GreenITDigest

Green IT down a little globally, Fujitsu study finds

2011-09-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

Fujitsu has released its annual Global ICT Sustainability Report. With rankings sliding, it could be subtitled "The Sustainability of Sustainability." Although no respondents got a perfect score of 100, many got an A+ or A, with one US wholesaler scoring 97. The average, regrettably, was closer to a D-.

You can read Leslie Guevarra's take on the report here. I't's actually a good summary, so rather than re-do that, I've just noted below some things that jumped out at me.

Right off the bat, the report’s overview positions ICT (that's what the rest of the world calls IT) as a critical leader in sustainability: “ICT Sustainability is a vast cross functional subject and has a critical leadership role in enabling sustainable business practices across all sectors.” Although I wholeheartedly agree with this opinion, I would have preferred to see support for it in the survey results.

The key to best practice in ICT Sustainability? “High scorers have control of their ICT power consumption, they measure their performance consistently, and they get all parts of the business involved.” I don’t know about your family, but my mother, bless her, would have howled if we wasted electricity the way many organizations do. The major obstacle to significant cuts in ICT energy consumption is that most ICT managers, still, don’t ever see their own energy bill. Energy management systems, clearly an ICT/IT function, can have a huge impact on everybody's energy consumption, not just IT's.

Some other key observations:

ICT consumes enough energy to be responsible for 3% of humanity’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, up from 2% in past years.
ICT can account for up to 75% of all GHG emissions in organizations that rely heavily on ICT, such as banks, government, and other administrative industries. In the West, these tend to be large organizations with sophisticated ICT infrastructures. These fared better than average in the survey.
The survey used the industry-standard Capability Maturity Model (CMM) methodology to quantify responses. CMM rankings range from 0 (no action or awareness) to 5 (optimized, or best practice).

Green IT works both ways. Not surprisingly, an organization that get everybody committed also applies IT to help its whole ecosystem become greener, from suppliers, partners, and industries to customers.This is represented in the "ICT as a Low-Carbon Enabler" portion of the survey. While this category covers a wide range of ICT-enabled activities, and therefore addresses much of ICT's value to its stakeholders, it had limited impact on the outcomes of this survey.

The survey demonstrated how tightly the visibility of the ICT power bill correlates to ICT sustainability (ITSx). Although this is shown in the figures, some puzzling contrasts appear. For example, US respondents were at the top of the power awareness spectrum, and Australian firms at the bottom. But in overall ranking, the two are just one position apart, with the US in 3^rd and Australia in 4^th.

"Green Fatigue" was speculated as contributing to a significant drop in Australia’s End User Engagement category, from 62.3 to 51.8. The survey gave no context for this supposition. It could also be tied to the abysmal visibility of the country’s ICT power bills, the report said. This decline may be reversed by a stringent e-waste bill passed recently in the legislature, and moves toward implementing carbon pricing. The US, by contrast, has neither at a federal level.

Inclusion of a nation in the survey was based on level of response. On that basis, the countries included were Australia, Canada, China, India, New Zealand, UK and the USA. Responses from all others were aggregated as "Rest of the World."

"Upper management tying electric bill to CIO performance," Green IT Guy says

2011-08-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

If that's true, it's certainly about time. I'd love to see a list where this is happening. I haven't heard it from any IT managers I've asked in the past year.

Read the full article at http://thegreenitguy.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/making-the-case-for-green-it/.

Some other key points:

If I can walk into any organization and cut their energy usage, carbon output, and IT expense in half, I don’t see how that could be considered green washing or marketing hype.
Energy reductions standards are moving from voluntary to mandatory.
Large investors are starting to pay attention to sustainability indexes.
IT departments that once considered Green IT a niche now see it as vital to their business.
"Green IT 1.0" initiatives such as data center consolidation have gone main stream. Pioneering companies and government agencies, such as UPS and the City of Palo Alto, have moved on to "Green IT 2.0"-- using IT to make everything else Greener.

See more of what the Green IT Guy, Terell Jones, has to say at http://thegreenitguy.wordpress.com/.

Where did Green IT go?

2011-07-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

Green IT has run out of steam, for now, because too many people have failed to make the conceptual leap from cost savings to sustainability. Some time ago, I and others moved on to emphasizing Green IT 2.0*, in which IT makes everything else more sustainable. But, people mostly aren’t seeing the connection. The worst is the guy at a recent VMWare event who’s proud of all the money he’s saving by virtualizing his data center, and still thinks climate change is a hoax.

No, scratch that story. I made it up. I'm sure that kind of dichotomy exists out there, but I don’t have any actual evidence. I probably should just start asking around.

Picture Saturday Night Live pointing their camera at a random person in the audience, and the caption saying “Cut 1200 tons of carbon a year by virtualizing her datacenter, still thinks Global Warming is a hoax.”

This is shaping up like a stand-up routine.

Here's a related dichotomy:

Many big info-driven corporations, like IBM, Microsoft, Starbucks, Proctor and Gamble, Toyota, and even Wal-Mart are grasping the need to become more sustainable, and the inherent risks in not doing so. So why are they so silent around the noisy Congressional climate change denialists, and the business leaders that support them?

* I think Forrester Research coined that term.

Sustainability without KM is like Engineering without Math: KM supports green initiatives worldwide

2011-07-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

Sustainability without Knowledge Management is like Engineering without Mathematics. Could it be more simple?

