Green IT. Enough already!

Being green & earth friendly is very, very good…. But don’t you think that it is constantly being OVER USED & in a marketing/salesey type of way? 

Green IT & Data Center Optimization are the code works that most all vendors are using now a days…. But really half of the power required for the data center is NOT by the IT equipment it is being used for power distribution & cooling.  Isn’t that data center FACILITY OPTIMIZATION?  But that does not get as many peoples attention does it?

I feel that the truth of the matter is that most of the information, offerings out there contains nothing new really.  The need to manage data center and desktop energy consumption has been from 30 plus years ago.   Centralizing of computing in the data center as a green (and even a security measure) strategy was known decades ago.    Again, green is good but I would like to keep it in perspective and not get over greened over here thank you very much.

I think I would buy into more of the messages out there if the word “green” was not used.   Marketing & vendors go back to the word “Energy, Power” The true words/content.  Not this stupid green word.  Green is a color, it has no content so stop including it on on of your darn marketing material.  Don’t even title your articles in Green Font.  It is frankly just very predictable.

“Ecofont” saves with Ink – Free Download

A Dutch company called Ecofont says their font, cuts ink usage up to 20% by printing dot like letters similar to pictured here below…   You can download it for free on their website.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is not a perfect print, but it gets the job done & definitely has a use.   The company is inviting developers to improve Ecofont under a free, open source model.   I’m going to give the download a try & see how it looks… so far it looks promising..

GO GREEN!!

 

It’s no secret: Energy consumption is skyrocketing as IT equipment proliferates across enterprises large and small. In fact, U.S. data centers ate up 61 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2006, at a cost of $4.5 billion, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s approximately twice as much power as they consumed in 2000—and the EPA expects data center energy consumption to double again by 2011.

Statistics like that have many IT professionals investigating “green IT” measures designed to cut power usage and shrink the carbon footprint of their IT operations. Yet only 15 percent of companies with at least 1,000 employees have an overall green IT implementation plan in place, according to an October 2007 survey from Cambridge, Mass.-based analyst firm Forrester Research Inc.

That’s not surprising. Going green can seem daunting, particularly where to begin. Fortunately, there’s significant overlap between going green and the simple common sense of running a tight IT ship. Buying energy-efficient new hardware is the first of five steps your company can take even if it doesn’t have a formal green IT initiative. Newer hardware almost always uses less energy, and there’s a good chance it will also come with energy-management tools that shut off the power automatically after lengthy idle periods.

First thing to do is to Update your Hardware.

But of course, that does not mean go on a spending spree.  Figure out what you really need & eliminate everything else!   Instead of running a bunch of useless printers, buy some multi-function machines that can be used for both coping & printing.  Complete the green cycle by donating unused equipment to a retuable recyling place (see my previous posts on some good ones out there) or donate your equipment to charity.

Every 4-5 years in innovation & improvement in the IT Industry aim to deliver more efficient equipment.   One year the power supplies will be more efficient & the year after that will be the LCD’s.  Something is always changing for the better.  Make sure to get the equipment that delivers the best energy performance.

Servers out there now come with CPUs designed to consume less engery.  Servers using QUAD Core AMD Opteron processors have a significant performance boot without increasign power utilization & heat generation.  AMD PowerNOW! Technology manages power utilization across all four processors dynamically, based on shifting application needs.   And AMD CoolCore Technology reduces power consumption within each core, cutting power to unused transistors.  PowerNow! Technology is also available in AMD Sempron, Turioin & Athlon processors for optimum power utilization in desktop & mobile computers.   Those slick flat planel display monitors consume only one half to one third as much electricity as standard monitors.  And newer backlit LED displays are even more efficient.

Secondly, if you are not using it turn it off!! Burning lights in unoccupied offices is a key source of waster electricity.  Avoid this by installing a motion sensor control system that automatically turns off lights and even turns down the thermostat when people are not there.  Have remote equipment monitoring tools that allow you to shut off idle audio-visual equipment without having to send someone manually.  Deploy administrative systems with power managment features such as IBM Tivoli as well as IBM Maximo.  Conduce user education to spread the energy savings word & remind everyone of their responsibility to do their part to turn things off etc.  User a printer management system that helps you collect detailed information about who is printing what.  You can use this to cut unnecessary printer usage.  If your server & desktop hardware have advanced power management features that automatically shut down unused systems make sure they are enabled.

