can do to help reduce carbon emissions in travel and this is a good example. There are several aspects that make it particularly useful contribution to reducing GHG gases:

Watching the video does give a sense that this application has been well thought through from the potential users perspective (not always the case for IT applications). It’s very flexible, works on a number of devices and is, hopefully, easy to use.
Secondly, it comes from SAP, a tried and tested (and trusted) corporate solutions provider. SAP has not always been at the forefront of green IT, but when it does provide solutions they leverage the software suppliers expertise in corporate IT. Many companies are likely to consider this application simply because it comes from SAP.
Thirdly, while many companies have addressed Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect – primarily electricity) emissions, Scope 3 indirect emissions, such as business travel, have generally fallen outside legislation and voluntary targets. This application allows corporations to address this issue – business travel will be the majority of Scope 3 GHG for many companies.

All-in-all this looks like a useful contribution to green IT. It’s the sort of self-contained, IT department-friendly solution that a CSR department could easily pick up and drive through as part of a corporate sustainability strategy.

Cool IT Leaderboard – disappointing progress

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:46:00 +0000

Greenpeace has released the latest version of its Cool IT Leaderboard, an assessment of which firms are leading efforts to address the causes of climate change. Joint leaders this time around are Cisco and Google, with a score of 58 out of 100, followed by Ericsson (51) and Fujitsu (44). At the other end of the scale, Toshiba and Hitachi, both new entrants to the list, score just 13.

The idea behind the Leaderboard is that, as revealed by the SMART 2020 and SMARTer 2020 reports, the IT industry has the potential to drive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The Leaderboard examines how IT companies use their actions and influence to help address policies that will drive clean energy deployment. This is the sixth version of the Leaderboard since it was first published in 2009.

Company influence is assessed in three ways:

Climate solutions (40 points) – making available solutions that help phase out the use of fossil fuels and drive the changes to mitigate the impact of climate change.
IT energy impact (25 points) – reducing the impact of IT’s own energy use, particularly through the use of renewable energy.
Political advocacy (35 points)– supporting demands for the policy changes needed to drive investment in clean technology and renewable energy.

In the area of climate solutions Greenpeace reports that the industry is making progress, but the pace is not fast enough, given the urgency of the situation. Fujitsu (28 points) scored highest in this area, closely followed by Cisco and Ericsson (24) – all three companies have made progress in developing methodologies to measure IT energy savings. Six companies didn’t make double figures, with Sprint scoring just five points.

Similarly, with the rate of data centre growth, IT energy use can only be effectively addressed with a significant increase in renewable energy. Cisco led this ranking with 22 points, followed by IBM (20). There were seven companies that scored single figures, but some with signs of improvement – Softbank (7) has committed to becoming 100% powered by renewable energy.

As for political advocacy, whilst some IT companies have shown significant commitment, there has been an increase in the number that continue to support trade associations and other bodies that have lobbied against climate change policies. NTT, IBM, Toshiba, Hitachi, AT&T and NEC were given negative ‘lobbying’ points in Greenpeace’s assessment. Google headed the ranking with 22 points, followed by Softbank and Sprint. These were the only three companies that achieved more than half of the available points.

Comparisons with previous Leaderboards are difficult because companies and criteria change – Toshiba, Hitachi and Sprint are included this time round, whilst Oracle, Sharp and TCS have been dropped. But the top four companies from the February 2012 ranking are still the top four (although in different positions) and the average score for all companies is up three points from 30.7 to 33.8 and

Review: These rankings from Greenpeace make a useful contribution to assessing the sustainability actions of the ICT industry, particularly since it covers some of the less tangible aspects of green IT. The details of Greenpeace’s assessments are open to scrutiny, and there is a tendency to move the goalposts, but the organisation achieves its objective of raising awareness of the issues.

ICT companies are in a position of strong influence in promoting sustainability across economies, given IT’s presence at the heart of most businesses, so real commitment should include supporting and lobbying for climate change action. It’s no longer good enough to try and please everyone all of the time. In any case, with the increasing introduction of regulation and legislation to address climate change, you would think that a commitment to the cause would set an ICT company in good stead for future business – there’s going to be a lot of it. Perhaps the problem is the pressure of quarterly reporting of US-based companies, which prevents a focus on the longer term opportunities.