Drastically reducing its energy consumption is absolutely vital to any enterprise that expects to survive in a fuel-constrained future. And, doing that depends totally on capturing, organizing, making sense of, and applying a far vaster array of environmental and operational details than ever before.

Read the KMWorld article that inspired this essay.

THIS IS KM. If you're uncomfortable using that term, get the heck over it. Without acceptance of the term Knowledge Management, and a firm grasp of the principles that constitute it, your environmental initiatives will be more likely to fail. It would be like trying to do Engineering without accepting totally the discipline that is Mathematics.

Unfortunately, the "Green KM" discussion almost always starts by chasing away its most significant audience, the general business community. It does this by first addressing sustainability in the classic KM domains of imaging and document management.

In this sense, it’s just like the argument for Green IT, which always seems to start out self-referentially-- how it makes IT itself more sustainable-- before moving on to what IT can do to make everything else more sustainable.

In both cases, as in any conversation that opens with "me-me-me," the audience is lost before it even became an audience.

In the same issue, see also Following a Greener Path: Data centers, power distribution companies and construction firms all try to conserve energy.

Do we embrace Green IT 2.0, or will the planet spit us out like a watermelon seed?

2011-07-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've been pushing the idea that Green IT 2.0, Forrester's term for using IT to green everything else, will make Green IT 1.0, making IT itself more sustainable, look like a rounding error.

Actually, that's what Cisco founder John Chambers once said comparing e-learning to email. I hope this prediction's more accurate than that one.

Effective use of information, whether we call it IT, or KM, or whatever, is the key to making it possible for humans to survive on this planet. Nature will do fine; losing a hundred thousand species is chump change to Her. But unlike all those other species, we get to choose whether we're one that stays or goes.

Like I said, Nature doesn't care whether we take it or leave it. Humans mean about as much to nature as a million brain cells matter to an all-night binge-er.

Do more, better sustainability ideas come from Imagination, or Experience?

2011-07-11T07:10:00.001-07:00

People can come up with more uses for technology than IT can imagine. That's the crux of idea #2 in an Information Week article about Randy Mott, recently departed CIO of Hewlett-Packard.

From the article: "To really understand a technology's potential, IT needs to put it in end users' hands." From Mott, in 2003: "It's tough to imagine fast enough. You have to experience it to imagine what's possible."

I believe this applies doubly to using technology to enhance sustainability. People who care about the planet are intrinsically motivated to excel where their work involves enhancing sustainability. The experience of imaginative, engaged people creates more solutions than imagination alone.

Most technology that reduces waste or saves energy, for example, also reduces costs. That's good for the company. Enhancing sustainability is good for the planet, which matters to the employees who made it happen. This combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation should, at least in theory, get workers super-engaged in making sustainability efforts work.

But of course, this line of thinking in itself contradicts my key point, in that it has risen completely from my imagination, and not from experience.

So, let's put some substance into it. If you've been engaged in sustainability efforts at your company, does your experience bear out my premise?

Wikileaks:painful but necessary

2010-12-03T09:32:00.000-08:00

Wilikeaks is a painful, but necessary step forward. Eventually, the walls must come down. It's a natural process in human evolution, for us as individuals and societies to grow more able to face and deal with our own reality, not lash out when it's revealed to others against our will.

The most harm, we are told, has been to our relations with harsh undemocratic regimes. With their trust in our confidentiality diminished, they will be less likely to share with us things that they know make them look bad, and that they shouldn't be doing in the first place, such as being deceitfully cozy with their non-democratic allies.

In the short run, revealing such truths may work against our foreign interests. In the long run, it's a big step forward for human evolution.

The World View on IT Greening the Enterprise

2010-11-30T07:16:00.000-08:00

How does the rest of the world view Green IT?

I want to draw your attention to a wonderfully concise (just 3 pages) summary of ICT's current and potential contributions to sustainability. ICT, by the way, is what the rest of the world calls IT. It more accurately represents Information and Communications Technologies, or ICT, as one package.

Trudy Heller, CEO of Executive Education for the Environment, offers an encouraging view of worldwide efforts to both make IT greener, and use IT to make everything else more environmentally sustainable. Dr. Heller wrote the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) chapter for the recently released Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability.

Although the article is not available online, I'm hopeful Trudy will either make the content available in some other venue, or work with me to summarize it here. Stay tuned.

Forrester: A CEO who's clueless on Green IT may not get IT either

2010-11-21T06:42:00.000-08:00

Forrester Research's Doug Washburn asks, Does your CEO care about Green IT?

Survey results suggest that more than half of CEOs surveyed globally rate sustainability as "very important" to their firms' futures, and that green-driven firms have been 16% more profitable over the past 3 years.

Here's Washburn's kick in the butt: "While your CEO might care about green, they may not necessarily care about IT."

Wow! That's a big leap. It's based on Forrester's finding that only 16% of firms globally even mention green IT in their annual reports. So, they see Greening as a high priority, but don't see IT as a key path to achieving it.

This spells a big "uh-oh" for CIOs. Green IT is a big visibility-maker and money-saver. You're not doing it just for IT's sake, you're doing it to demonstrate what you can do-- for other parts of your firm, as well as for current customers and those you don't have yet.

Seize the day, and read the article, at http://www.zdnet.com/blog/forrester/does-your-ceo-care-about-green-it/459.
And to find the path Doug laid out for Green IT 2.0 a year and a half ago, visit http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/rise_of_green_enterprise_primer_for_it/q/id/48085/t/2. (BTW, to get more than an excerpt costs $499. It is Forrester, after all.)