Third thing is no big surprise.. Virtualize, Virtualize, Virtualize.  Virtualizing servers is far more efficient then simply purchasing new server hardware for each application you deploy, a strategy that can quickly result in server sprawl.  By reducing the amount of hardware in your data center, aggressive virtualization can yield a sharp reduction in energy consumption.    Thin Client computing consumes up to 80% less energy.  Storage virtualization where multiple physical storage repositories behave like a single physical storage pool, can improve disk utilization, reducing wasted storage space that consumes power unnecessarily.

Next is Straighten out your Storage!!!  Storing multiple instances of identical data in different places is neither green or smart.   Scour your data for redundant instances and eliminate them in a process knows as de-duplicaiton.  EMC & Symantec are two software vendors that offer products that de-duplicate data during backups.  De-duplicated data backups are 25 times smaller then convential backup, resulting in significant savings on storage equipment and power utilization.  Thin provisioning and dynamic capacity managment increases storage efficiency.   Data compression, an old standby, can help save on hard drives too. 

Next thing to do is to Consolidate your Data Centers!!  Once you have virtualized your servers & consolidated your storage, you will probably notice a lot of extra space in your data centers.  So much in fact, you should be able to shut down one or more of them slashing real estate and energy costs in the process.   Consider building an entirely new facility!  Doing so has some large upfront costs but years from now if you have the funding, it is a golden opportunity to implement green IT measures from the ground up!  If you have already done that, you are ready to contemplate more exotic technologies such as solar and wind power. 

Whether or not you embark on such advanced initiates, taking even the most basic step into a greener data center will make your company have more state of the art IT products for your coworkers, making your company  more competitive and in turn help saving the planet.

 

Do Carbon Footprints REALLY Matter?????

I am not exactly sure how I feel about “green technology”.  There sure is a lot of green talk out there now a days.  Talk about saving energy/power on technology, virtualizing in order to reduce energy bills.. consolidating desktops etc…  Does our “carbon footprint” really even matter?  How out of control are we going to get??   I read somewhere that Starbucks contributes about 2 ounces of carbon to the environment for every coffee cup it serves.. and that does not include the carbon needed to transport the coffee from the store to store.. so if a company wants to potentially compete with Starbucks they could advertise their coffee only contributes 1 ounce of carbon to the environment..?? What? Really? That will make a difference in deciding what coffee you drink?   Starbucks executives were convinced early in the decade that the atomospheric carbon could wreak havoc on the global climate- and so on the supply and price of coffee beans.  And as they increase their stores & the production of coffee they are going to need a large supply of beans and need the environment to be in good shape.

Google recently led a group of 40 other companies (including Starbucks) in kicking off “Climate Savers Computing  Initiative” which is a project aimed at buying more energy efficient PC’s…   Below is an article about how Starbucks is planning on trimming their emissions footprint..

I read in the paper on Sunday about all of these places that have carbon footprint calculators.  Here are some of them.  www.coolclimate.berkeley.edu www.chicagotribune.com/carbonfootprint, www.terrapass.com/carbon-footprint-calculator, www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator, www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator

Of course all of these calculators are totally different have have a major range difference of their idea of how much carbon you are producing.  I see the need for awareness of the civilian and to try to cut down & be aware of their carbon production.   But should companies really focus on this & make it an initiative.  More specifically small & medium sized business???  Google, Starbucks, Intel, SunMicrosystems, etc.. I get why they are implementing these carbon plans.. but the question remains how important will it be for smaller & medium sized business that do not have the resources to hire energy experts & devote any time to figuring out their “carbon footprint”….