Wireless networks cast a shadow over ‘green’ cloud services

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:03:00 +0000

The Australia-based Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) has released a report that says the focus on the growth of data centres to service cloud services has missed the point. WiFi and cellular will soon become the dominant access method for these services. This ‘wireless cloud’ will grow by 460% between 2012 and 2015 with up to 90% of the energy consumption in 2015 down to wireless access technology and just 9% to data centres.

The report points out that major ICT industry players strongly promote wireless access to cloud services. The growth is supported by the increasing number of devices that don’t need a cable to connect to telecommunication networks, particular tablets and smartphones, which use WiFi or mobile networks.

Researchers have calculated the energy consumption of the wireless networks needed to support cloud services and factored in the growth of access via portable devices. The report – The Power of Wireless Cloud – warns that on current trends wireless cloud will consume up to 43 TWh in 2015, compared to just 9.2 TWh in 2012. That’s an increase in carbon emissions from six megatonnes in 2012 to up to 30 megatonnes in 2015, the equivalent of putting 4.9 million cars on the roads.

Dr Kerry Hinton, CEET Deputy Director said, “When Greenpeace analysed cloud efficiency it hit a nerve with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Apple by suggesting that data centres are to blame for a ‘dirty cloud’. In fact, the problem is much worse, data centres aren’t the biggest issue. The trend towards wireless is the real problem, and the networks are to blame. By 2015, the energy consumption of data centres will be a drop in the ocean compared to wireless networks in delivering cloud services.”

CEET, opened two years ago, is a partnership between Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs, the University of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government. It’s a research centre looking at energy-efficient telecommunications.

Review: This is a detailed analysis of the energy used by wireless networks to access the cloud and makes worrying reading.

I guess the focus of concern in ICT energy use has been on data centres because they’re the most obvious, and visible, manifestations of the energy needed to power cloud computing. The wireless/mobile energy usage is more fragmented, in terms of where it is generated and by whom. So data centres have been the easiest target in reducing cloud energy.

Although reducing wireless energy use is more of a challenge, it doesn’t mean it’s not being addressed. The CEET is itself a research provider to the global GreenTouch consortium. GreenTouch has the aim of delivering, by 2015, the architecture, specifications and technologies – and demonstrating key components – needed to increase network energy efficiency by a factor of 1000 compared to 2010 levels. It has already had some significant successes - you can read more by searching the blog.

There is a need for green ICT to look beyond the obvious and ‘quick-win’ targets, such as data centres, where we already know much of what can be done. The focus must inevitably move on to the more difficult challenges, such as network energy use. With fragmented responsibility, it’s even more important that there is global, ICT industry-wide co-operation, through such organisations as GreenTouch. Unfortunately there are still some very prominent telcos that are not members of GreenTouch – BT, Deutsche Telekom and O2 to name just three.

The EU details it actions in using ICT to address societal challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:44:00 +0000

The European Commission has published a booklet providing information on the many European Union initiatives which address societal challenges through digital innovation. It illustrates the role ICT plays and how ICT research and innovation result in practical applications in areas such as healthcare, delivering effective public services, energy saving, smart transport and the preservation of cultural heritage.

The 68-page document – ICT for Societal Change - is split into five sections:

Living healthy, ageing well
Efficient use of resources
Smart, green transport
Innovative online public services in an inclusive and reflective society
Living in a secure society

Each section gives an outline of the issues and brief details of the various projects, funding and research being provided by the EU.

For example, in the ‘Efficient Use of Resources’ section there are details of (among others):

BeAware - which has developed new information tools and services to help turn citizens into active energy-saving players.
The SmartHouse/SmartGrid project – tests how houses with automatic systems for lighting, heating and other functions can become more energy efficiency by connecting them into a digital network.
@qua – a project to promote the uptake of ICT solutions to address the efficiency problems in water management.
The FIT4GREEN project – achieves ICT power optimisation by spreading load across multiple data centres.

Similarly, the ‘Smart, green transport’ section includes, for example, projects to help reduce energy use by road vehicles through better route planning, improved driving performance and more efficient traffic management, as well as systems that make it easier to manage the charging of electric vehicles.

The European Commission’s involvement comes through two programmes. The Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) focuses on the importance of quantifying the ICT industry’s own energy performance and carbon footprint as well as its potential to make other sectors, such as buildings and energy generation and distribution, more energy efficient. The other is the EU's new Research and Innovation programme, Horizon 2020, running from 2014 to 2020 with an €80bn budget. It will support ICT policy initiatives and invest in R&D around digitally-based solutions to issues affecting EU citizens and communities.