Share your Green IT secrets, and don't stop there

2010-11-21T06:19:00.000-08:00

Heather Clancy, in her ZD-Net.com Greener Pastures column, encourages IT folks to share their best stuff for the Uptime Institute's 2011 Green Enterprise Awards.

While it's called a Green Enterprise award, alas it is still just Green IT 1.0: Making IT Greener. Remember, that's just the appetizer. The main course is Green IT 2.0: IT Making Everything Else Greener.

Of course, IT should make itself Greener. Besides the environmental benefits, all those cost savings make it a total no-brainer. It's also rather self-absorbed and self-limiting to stop there.

The far greater impact comes when IT brings its tools, data, and systems thinking to the immense task of making whole enterprises, even whole industries, regions, and international systems, Greener. And, it greatly increases the CIO's strategic value to one's own enterprise.

Why stop at your own doorstep, when there's a world to benefit?

Precious metals used in LEED certifications

2010-11-16T11:17:00.000-08:00

Are the platinum, gold, and silver in the LEED certifications conflict-free and sustainably mined?

Hmm? ;)

Triple Bottom Line conference hosted by Drexel and the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia

2010-11-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

By David Calloway, Green IT Digest © 2010

What do Boeing, Campbell’s Soup and Dow Chemical (formerly Rohm and Haas) have in common? That is, besides being large companies and longstanding, major forces in this regon’s economy?

All three are internationally recognized leaders in sustainability. Yes, really. And no, I'm not kidding. Representatives of these firms and others shared some success stories at a recent conference co-sponsored by Drexel University’s Lebow College of Business and the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia (WTCGP). The program also featured speakers from sustainability guarantors B Lab and the City’s Office of Sustainability.

The Triple Bottom Line represents the three beneficiaries of a sustainable enterprise: People, Planet, and Profit. Applying well-known and accepted metrics, it provides a way to measure an organization’s environmental impact along with its financial return. And, as we know in all areas of business, what we can measure, we can improve.

This program, subtitled Implementing Sustainable Business Practices, bridged several purposes for its sponsors. Drexel hosted the program on behalf of the MBA students visiting from the school’s graduate center in Sacramento, CA.

The WTCGP was promoting the region’s strengths in sustainability, while increasing exposure to international opportunities for both students and the region’s businesses. This seminar was part of WTCGP’s new “Job Creation through Export Development” program funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration. The program is designed to advance the global competitiveness of the many Pennsylvania and New Jersey companies in leading industry sectors, such as renewable energy and environment. Find the WTCGP at http://www.wtcphila.org/.

Drexel’s Sacramento business students, in Philadelphia to complete a course in Sustainable Business, learned about local Green buildings and businesses. They visited two Green buildings, the Comcast Center and Tasty Baking’s new Navy Yard bakery, which is moving toward zero-waste status.

“It was eye-opening for the students”, said Donna Ferrari, Drexel’s Director of Special Projects. “Many came with the impression that companies are just giving lip service to sustainability. But the conference speakers told how addressing sustainability issues head-on will help them survive.” Drexel's LeBow College of Business is at http://www.lebow.drexel.edu/.

The WTCGP used the forum to showcase Campbell’s, Boeing, and Dow. These firms are central to the region’s economy, working to create a triple bottom line, and fully engaged internationally. These three attributes, all visible and measurable, make them models that more companies in the region could emulate, with the help of the WTCGP, of course.

An ongoing partnership in international business allows Drexel students to combine their international residencies with the WTCGP’s trade missions through their “Export for Scholars” program. Students research off-shore markets, international partnerships, and overcoming cultural and other barriers. Observing international trade meetings gives them valuable hands-on experience.

The conference included a Green Expo where vendors presented a range of products and services to help businesses and consumers to be more effective in terms of the environment, and of their bottom lines.

The word of the day was metrics: If you don’t measure it, you won’t do it. Every presentation was dotted with dashboards, flooded with figures, and replete with reports about carbon reduced, good intentions realized, and strategies implemented. It’s clear that, at least in these companies, the drive toward sustainability is for real, and it’s working.

The speakers shared their firms’ strategies and experiences, as they’ve worked to improve the environmental performance of themselves, and their impact, and that of their partners, customers, and industries. The speakers and their talks are summarized in the following paragraphs.

- Katherine Gajewski, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. After getting a late start, Philadelphia is working to advance the 5 E’s: Energy, Environment, Equity (as in equality, not capital, although that was mentioned, too), Economy, and Engagement. Despite ongoing financial challenges, Philadelphia and several other progressive cities across the nation are succeeding in areas where the federal and many state governments are being hamstrung by lobbyists and legislative paralysis. For more on the city’s progress, visit http://www.greenworksphila.org/.

- David P. Stangis, Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Campbell Soup Company. If there’s any company in a position to influence the health and landfills of the world, it’s the ubiquitous Campbell Soup. A big company full of everyday products, Campbell’s program focuses on everyday actions that add up to fulfilling the big vision, a full-court commitment to Nourishment, naturally: Nourishing Employees, Consumers, Neighbors, and Planet. The program is described in detail at www.campbellsoupcompany.com/csr/.

- Katherine T. Hunt, Ph.D., Director, External Science and Technology, The Dow Chemical Company. After Dr. Hunt’s explained Dow’s purchase of Philadelphia’s Rohm and Haas, it makes more sense to me. Dow’s been a feedstock-driven business, and wants to be more market-driven. Research leader Rohm and Haas makes more money producing less stuff, which also makes sense environmentally. Dow wants to be more like that. So buying R&H is helping Dow become both more profitable, and more sustainable. That’s a real win-win outcome. Find the chemistry at www.dow.com/commitments/.

