IBM is at the cutting edge of IT Carbon Management strategies. As a leader in IT we will be sharing our perspective on the industry’s thoughts, actions, challenges and opportunities. Contributors to the blog include Steve Bowden STG Chief Technology Officer, Green Computing among many others. We look forward to the opportunity to exchange thoughts and ideas on this critical topic.

Why not aim for a bigger slice of a smaller pie?

Should IT be trying to increase – not decrease – its estimated 2 per cent share of global IT emissions?

Gartner has laid the blame for two per cent of global CO2 emissions at the door of the IT function. Cue much hand-wringing/wailing and gnashing of teeth/absolute indifference in data centres from Bratislava to Bogotá.

When IT professionals are berated for the high – and rising – environmental impact of their activities, do they immediately reach the same conclusions as the wider green lobby? Namely, that they must act swiftly to reverse the growth of emissions and get themselves back below the aviation industry in the global hall of shame.

Or do they wonder why there is so little emphasis on IT’s ability to eliminate vastly inefficient paper-based processes, automate hugely wasteful administrative systems, digitize whole forests-worth of documentation, and pull armies of executives out of jumbo jets and into video-conferencing rooms?

Sure – IT departments can, and should, do more to increase the efficiency of their operations. But should they not also be trying to expand – absorbing wasteful non-computerised activities so as to grab a bigger slice of a smaller global emissions pie?

Jon Nation
UK Climate Forum

Digg



Post to del.icio.us

technorati

Technorati Profile

Heat From Data Center to Warm a Pool

Associated Press - Heat From Data Center to Warm a Pool
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, April 2, 2008

A new computer center in Switzerland is making novel use of the hot air thrown off by its servers and communications equipment: The heat is being funneled next door to warm the local swimming pool.

When computing companies talk about "greening" their energy-guzzling data centers, that usually means powering the centers with renewable sources or using more-efficient servers.

In a few cases, the heat produced by the computers is used to warm nearby offices. In what appears to be a first, the town pool in Uitikon, Switzerland, outside Zurich, will be the beneficiary of the waste heat from a data center recently built by IBM Corp. for GIB-Services AG.

As in all data centers, air conditioners will blast the computers with chilly air — to keep the machines from exceeding their optimum temperature of around 70 degrees — and pump hot air out.

Usually, the hot air is vented outdoors and wasted. In the Uitikon center, it will flow through heat exchangers to warm water that will be pumped into the nearby pool. The town covered the cost of some of the connecting equipment but will get to use the heat for free.

Steven Sams, a data center services vice president for IBM, said the Swiss project should be a model. After all, IBM says, the computers in the Uitikon center will throw off enough heat to warm as many as 80 houses.

Posted by - Jon Nation
UK Climate Forum

Legislation or innovation?

National governments and international bodies are busily rolling out legislation to punish environmentally unsound businesses. What’s the right balance between top-down legislation and letting the global market solve the problem for itself?

Planet Earth has a short and relatively inglorious history of global governance. Faced with the need to co-operate on matters of global significance, we tend to fragment into tribes, sling mud at each other, and generally cut off our collective nose to spite our face. At the extreme ends of the debate, climate change pits hand-wringing Gaians against gun-totin’ libertarians, and little gets done amid the shouting.

Will new legislation, imposed from the top down, succeed in curbing emissions and oil consumption where rational debate is failing? Is there any value in imposing punitive taxes on gas-guzzling businesses in the UK if far larger economies are allowed to operate free from government control? And to what extent might we trust the innovation of big business to solve the emissions and fossil fuel crises?

IT departments should consider themselves in a privileged position – after all, IT is largely a question of automating, de-papering and otherwise overhauling costly and inefficient business processes, turning them into slick, low-cost, low-impact activities.

It’s true that emissions associated with IT are rising fast. But why not focus on the positives? Arguably, each of the kilowatt hours that goes into IT removes dozens of kilowatt hours from non-computerised business processes.

Jon Nation
UK Climate Forum

It’s power cost saving not the CO2 reduction that motivates Green IT investment

For CO2 emission reduction to be taken seriously there must be a compelling business case that shows direct benefit for the polluter and not simply through tax or penalty avoidance.

To execute the principle of "Polluter Pays" there must be an investment payback model, and particularly during the current economic climate where, for example, financial services is tackling subprime issues and retail distribution is forecasting slow consumer sales growth. The foundation of that business case is power reduction which reduces the cause of CO2 emission and simultaneously shows how data centre investment will be repaid many times over.

A major finance sector respondent [Legal & General] in the IDL study indicated "Data Centre has reached near full capacity for power consumption. It is imperative that they address this issue in 2008" and similarly in education [LSE] "Cost savings on power reduction are important overall in 2008".

Neil G MacArthur
IDL Director of Strategy

Sorting cold facts from hot air

Welcome to a new blog from the IBM Climate Forum, aimed at sparking an open debate on all that’s good, bad or ugly in the world of “green” IT.

Would you consider the fast-shrinking physical space in the typical data centre a barometer of inefficient practices and environmentally unsound IT?

Demand for new business applications and data storage may be rising fast, but does that mean the data centre should be allowed to grow beyond its current physical boundaries? Aside from the cost and disruption of replacing an existing building, businesses should perhaps be reconsidering the validity of the one-application-one-box approach to service provision.

Of course, virtualisation and physical consolidation aren’t guaranteed magic wands for freeing up space, reducing heat output and cutting power consumption. In particular, packing dozens of virtual servers into shiny new quad-core blades can create volcanic hotspots in the data centre, requiring vast numbers of new air conditioning units.

The wider green movement tends to balance new technology with a make-do-and-mend attitude, and this might be a useful way of looking at the issue of space in the data centre. Something as simple as untangling underfloor cabling can make a significant difference to the flow of cooling air, and a rigorous pruning of “humorous” videos and mp3s from user mailboxes might just free up a couple of racks...

Jon Nation
UK Climate Forum