Review: This report details more than just green ICT initiatives, it’s as much about the overall quality of life in Europe and how technology can be used to improve it. But it’s an interesting catalogue of ways that ICT can contribute to sustainability with some good examples of the principle of greening by ICT.

It’s also quite reassuring that the EU is promoting the ability of ICT to help society become more sustainable, a view that is not being widely promoted by governments across the world. The SMARTer 2020 report was produced just to make that point and released during the climate change talks in Doha.

SAP announces ‘Utility of Tomorrow’ competition for students

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:36:00 +0000

SAP AG has announced a ‘Utility of Tomorrow’ contest to help utilities better understand what customers want and drive innovation in the market through more interactive and appealing customer experience.

The company sees a particular challenge for utilities in engaging with a younger generation that expect a connected, consumer-centric experience. To that end, the contest aims to put university students from around the world together with leading utilities in order to develop ways to transform the customer experience. Potential areas covered in the competition include green energy, connected appliances, water management, electric vehicles and waste management.

SAP is hoping that participating faculty may include the contest as part of their curriculum. SAP University Alliances programme members Aalborg University, Aarhus University, IT University of Copenhagen, University College London, University of Oxford, University of Mannheim and University of Liechtenstein have joined the programme as founding members.

Utility companies are being invited to sponsor the contest, from which they will gain customer insights, play a role in selecting the winning ideas and may engage directly with the successful contestants. DONG Energy, Israel Electric Corporation and San Diego Gas and Electric have agreed to be the initial sponsors.

Winners will participate in a Silicon Valley workshop to further develop their ideas and finalists will also have the opportunity to present their ideas at a SAP event in Las Vagas in October. There’s more detail at www.utilityoftomorrowcontest.com.

Review: As we move (all too slowly) towards a more sustainable world, the utilities business is being transformed. It can no longer consist of companies simply providing services to clients at a agreed cost. Much of the resources provided by utilities are, or will be, in short supply. Greater interaction with customers is required to limit use and keep costs down. The advent of smart meters and smart grids is a case in point. When fully implemented they will allow customers to closely monitor and manage their energy use, saving energy and money.

The problem is that there is much resistance to smart meter implementation because of the information they collect and pass on. Much of the objections may be overcome if the customer experience is good enough, but we’re not there yet. The SAP competition may well throw up some issues from the first generation that will widely use smart utilities.

But there are also some new benefits from utility developments. For example, the implementation of smart grids is likely to bring with it the availability of more connected devices, one of the topic areas for the competition. A smart meter could become the hub of a Home Energy Management network, where various electrical devices can be monitored and managed remotely. Innovative ideas are needed to develop these sorts of capabilities and make them as attractive as possible.

IT companies make inroads into the industrial energy management systems market

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:49:00 +0000

A new report from Navigant Research maintains that while large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have long been the leaders in the Industrial Energy Management Systems (IEMS) market, major IT companies are starting to make inroads, as are smaller players.

IEMSs are evolving quickly as industrial facilities look to become more energy efficient while still meeting production demands. What’s new is the technology, processing capabilities, software applications and business intelligence insights that vendors can now apply, much of which comes from other applications areas. While the traditional OEMs benefit from their global presence, sector knowledge and established infrastructure, the market changes have driven a need for the ability to handle large data sets and sophisticated real-time business analytics applications, which is where the IT companies have the expertise.

“The IEMS market is opening to new firms, new technologies, and unique products and services,” said Eric Woods, research director with Navigant Research. “This is good news for both clients and vendors as fresh ideas make IEMSs more accessible”.

But new market entrants will need to partner with more established IEMS players in order to be successful entry, says the report - Industrial Energy Management Systems. Those that succeed will get a share of a worldwide market for systems and services that will grow from $11.3bn in 2013 to $22.4bn in 2020. The largest market for IEMS is in North American but only slightly ahead of Europe. There’s much more in the (paid for) report.

Review: Industrial companies that use a lot of energy can make significant savings through a better understanding and management of the energy use within their facilities. That’s where IEMSs score - its the detailed knowledge and understanding of consumption that makes the difference. This is very much along the lines of, for example, data centre energy management, which has been a rapidly growing focus for IT operations in recent years, and also the emergence of Big Data, were high volumes of information need to be processed, interpreted and understood.