- Hardik Savalia, Associate, B Lab. For a publicly-held corporation to officially pursue the Triple Bottom Line—People, Planet, Profit—is currently illegal, except in Maryland or Vermont.
That’s right. The fiduciary responsibility of a firm to maximize profit is the only leg of this three-legged stool that has any legal standing in the other 48 states. B Lab, based in Berwyn, PA, is working to change that, by creating a new kind of legal entity: the B Corporation. B stands for Benefit, because it benefits not just shareholders, but stakeholders—the whole environment in which the corporation operates. Today, B Lab certifies mostly small, privately-held firms. As the B Corp takes hold in a growing number of states, investor demand will drive ever larger enterprises to seek and earn B Corp status. Learn all about it at www.bcorporation.net/.

- Edward (Ned) Ferguson, Director of Environment and Energy, Boeing. Did you know the GPS you use to reach your destination is not officially available to a commercial pilot? GPS-based air space modernization will reduce fuel consumed in flights up to 30%. It will also make flying faster, safer, and more reliable, as well as save flight controllers a lot of grey hairs. While today’s jets are 70% more fuel-efficient (and 30% quieter) than the original 707, airplane makers still have a long way to go to reduce aviation’s impact on global warming, and to save the airlines from continuing financial losses. To address both, Boeing is committing 75% of their R&D budget to improving the environmental performance of their jets. In addition to making planes that use less fuel, Boeing is working to grow fuels that create less carbon. Grow fuels? Yes, they’re creating bio-fuels using non-food sources to reduce the petroleum in their fuel, and thus the carbon in their exhaust. These fuels will come on-line in two to three years, and be used until more effective, algae-based fuels become available in six to eight years. These will make huge reductions in both carbon, and fuel cost. Reducing the amount of fuel consumed, and largely eliminating petroleum as a fuel, will make the airlines more environmentally and financially sustainable. Find more at www.boeing.com/newairplane/environment.

If you're not from the US, would you recognize an "apple core"?

2010-09-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

Do only Americans throw away this much of an apple?

In the rest of the world, I'm told, there's no such thing as an "apple core". What's left after eating an apple is, maybe a handful of seeds and a stem, or maybe not. That's what's left after I eat an apple. For what we pay for organic apples, I figure, why waste any of it?

If you eat only 3/4 of a daily apple, do you keep away only 3 out of 4 doctors?

What do you think? Maybe you can enlighten me on this?

Image courtesy http://apps.co.marion.or.us. I take it Marion County, Oregon, grows a lot of apples. I'm sure they'd want them put to good use.

Hunch confirmed-- CIOs tossing Green IT aside

2010-09-22T06:09:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I started sharing my impression that Green IT has fallen off the rader of most IT leaders. The Green-savvy CIO of a suburban Philadelphia pharma research firm then told me his offer to present to a regional IT conference was turned down, because "The whole Green IT track was canceled due to lack of interest."

Today, I read in Information Week's 2010 survey that Green IT is "dead in terms of priorities--or at least on life support."

"How else to explain the paltry 5% who cite a 'more eco-friendly environment' as a top 2010 innovation effort," IW continues. "...Companies talk a great 'sustainability' game. It's just that IT teams tend to come at green IT through the cost-cutting door."

Cost-cutting is great, of course. It's a key part of keeping a company in business and thriving. But doing only that, while losing sight of the sustainability advantages of virtualization, consolidation, moving to the Cloud, and the like, means throwing away important benefits.

Top leaders at many firms know sustainability is of growing importance to their firms' survival, as well as to the planet.Many individual employees know it, too. When IT leaders lose sight of sustainability, they risk cutting themselves out of the loop. It's like the 1980s all over again, when IT, then called MIS, let itself become just another service silo inside the out-of-touch enterprise.

By contrast, CIO magazine Executive Editor Elana Varon points out that "CIOs can contribute to developing eco-friendly products." This is green for a business purpose, and it can happen only in an environment that has fully embraced sustainability as a core business purpose.

Here are a few excerpts from that article. You can find the details for yourself at CIO Magazine.

At Whirlpool (WHR), CIO Kevin Summers is helping with an initiative to build smarter appliances...All of those appliances on a smart grid are like PCs on a network.”
David Kepler, CIO and chief sustainability officer with Dow Chemical (DOW), says customers want more sustainable—and sustainably produced—materials. So IT provides tools for managing energy and greenhouse gas emissions in manufacturing plants, as well as for thinking through how buildings that use the company’s solar roofing shingles connect to the local electric utility.

This multi-year recession and its massive layoffs have left the remaining IT staffs overworked and exhausted. Many feel much more committed to environmental causes than to their own employers, who they are likely to abandon at the first opportunity. Firms can say what they want in their well-funded Green PR campaigns. ITers will hear only the ringing silence of their own managers on the subject.

Micro-contracts: a boon to environmental protection, or the end of civilization as we know it?

2010-09-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

It often happens that when I see something new, the ideas and possible applications start popping. While it can be very distracting at times, at other times it can be useful.

I discovered a company named EchoSign that, via the Web, captures, tracks, validates and assures signatures on contracts. What could you do with a micro-contract environment that's as easy to manage as an e-commerce storefront?

First, I would demand quick, real-time monitoring, validation and assurance of sustainability measures that entities have undertaken, particularly natural resource extraction firms. Then I would extend it from there, into other kinds of complicated projects.