After further investigating there is a Chicago based company called www.bluestarenergy.com that may have some energy efficiency offerings/savings that may prove to be beneficial… worth checking out.   And check this out http://www.epeat.net/ EPEAT is required for all federal purchasing..  It seems that this is not a trend that will be dying anytime soon.  Scrolling over the environmental benefits I see lots of numbers that definitely seem to be important but I am not exactly sure what they all mean.. do you?

2007 purchases of EPEAT registered laptops, desktops, and monitors over conventional products will:

• Reduce use of primary materials by 75.5 million metric tons, equivalent to the weight of more than 585 million refrigerators

• Reduce use of toxic materials, including mercury, by 3,220 metric tons, equivalent to the weight of 1.6 million bricks 

• Eliminate use of enough mercury to fill 482,381 household fever thermometers 

• Avoid the disposal of 124,000 metric tons of hazardous waste, equivalent to the weight of 62 million bricks.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-carbon footprint calculating.. I am just not sure how effective this calculating really is.. and if a total calculation is really necessary to decide whether or not to update your technology.  I like the idea of virtualaztion, saving space, less carbon, energy producing computers.. but I think my temporary answer is to over look the carbon calculators that are time consuming and extremely inconsistent and rather keep in mind about the energy consumption your computers, servers may take and when you are needing to upgrade, consider using a more energy efficient computer, server or virtualization… and there you go, you did your part to “reduce your carbon footprint” and you hopefully you can reduce your energy bill. 

Starbucks(nasdaq: SBUX – news - people ) wants to go on a carbon-lite diet. But oh, it’s hard.

In its shop in downtown San Mateo, Calif., for instance, baristas serve up about 40,000 cups of coffee drinks every month. Just based on utility bills alone, that means Starbucks is serving up about 4,900 pounds of carbon with its drinks–or about two ounces per cup.

Starbucks executives say they are looking for ways to trim those carbon emissions. But they are reluctant to say just how much Starbucks’ worldwide carbon footprint is–and how it has changed over the past few years. Starbucks has calculated the carbon footprint of its North American locations only once, in 2003. Since then, its number of U.S. company-owned stores has almost doubled to 6,281. Its international company-owned locations, also left out of the calculation, now number more than 1,500.

“Although we have grown in size, the nature of our business remains the same–the operation of retail stores and roasting coffee,” says Jim Hanna, environmental affairs manager at Starbucks in Seattle. While Starbucks chooses not to calculate its carbon footprint every year, the company does conduct annual progress checks, but these numbers are not publicly reported.

Other eco-friendly companies are also surprisingly coy. Last month, for instance, Google(nasdaq: GOOG – news - people ) led a group of 40 other companies (including Starbucks) in kicking off the “Climate Savers Computing Initiative,” a project aimed at building and buying more energy-efficient PCs.

But Google refuses to disclose its own carbon footprint. “This is important competitive information that relates to the details of our operations,” says Google’s Bill Weihl, the engineer in charge of the company’s energy strategy.

Google is nonetheless keeping a watch on the size of its carbon footprint and hopes to achieve “carbon neutrality” by the end of this year by using non-carbon energy sources for much of its power needs and purchasing carbon offsets for the rest. Recently, Google flipped the switch on 1.6 megawatts of solar power modules on the roof of its Mountain View headquarters.

Starbucks was early among eco-sensitive companies. Executives became convinced early in this decade that atmospheric carbon could wreak havoc on the global climate–and so on the supply and price of coffee beans. “We’re facing environmental risks posed by climate change that could negatively affect many aspects of our company, including our ability to procure coffee,” Hanna says.

Temperature and rainfall dictate how much coffee comes out of regions including Latin America and Asia. “As we hope to increase to 40,000 stores worldwide in the next 10 years, we’re going to need a larger supply,” Hanna says.

In 2003, Starbucks hired Denver-based engineering firm CH2M Hill to calculate the carbon footprint of the approximately 3,700 stores it then had in North America. CH2M Hill began measuring corporate footprints in the late 1990s and has done comparable calculations for a few dozen companies, including Nike(nyse: NKE – news - people ), 3M(nyse: MMM – news - people ), SC Johnson and energy firm Kinder Morgan(nyse: KMI – news - people ).