The interesting part is that, as with data centre infrastructure and energy management systems, there seems to be a lot of innovation which is making the solutions more accessible. It also means that potential customers can talk to their existing IT suppliers first. Ultimately, these sorts of solutions will, in any case, need to be integrated with corporate wide solutions, particularly when energy management and sustainability falls within a broad CSR remit, as is increasingly the case.

Volvo saves fuel with I-See software

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:45:00 +0000

Volvo Trucks has introduced a new version of I-See, technology that enables trucks to negotiate hills more fuel efficiently. The system handles gear selection, acceleration and engine braking on hills which, on long-haul assignments, can save as much as 5% of fuel.

I-See is a software system that works with the driveline and GPS using the truck's cruise control. When the truck approaches a hill the vehicle's speed increases so that it can drive longer in a higher gear. When the truck reaches the brow of the hill, the driveline is disengaged and the truck is allowed to freewheel to save energy.

With the new version, the first time any truck equipped with the technology (from whatever haulage company) drives on a hilly stretch of road, information about the local topography is stored in the truck and also transmitted to the Volvo Trucks server. When another truck with I-See encounters the same hills the system automatically receives the information on how to negotiate the terrain most fuel-efficiently.

Review: Green IT covers both efforts to green internal ICT operation and also using technology to help make the organisation as a whole more sustainable. Since ICT itself only accounts for 2-3% of global carbon emissions, this ‘greening by IT’ is far more important globally (as the SMARTer 2020 report points out).

Volvo’s I-See is a good example of a greening by IT, which is often simply a bringing together of various aspects of IT and communications. In this case it’s a layer of software on top of the trucks built-in technology combined with GPS and data downloaded wirelessly from a central server.

These innovations can either be an internal development or, as in this case, acquired from elsewhere. The main requirement is someone in the organisation that drives the implementation, which could come from the IT department or the central CSR organisation. Either way, it needs a champion and', ideally, a governance model that ensures effective implementation.

A 5% saving may not be much, but this is just one way that savings on transport can be achieved – if you search the blog you’ll find more.

The EC is proposing Europe-wide measures for environmental performance

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:45:00 +0000

Last week the European Commission proposed EU-wide methods to measure the environmental performance of products and organisations.

The move stems from concern about the various government and private methods for companies to monitor and measure environmental performance and the costs that can be involved. At the same time, consumers are confused by the plethora of environmental labels. A single, unified approach across Europe would prevent confusion and would support the Single Market for Green Products, a part of the EU’s Single Market Act of 2011.

The proposal includes:

measuring environmental performance through a Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and an Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF);
recommending the voluntary use of these methods to EU countries, companies, individuals and the financial community;
a three-year ‘testing period’ to develop product and industry rules, as well as assessing existing methods;
principles around transparency, reliability, completeness, comparability and clarity in communicating environmental performance;
supporting international efforts towards more coordination in methodological development and data availability.

The PEF and OEF methods have been prepared by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), so they cover environmental impacts from the extraction of raw materials to the disposal of a product.

Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik said: "To boost sustainable growth, we need to make sure that the most resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly products on the market are known and recognisable. By giving people reliable and comparable information about the environmental impacts and credentials of products and organisations, we enable them to choose. And by helping companies to align their methods we cut their costs and administrative burdens."

When the testing period starts there will be a call for volunteers from stakeholder groups to help develop rules for the PEF and OEF. A second phase will evaluate the results of and will be the basis for policy applications.

Review: Arguably the EU is late in the game of developing environmental performance standards. Various organisations, have been working on aspects and methodologies for a number of years. I guess the advantage of the EU’s involvement now is that much of the hard work has already been done in understanding the issues and challenges. And this proposal also looks at how the rules should be implemented by organisations across the EU, ensuring a level playing field.

Hopefully the proposal will include many of the elements of the de facto standards already widely used, such as the GHG Protocol and Carbon Disclosure Project (and others). Anything that strays significantly from what’s already broadly accepted is likely to cause some resentment. Hopefully, though, it will be a unifying development, pulling together the best of what’s out there now.

Ultimately the proposal may be enshrined in legislation, so companies and manufacturers need to be aware of developments. The proposals have the potential to impact a range of industries at both the product and company level. It could well have significant impact on Corporate Social Responsibility activities as well as internal ICT operations.

HP launches energy-saving data centre servers

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:40:00 +0000

On Monday HP launched a new class of server ‘designed for the data centre and built for the planet’. HP claims that the Moonshot servers use up to 89% less energy, take up 80% less space and are 77% cheaper than traditional servers.