Here are a few reasons, off the top of my head, that this capability could become ubiquitous:
1. business functions are virtualizing, flattening, and accelerating, driving an explosion in partner relationships.

2. That, plus increasing regulatory and transparency pressures, is driving an explosion in contractual relationships.

3. I foresee (if it isn't happening already) the ongoing data explosion driving the evolution of a new legal entity, a sort of digital sub-contract, in which line items and other more granular components of contracts require sign-offs, validation, tracking, and the like. Note that the only reason we don't have these already, is that nobody has wanted to be responsible for managing them. It's a classic case of advancing technology creating a new job for itself, and thus its justification: we do it because we can.

4. Similar to 3: Iterative methodologies such as Agile and Scrum are permeating the development of all kinds of business processes, not just IT/ICT projects. It might be nice to have a micro-tracking tool that also, incidentally, represents a legal commitment.

5. As in 4, environmental initiatives, especially among partner entities and governments, could really benefit from a ready-made, easy to use tracking and validation platform that can manage myriad deliverables, dates, and other such project performance details. While such tools do exist, they're usually buried deep within expensive, complicated and proprietary enterprise systems. Putting this into a Web-based, as-needed, just-in-time service radically changes what we can manage.

On the other hand, these may all be terrible ideas, and we'll just enable a level of paralyzing micro-management and mega-litigation like we've never seen. I hope that's not the case.

(c) 2010 David Calloway

Lose Up To 4500 lb FAST!

2010-09-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Now, I have to admit-- I'd be a hypochrite to wear this on a T-Shirt myself.

While volunteering for BikePhilly 2010, I envisioned this image for the many people I've met who have given up their cars, upgraded their bikes, rent a PhillyCarShare or ZipCar when they need to, and get younger looking every year.

Join the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia at http://www.bicyclecoalition.org/.

Free Report and Assessment Tool: Evaluating, Assessing, and Reducing the Carbon Impact of ICT

2010-09-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Evaluating, Assessing, and Reducing the Carbon Impact of ICT is a free report offered by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).
GeSI’s ICT (or IT, as it’s called only in the US) Enablement Methodology “provides immediate guidance on the process of identifying and quantifying the CO2 effects of implementing an ICT solution.” It comes with an Assessment Worksheet.

Three things I want to gain from this: 1. Determine the value this report can bring IT, or ICT, units in this region; 2. Find clues to why people promoting "Green IT" solutions still seem to be separate from the overall corporate sustainability community; and 3. Identify what I can do to change that.

ICT, by the way, is what the rest of the planet calls IT. It stands for Information and Communication Technology. This term far better describes what most of us do as ITers. As IT moves increasingly to the Cloud and the Internet, which are themselves becoming indistinguishable, Communication becomes even more central to all we do.

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative, based in Brussels, “brings together leading ICT companies – including telecommunications service providers and manufacturers as well as industry associations – and non-governmental organisations committed to achieving sustainability objectives through innovative technology.”

Many familiar names are members of this organization: Microsoft, Verizon, HP, Deutche Telecom (parent of T-Mobile), Cisco, and more.

The ROI of green IT | Green IT - InfoWorld

2010-09-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

The ROI of green IT Green IT - InfoWorld: "The ROI of green IT"

Things that make IT greener, also make it more efficient, more effective, more agile, and friendlier to the business side. In fact, Green IT makes so much sense, it's almost a no-brainer. And that's a problem.

It is my hunch that IT organizations that launch "Green IT" initiatives outside the overall Corporate Sustainability tent risk costing their organizations in a variety of ways. I'll talk about these in my next post.

If you have any experience that either confirms or contradicts this assertion, please talk about it here, or email me at greenitdigest at comcast dot net.

Social m-Learning can enable eco-alignment

2010-09-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

e-learning and m-learning (mobile learning) can be pivotal forces in making the workforce as a whole more eco-savvy, both in attitude and in practice. m-Learning is especially promising, because it supports just-in-time, on-the-job learning, while a job task is being performed.

In a social media context, m-learning allows active mentoring and guidance at far lower cost than has ever been possible. Now, the many corporate leaders who are committed to improving their environmental performance can do more than just preach and hope. They can provide the tools for all their employees to walk the talk in reality.

BTW, I could really use some suggestions for Labels for posts like this. Mostly, I just make up my metadata, but that's lousy SEO practice. Any suggestions?

Green Promoters: Lose the Lawn!

2010-08-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

Unless you're in the Great Plains and it's two feet high, a lawn is UNSUSTAINABLE.

I'm not saying to go out and tear yours up. I'm certainly not going to tear mine up, my wife wouldn't allow it.

But, I am saying, stop using grass and lawn imagery when you're promoting your Green products and services. It's going to backfire, and you'll wish you'd used some more accurate icon of sustainability. What would that be? Oh, I don't know. Use your imagination, and let me know if you think of something.

My favorite part of gathering requirements

2010-07-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

What do I like best about gathering and documenting requirements?
It's this: When I finish analyzing a process, I share with the participants where I see them, as part of the big picture. Often, they are surprised and impressed with how important they are. The resulting confidence leaves people more optimistic and open to embracing new roles and challenges.

Project Management in {your specialty goes here}

2010-06-18T04:53:00.000-07:00

I hope you never have to recover a crashed hard drive. But in doing so, it's amazing what one finds. I turned up gems that could have become articles, books, businesses or even entire industries, had I just stuck with them. This is one idea that could have become an article.