Doing such calculations is still something of a black art. CH2M Hill’s Lisa Grice, who worked on the coffee company’s carbon footprint, says the final number primarily includes electricity used in retail stores. Carbon calculators take into account stores’ geographic locations. That’s because electricity generated at power plants in one state may come from a different source than a power plant in another state. Some stores may get electricity from coal-fired plants, which results in greater carbon emissions, while others may depend on hydroelectric power, which has a lower carbon byproduct.

Starbucks decided to leave out the additional 81,000 tons of carbon dioxide it emitted through transporting coffee materials and disposing solid waste. According to Starbucks Environmental Affairs Manager Ben Packard, the company can only control and manage carbon emissions from energy used in retail stores and coffee-roasting plants.

It took about half a year of data collection and complex calculations to figure out that Starbucks emitted 295,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere in 2003. Starbucks decided to leave out an additional 81,000 tons of carbon dioxide it emitted by transporting coffee materials and disposing of solid waste. According to Starbucks Environmental Affairs Manager Ben Packard, the company can only control and manage carbon emissions from energy used in retail stores and coffee-roasting plants.

Starbucks attributes 81% of its greenhouse gas emissions to purchased electricity and 18% to coffee roasting at its three North American plants and natural gas usage in stores.

That 295,000-ton figure gives Starbucks a small carbon footprint, among a list of about 1,000 companies compiled by the Carbon Disclosure Project, a London-based nonprofit. Near the top of the list is energy giant American Electric Power(nyse: AEP – news - people ) with 146.5 million tons of carbon emissions. Next in line are oil and gas companies Royal Dutch/Shell and British Petroleum(nyse: BP – news - people ) with 105 million tons and 92 million tons.

Comparatively, General Electric’s (nyse: GE – news - people ) 12.4 million ton footprint makes it a medium-size emitter. The smallest carbon emitters weighed in at a few thousand tons. Most of the lower footprints belong to insurance companies, retailers and banks.

Starbucks execs say that even as they’ve been growing the number of outlets, they’ve been trying to be more energy efficient. In 2005, Starbucks joined the World Research Institute’s Green Power Market Development Group, a consortium of 15 companies ranging from Staples(nasdaq: SPLS – news - people ) to Google. The group helps its members purchase renewable energy at lower prices. Last year, the coffee company increased its wind power to 20% of the total energy usage in North American stores. This offset 62,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

But to track progress in reducing carbon emissions accurately, companies need to update those footprints frequently, says Marcus Peacock of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “We’ve asked companies to check their numbers annually,” he says.

A number of companies are doing just that. Both Intel(nasdaq: INTC – news - people ) and Sun Microsystems(nasdaq: SUNW – news - people ), which are also part of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, report their carbon footprints annually. Intel’s carbon footprint added up to 4 million tons in 2006, a number that includes worldwide operations. Sun first calculated its footprint at 255,000 tons last year, and used past data to figure out carbon emissions dating back four years. The company also reports up-to-date carbon numbers on its Web site.

“We calculate this monthly so that we can make sure we’re on track with improving emissions,” says Sun’s VP of Eco Responsibility Dave Douglas.

Both Intel and Sun are part of the EPA’s Climate Leaders Program, a group of companies that sets tangible carbon reduction goals. Climate Leaders began five years ago, when few companies even knew the meaning of carbon footprint. Now, the program boasts 132 members.

In the meantime, Starbucks executives insist they are looking for ways to improve energy efficiency and encourage their customers to do the same. This summer, Starbucks told its customers to go green through a number of high-profile campaigns, including “Green Umbrellas for a Green Cause” and the online Planet Green Game (planetgreengame.com). Starbucks will also start monitoring the energy usage of specific equipment at some stores later this year. “We’ll install individual meters on espresso machines, refrigerators, water filtration systems and other components,” Hanna says.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see a green espresso maker at a Starbucks near you anytime soon. “Quality and performance come first,” Hanna says.
http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/07/02/starbucks-emissions-environment-biz-cz_sn_0703green_carbon.html