This new class of server is designed to address the IT challenges created by social networking, cloud computing, the use of mobile devices and big data. “With nearly 10 billion devices connected to the internet and predictions for exponential growth, we’ve reached a point where the space, power and cost demands of traditional technology are no longer sustainable,” said Meg Whitman, president and CEO, HP. “HP Moonshot marks the beginning of a new style of IT that will change the infrastructure economics and lay the foundation for the next 20 billion devices.”

The main difference from previous HP servers is that the new Moonshot range is built from chips usually found in smartphones and tablets, where space and energy use has been much more of a focus. It means the servers use less power and space in a data centre, so can be packed in more densely. The servers are also designed for specific purposes. The first available are powered by Intel’s Atom S1200 Centerton chip designed for web hosting. Future systems will run on processors from the likes of Calxeda, Texas Instruments and Advanced Micro Devices and will be aimed at big data, high-performance computing, gaming, financial services, genomics, facial recognition, video analysis and other applications.

Review: There is already enormous pressure on data centres, with demands from our increasingly connected world pushing space and power availability to the limit. Building traditional data centres to meet the increasing demand needs huge facilities and a supply of power that may not be available in urban areas.

The ability to use much smaller and more power efficient servers is an ideal solution. “Testing results show that with Moonshot servers we can expect to run hp.com, with the energy equivalency of a dozen 60-watt light bulbs, which is a game changer,” said John Hinshaw, executive vice president, Technology and Operations.

It does seem that the green IT focus is now moving away from the overall energy efficiency of data centres – as represented by the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratio - to more directly addressing IT power use. Even with virtualisation, servers can be very inefficient, with a tendency to use high levels of power even when doing very little. More efficient devices will start to address that issue and their benefit will no doubt be reflected in the new data centre metrics that are emerging.

But it's disappointing to hear the servers equated to 60-watt bulbs. Doesn’t HP use low-powered, energy-saving lights?

Data centre at sea gathers information on climate change

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:09:00 +0000

Liquid Robotics has announced the introduction of the world’s first hybrid wave and solar propelled unmanned ocean robot. The device will explore the world’s oceans in conditions that previously were too challenging or costly to operate and send back data to help solve problems such as global climate change, ocean acidification, fisheries management, hurricane prediction, tsunami warning and exploration for valuable natural resources.

Wave Glider SV3 uses both wave and solar energy for forward propulsion and powering its on-board data collection systems, enabling it to go further – tens of thousands of miles - and through all sea weather conditions - doldrums, high currents, hurricanes/cyclones. Data consolidation and processing at the point of collection also means real time delivery of information back to base.

The Wave Glider SV3 leverages the experiences of the SV2 version, which was introduced in 2009 and has travelled more than 300,000 nautical miles globally. It also set a world record for the longest distance travelled by an autonomous vehicle and has been deployed from the Arctic to Australia and from the Canary Islands to Loch Ness. What’s new about the latest version is its on-board processing capabilities, adaptable power and storage, and the introduction of a new operating system designed for intelligent autonomy.

Roger Hine, CTO and inventor of the Wave Glider, said “Riding the advancements in consumer electronics, smart phone, tablet computing and a new generation of extremely capable processors, we are now able to provide processing on-board - actually as powerful as a supercomputer from not long ago. With that computational power and the ability to tirelessly swim across vast oceans, the Wave Glider SV3 represents a big step forward in the state-of-the-art of unmanned monitoring and exploration.”

Review: One of the challenges of Green ICT is to provide the means to monitor the inevitable impacts of global warming. As weather patterns change it will become increasingly important to understand what’s happening and provide early warning of the extreme weather events that will characterise climate change.

Much of the effort is going into monitoring from above, i.e. using satellite and atmospheric monitoring, but equally important is what’s happening in the sea. For example, the UK’s climate is vulnerable to changes in ocean currents in the North Sea, driven by melting polar ice. Devices like the Wave Glider may well tell us more about what the long-term changes are, as well as monitoring for more immediate impacts.

Wireless controls are spurring growth in building control systems

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:47:00 +0000

According to a recent report from Navigant Research (Pike Research as was) wireless technology is finally entering the mainstream of the commercial building controls market. Worldwide shipments of wireless controls for building automation systems will exceed 36 million units by 2020.