In 2006, Project Management expert Cheryl Strait published "It's All in the Technique" in Information Management Journal. Reading the article, I quickly recognized the universality of her advice. It's so universal, in fact, that I copied it into Word, and wherever the phrase "records management" or the acronym "RIM" appeared, I replaced it with {your specialty goes here}.

I read through the result, and it mostly worked. Try it for yourself. Find the article at http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/all-in-the-technique.html, and wherever you see the phrase "records management" or the acronym "RIM", mentally plug in your industry or specialty.

BTW, according to LinkedIn, Cheryl is now a Principal at Ernst & Young, near Detroit, MI, USA.

Mobile Learning is key to creating a Green Workforce

2010-06-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

M-Learning-- mobile learning-- is key to creating a Green Workforce, because it puts in people's hands the info they need to do the right thing- where decisions are made, and actions taken.

Most firms express a committment to the environment at a high level, but the behavior I see at a day-to-day level is still as oblivious as ever. I want to create a framework and a curriculum to enhance all on-the-job interactions with the environment. The content would start out general and story-driven, gradually scaling out to role- and task-specific instructional materials, across a range of trades and professions. It's a huge task, and as the recent oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico proved, it's past time we got started on it.

Please forward this to ones who would be motivated and able to make a business in this domain.

The Kaizen Culture: Don't Manage Waste, Eliminate It

2010-05-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

Kaizen is the Japanese term for constantly working to eliminating waste in all ways, at all levels. It's quite popular in manufacturing and other pursuits, and is helping to increase the competitiveness of our industries.

But in our everyday lives-- now, that's a different, sadder story. Today is large trash day here in Swarthmore. On just a few nearby streets, I saw enough nice, usable furniture out on the curb to furnish an apartment.

Our current approach, at its best, is called cradle-to-grave management. But that's a misnomer, since there is no actual "grave" where so much waste can be buried. As in our industries, we must seek to eliminate waste, by not producing it in the first place. This is called cradle-to-cradle resource management, or zero-output waste management.

The way we're "managing" our waste now, we're destined to drown in it, sooner or later.

Is "Complex Learning Theory" about learning complex things, or a complex theory about learning?

2010-01-03T12:57:00.000-08:00

Complex Learning Theory:
Is that a theory about learning complex things,
or a complex theory about learning?
It's all too chaotic for me.

I'm repeating this old article, because it's still relevant. It began as a note to my research advisor: "In case you were wondering why my 'Chapter 2-- Learning Theory' is taking so long to write…"

Whenever I look for something on the Web, I end up chasing after something else. So, to keep myself on course, I lean into the wind, furrow my brow, and doggedly recite, "North -- North -- North -- Noth -- Noth -- Nouth -- Nouth -- South -- South..."

In my Masters research paper I investigated ways the Web could be made a simpler, more organized learning tool. And this is a research paper, so I need theories, right? I didn't find "Simplicity theory," but I did find "Complexity Theory." Hmm- Maybe that has something useful to say about this!

I went to my friendly search engine, Google, and typed in "complexity theory learning". Of course, Google returned about 5300 links, most of them patently irrelevant. The first one was dead-on: "Complexity Theory Learning." Great! But the content was a bit too-- well, complex. So, I clicked "More Like This".

Yes, this is perfect! Not only do I find Chaos & Complexity Theory in Education, but it's at nearby UDel (http://www.udel.edu/aeracc/)! Now thoroughly mesmerized, I ignore the cautionary, and not highlighted, "Chaos &…" part, and surge onward.

Well, not quite perfect. It's got a good overview paragraph, and lots more links, but nothing specifically about learning. Here's "An annotated list of websites of interest to those pursuing complexity theory " (http://www.udel.edu/aeracc/sites.html). Well, I am interested, and... am I pursuing complexity theory? Uh-- I think so.

Okay, now I'm in the annotated list. Hey, there's Complexity on Science Friday NPR (http://www.realaudio.com/contentp/npr/nf1103.html)! Well, I like Science Friday, but it’s stupid to have to sit at my computer just to listen to the radio. So, I pass that up, and continue reading...

Hmm. Here's a category called "Education and Complexity Theories". That sounds on-target, but it has only three choices. I'm not looking for Math, and Connectionism sounds too touchy-feely for serious academic work. Social Systems sounds kind of like a party, so I go to: Clemson Research Institute for the Study of Complex Social Systems (CRISCSO) (http://www.hehd.clemson.edu/complex/Cmplxdex.htm).

All right! And it’s got pictures! But where's the social part? What's this "generated by equations" stuff? Finally, I see For beginners. A-hah! Let's see where that goes: Chaos and Complexity Theory for Beginners. Perfect! (There’s that word again. Remember the last time I said that?)

Hmm. What's this? "Poincaré Map of the Logistic Equation with a Spreadsheet"? I don’t know, that sounds kinda heavy, but with my defenses too numbed to smell a trap, I proceed to:

Having Fun With a Chaotic Equation:
Using a Spreadsheet Program to
Plot the Logistic Equation

Fun, Plot Logistical Equation, Chaotic, Spreadsheet… What are those words doing together?

It’s a plot, all right! This can’t be happening! I laugh, I cry, I stare into the glare of the oncoming headlights. My ears ring, my head spins, and I grab the arms of my chair. Noooo! I’m falling into the black hole of Web obfuscation! And it's got a code! Lemme outta here, that stuff's highly contageous! (Cue sound effect of door slamming, as normal breathing slowly resumes.)