The report, Wireless Control Systems for Smart Buildings, maintains that after years of niche, proprietary solutions and slow standards development, open standards such as ZigBee and EnOcean are replacing vendor-specific wireless RF technology. These open devices will account for nearly half of all wireless building control node shipments by the end of the forecast period.

Building automation has been around for decades, but wireless networks make the control systems much easier to install and maintain – there’s none of the challenges of running cabling to support communications and/or power. It means that sensors and devices can be used in, for example, historic buildings where installing wiring is difficult, if not impossible.

Wireless devices using open standards can also work together. It means that various building automation systems can be linked, including lighting, heating and cooling, fire and safety, and security and access.

Review: Growth in the ICT industry is always spurred on by the emergence of common standards, whether the result of industry agreement or simply the dominance of a single player. It seems that the take-up of open standard wireless devices are having the same impact in building control systems.

Managing buildings is one area where ICT can make a contribution to abating global carbon emissions. According to the SMARTer 2020 report ICT can help reduce worldwide emissions by 9.1GtCO₂e by 2020, 16.5% of the global total. The report estimates that over 4% of that can be achieved by installing building management systems that make energy use more efficient. It’s not a large proportion of what ICT can do, but the growth of open standards wireless devices is now making it much easier to implement. If the Navigant report is right then there’s little excuse now for corporations not to manage and monitor the energy their buildings use. It can say money as well as helping save the planet.

Global corporations are failing to meet the sustainability challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:37:00 +0000

According to the latest Corporate Responsibility Review from sustainability ratings agency Oekom Research AG, only one in six (16.7%) of the companies from the global MSCI World equity index show a good level of commitment to sustainable development and none were categorised as ‘very good’. Around a third of the companies have some sustainability management initiatives, but efforts are still not being systematically integrated into management systems. Over half the companies (52.3%) have so far taken little or no action.

Oekom Research evaluates data from companies and independent sources on the basis of industry-specific criteria. The ratings are based on seven major sustainable development challenges:

Climate change
Biodiversity
Water
Forest protection
Poverty
Demographic change
Corruption

The results are used by their clients to help manage capital investments and for designing appropriate investment products. Oekom research says that its ratings currently influence the management of investments valued at over €520bn.

Companies from the paper and forestry industry achieved the highest average score for their sustainability management, but even then scored just 47.7 out of a possible 100. In second and third places were manufacturers of household products (45.4) and car manufacturers (40.8). At the bottom of the table were the retail trade (21.7), the property sector (20.6) and the oil and gas industry (18.9).

By country, more than 40% of Finnish, Italian, German and Dutch companies were found to be leaders in their sectors in terms of sustainability management. By comparison, in the US just 9.5% of companies were considered leaders and only 7.3% in Japan.

Matthias Bönning COO and Head of Research at Oekom Research said “Despite individual examples of good practice, the majority of companies are falling short of what is needed from the point of view of sustainability. Many of them did not even manage to achieve a score of 40 out of a possible 100. In the light of the huge challenges we face, this is clearly not enough.”

Review: The fact that there is a market for this sort of data shows the growing importance of sustainability among investors. Companies will increasingly be obliged to adopt a more sustainable approach, even if there is no relevant legislation. There may well be a debate about what should be included under the umbrella of ‘sustainability’, but Oekom Research is reflecting what it, and its clients, see as the main issues.

Perhaps the most interesting comment is the lack of systematic integration of sustainability within management systems, a comment that is equally true of Green IT. While many companies have been implementing specific processes and technologies to reduce energy use and hence carbon emissions, this has generally been a piecemeal approach, rather than an integrated strategy. Addressing broader sustainability issue will require an even greater rigor.

One approach to achieving the necessary thoroughness is to use a green ICT governance model that links IT and corporate sustainability. An IT governance framework, such as the widely-used COBIT 5, provides an end-to-end business view of the governance of enterprise IT that reflects its role in creating value for businesses. It doesn’t take much to extend the principal to include aspects of sustainable ICT.

French greens call for laws to guarantee electronic product life

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:53:00 +0000

Europe Écologie – Les Verts (EELV - The Green party in France) has proposed a Bill to the French Senate aimed at reducing planned obsolescence and increasing the shelf life of electronic products. The move follows similar action by the Belgian Green Party, Ecolo, a year ago. Planned obsolescence is taken to mean those strategies put into place to artificially shorten the useful life of products and bring forward their disposal and replacement.

The proposal from EELV would establish a legal framework in France to penalise such practices and recompense consumers. Specific points include:

• Extending the existing EC product guarantees for IT, telecom and audiovisual equipment from the current two years to five.

• Under current EC legislation, if a defect appears during the first six months the presumption is that the fault was there at purchase, unless the seller can prove otherwise. The Bill would extend this assumption to two years.

• Making spare parts available for 10 years and encouraging green groups to stockpile parts from products that are not repairable.

Other proposals are to reduce tax on products that are environmentally designed and to oblige manufacturers to provide better information on reuse and recycling.

In the French proposal, deliberately implementing technical obsolescence would be an offense punishable by two years imprisonment and/or a fine of 37,500 euros.

Review: One of the issues that sparked off the legislation in Belgium was a report in the media of a printer that contained a microchip designed to limit printing to 18,000 pages (although internet users apparently created a programme that overcame the limit). There have been similar concerns about inkjet printers signalling that ink cartridges are empty when in fact there is still plenty of ink left.

It is this sort of cynical restriction on product life, creating huge amounts of unnecessary waste, that’s being addressed. While it remains to be seen whether any of these proposals become law, it can only be a matter of time before some legislation is introduced. Already electronic product stewardship regulations are being introduced around the world and the requirements are likely to get tougher as countries realise the environmental impact of product disposal.

Certainly, any corporate green IT strategy should take into consideration the product lifecycle at the procurement stage. There are standards and labels in place, such as EPEAT and Energy Star, to help make the right purchase decisions. But corporate IT increasingly includes consumer products chosen by employees. The sort of legislation proposed in Belgium and France would ensure that these products are capable of lasting longer - although trends in design and fashion are as much the cause of product replacement as anything else. But that’s another story.

Thanks to greenIT.fr

EU invests in making the cloud greener

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Foster) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:01:00 +0000

The EU has been funding a project aimed at developing ways to reduce the environmental impact of data centres. The approach is to use technologies and methodologies to measure the energy consumption of IT infrastructure in a more detailed way than before. Real-time sensing and measurement combined with intelligent processing is used for predictive energy consumption models.

Dr Massimo Bertoncini at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica in Italy headed up a team of researchers who spent 30 months on the project. It was conducted in the 'Green active management of energy in IT service centres' (GAMES) project and supported by €3m in funding from the European Commission.

The GAMES consortium focused on IT infrastructure, taking the view that any improvement in energy efficiency in the IT will automatically reduce energy consumption in the cooling/facility systems. In optimising the IT energy use, the approach takes into account the trade-off between energy-efficiency optimisation and business demands - such as Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees.

According to Dr Bertoncini 'For data centres to become more efficient, it is essential to know how energy is being consumed. Our focus was therefore to develop effective monitoring solutions that allow data centre performance and processes to be adapted in real time.'

The results were tested at two large (and already relatively energy-efficient) data centres in Italy and Germany – one used for hosting legacy applications and the other for high performance computing. In both cases PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) was reduced from around 1.35 to 1.25.

'We showed that this approach works across technologies and at different data centres designed for performing different tasks,' Dr Bertoncini said. 'There is always a trade-off between energy efficiency and performance: essentially, the more performance required, the more energy will be used. The key is finding the right balance to provide the best service at the lowest energy cost.’

The project also studied families of applications that showed similar energy-consumption behaviour patterns. It makes it possible to associate a set of best practices to achieve the best trade-off between SLAs, performance and energy consumption. The project has made these best practices available.

Apparently the team has received a lot of interest from industry and will make its solutions commercially available. It is also looking into launching a follow-up project to further improve the technology.

Review: One of the problems with the PUE metric is that it’s only a relative measure, comparing the data centre’s non-IT energy consumption with that used for the IT infrastructure. PUE can be improved by using more efficient cooling, for example, even though the IT systems themselves can still be very inefficient.

This EU-funded project looked at the more difficult part – the efficiency of the IT systems themselves. It’s based on giving data centre managers the ability to closely monitor energy use and decide the most optimum IT configuration to achieve the performance required whilst minimising the energy used.

This focus on the IT infrastructure is going to become increasingly important in the future as data centre managers look for continuing improvements in energy efficiency. What looks particularly interesting is the reference to the behaviour patterns of families of applications. Having a set of best practices for specific applications could prove a practical template for reducing data centre energy consumption.