Whoa, that was a close call. Whatever the title, beginners are clearly NOT welcome here, I can see that. Maybe academics should leave popularizing to marketers and other professionals.

Hastily I escape back to UDel, realizing that my only hope is Complexity on Science Friday NPR (http://www.realaudio.com/contentp/npr/nf1103.html). Maybe at least I can download it to my PDA and listen to it on a trip. Having to sit still at my PC for an hour and be lectured at by Ira Flato is not an ideal condition for learning.

What's this? "Requested file not found. The link you followed may be outdated or inaccurate." Groan. Help! After I click the "More Info" button, the mass of trouble-shooting instructions fade to a muddy blur.

Does anybody remember why I'm doing this? I don't. This is all just too complex. Or, as Fagin put it in Oliver, "I think I'd better think it out again!"

I still don't know how Complexity Theory applies to Learning. My brain is numb. I don't have any more time to look.

Learning Theories has just gotten too Complex for me.

Schlepping our own Stumbling Blocks to Copenhagen

2009-12-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

I published this a while back on my Plastisaurus site, but it bears repeating now:

FOR SALE: Fine, furniture-grade Stumbling Blocks, in solid woods and hardwood veneers.
Lovely accessories, add grace to your home, office, or outdoor decor.
Wonderfully inert, useful for stabilizing large piles of objects, as well as for stopping trucks, traffic, good moods, meeting agendas, and relationships. Quite heavy, on-site pickup only. Make offer.

I was inspired by the US quietly increasing its 2020 Carbon Reduction Target from 1990 levels to much higher 2005 levels.

Although there are sure to be plenty of things for our negotiators to sit on, they're schlepping their own Stumbling Blocks all the way to Copenhagen. I can only hope they get damned uncomfortable!

Add IT, Global Telecom Group tells Copenhagen

2009-12-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

Pressure mounts for IT inclusion in Copenhagen agreement

Industry steps up lobbying for energy-efficient IT projects to be included in expanded CDM

Summary:

The IT industry will be mentioned in the draft climate treaty that will form the basis for negotiations at next month's UN summit in Copenhagen, following a successful lobbying campaign from the international body that regulates the IT and telecommunications industry.

The International Telecommunications Union said that the main aim of its push to have IT included in the treaty is to see energy-efficient IT projects included in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offsetting scheme, or any successor to it.

Read the full article at:

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2253904/top-level-pressure-grows-ict

San Jose Data Center now LEED Gold. Any in the East?

2009-11-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

Fortune Data Centers Lands LEED Gold Certification, Facebook as Tenant | GreenerComputing.com.
Only five such in the US. Any in the Philadelphia region, I wonder?
Where does one go around here to find clean computing?
When it's all virtual, how much does location matter?
Is there an environmental cost if a local firm uses a LEED-certified data center on the West Coast, which means transmitting all its bits and bytes across the continent, an a steady, two-way, 24/7 torrent?

What Global Warming?

2009-11-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

The image is not as elegant as I'd like, but hopefully you get the idea.

You've probably heard the story that, if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and turn on the burner, it won't realize it's dying until too late.

Whether that story is true or not, it's a fitting image for those who are still denying that climate change is real.

Building a case for Green IT Accreditation and Certification standards in the US

2009-10-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Building the case

Most of my career has been in Information Technology. I have considered myself an environmentalist much longer than that. I am finally crawling out of my cubicle and taking actions that are long overdue.

It's possible to make a strong case for making the greening of IT a central focus of any enterprise sustainability effort. This case will be greatly strengthened, if these two claims can be proven:

Computing is the fastest-growing energy consumer in the world. This includes all the networks, data centers, infrastructure, and devices, both wired, wireless, and cellular, used in all applications everywhere, because they all work through computers.
Greening IT offers the fastest financial payback of any advanced sustainability effort, second only to basic things like turning lights out at night and closing the door to keep the heat/cold out.

Do you know where, or from whom, I can get evidence that confirms, denies, or clarifies these claims?

Two more points to support this case were originated by me. Any input on these would also be appreciated:

As inherent systems thinkers, IT people are ideally suited to step out of our cubicles and take active sustainability leadership. This includes advising and coaching non-ITers to think and act more systemically about the ecosystem and its challenges. We needn’t continue acting like voices in the wilderness.
Green IT is distinct enough to be recognized as a professional discipline, because it encompasses design and use of business processes and applications as well as of hardware and software infrastructure, facilities, power and ventilation systems. As a distinct professional discipline, Green IT will be defined, promoted, managed, and enforced by an independent, not-for-profit organization. This means creating and applying distinct standards and instruments for accrediting qualified professionals, and for certifying business entities, including data centers. More detail on this quest is below.

No Green IT Accreditation in US?

This line of inquiry began with my finding no avenue for becoming accredited as a Green IT professional. Here are the most relevant programs I did find, and the key limitation of each:

The Greater Philadelphia Green Business Program provides its member firms a checklist and a framework for moving toward greater sustainability. In most cases this encompasses IT initiatives, but does not provide specific guidance for them. Visit www.phillygreenbiz.com.

The British Computer Society (BCS) is launching a new qualification for Green IT. The Foundation Certificate in Green IT outlines best practice basics, covers related regulations, policies and legislation in the UK, strategizes techniques, and describes carbon energy accounting. This author does not know whether such a broad agenda makes it the best available model, or just really vague. Visit http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10479.

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) sees Greening IT as a subset of LEED. This makes it an issue of buildings and facilities, and how much power they consume, not how and for what the power is used. IT solutions that reduce energy and increase efficiency, such as virtualization, cloud computing, telecommuting, and teleconferencing do not enter this equation, which leaves GBC out of the running. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Visit www.usgbc.org/.

The Green Electronics Council created EPEAT certification to help purchasers evaluate, compare and select electronic products based on their environmental attributes. Component lifecycle, while important, is just one aspect of Green IT. EPEAT stands for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool. Visit www.epeat.net/.
The MSPAlliance has a program offering Green IT Certification to member Managed Service Providers. While this certification may be useful as a model, it was created to fit the needs of one industry, not all. Visit http://www.mspalliance.com/why-mspa/green-it-certification-program.

Building a case for Green IT Accreditation and Certification standards in the US by David Calloway is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Green IT: Links to what the big players are doing

2009-10-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

I wrote this piece in late July 2009. It's appearing now as a reference for people who attend Celebrate Green IT! in Philadelphia on October 20. Thanks to http://www.thegreenitreview.com for a list that inspired this collection.

But those who didn't attend are welcome to use it, too.

What are the big players doing, and how can the not-so-big do it too?

The "low-hanging fruit" of Green IT savings are coming mainly from gains in energy efficiency. Much of this fruit hangs so low it's a hazard to foot traffic, so the assessments that identify it are mostly performed free of charge. The consultant who has the patience, and the pockets, to help one's clients pluck this low-hanging fruit will qualify to pursue the grand prize: a long-term contract to make the business itself operate more efficiently. So says Forrester research in a recent study about what IBM, HP, Accenture, and other big players are moving toward. I've gathered links to several major firms' Green IT and Green Enterprise web sites and white papers here.

See if you can learn their game.

IBM's Green IT portal: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/green/index1.shtml
A review of IBM's Smarter Planet and Green Sigma Coalition: http://www.thegreenitreview.com/2009/06/ibms-new-green-alliance.html

HP / Hewlett Packard: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/feature_stories/2007/07-360_greenup.html
HP also offers a free copy of Green IT for Dummies! It was written for the UK, but you'll get the idea. It's at http://www.hp.com/go/greenit4dummies.

Accenture: Shaping the Green Agenda, http://www.accenture.com/Global/Technology/Technology_Consulting/ShapingtheGreenAgenda.htm.
Accenture's Data Center Estimator white paper is at http://www.accenture.com/NR/rdonlyres/AF3D40D8-3786-4984-A18C-A1639678A1FC/0/AccGreenTechSuiteDataCenterEstimator.pdf.

SAP: http://www.sap.com/solutions/sustainability/index.epx.
And, SAP is kind enough to share their Business Case for Sustainability, at http://www.sap.com/solutions/sustainability/business-process/index.epx.

Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/environment/

CSC: http://www.csc.com/greenway

Dow Jones has a Sustainability Index at http://www.sustainability-indexes.com/. SAP reports it has topped this list for 3 years running.

A firm called Glasshouse has what they call an Energy Proficiency Impact Analysis: http://www.glasshouse.com/UserFiles/File/090602_epia.pdf. It's more general, and includes

Energy savings for smaller commercial buildings-
http://www.automatedbuildings.com/news/jun08/articles/spinwave/080526024707spinwave.htm

Green Initiatives: Hire A Consultant?

2009-10-19T05:58:00.000-07:00

Green IT Can Yield Tangible Financial Benefits, But Specialized Expertise Can Facilitate Project Development
Source: http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Fp3024%2F31p24%2F31p24.asp, written by Kurt Marko.

This is my commentary on the article, along with some quotes. I wrote this piece in late July 2009, and posted it October 20. A companion piece follows: What the Big Players Are Doing.

The article was published June 13, 2008. What’s happened in the intervening year? Why so little apparent progress?
Might author Kurt Marko have ideas on identifying Green IT initiatives and connections in the Phila area?

Quotables:
The quotes are in san-serif type, and my commentaries are in serif type.

…three major drivers of green IT initiatives are cost savings imperatives (of which power and cooling efficiency are paramount), overall corporate green initiatives, and technology refresh opportunities.

Green may be golden for a new class of IT service providers aiming to capitalize on growing environmental awareness by enterprises, according to a recent study by Forrester Research.

In light of the diverse and fluid nature of green IT and the specialized knowledge outside traditional IT domains it entails, companies pursuing green initiatives are looking to consultants and service providers for help.

Forrester terms this new market “green IT services” and defines it as “consulting services that help enterprise IT organizations reduce their companies’ environmental impact by assessing, planning, and implementing initiatives that make the procurement, operation, and disposal of IT assets more environmentally responsible.” Of course, disposal is just one aspect. IT is trending toward cradle-to-cradle asset lifecycle management, which means that the materials in every product are managed with the intent that they will eventually become part of another product, not end up in a US landfill, or worse, in an off-shore dismantling sweatshop, poisoning foreign children and ecosystems.

…however, there’s a much more quantifiable reason IT departments are going green: power consumption. Increasing server density, coupled with today’s power-hungry quad-core processors, means many data centers are simply running out of electricity.

IT-intensive sectors are ripe for green initiatives. Mines says, “financial services, telecom, and pharma were often cited in our interviews as companies facing limits on growth due to power provisioning, cost, and/or tight real estate in their data centers.”

SO, WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
A Green IT Assessment looks much like the technology assessment a systems integrators will typically do for a new or prospective client. According to Forrester’s Mines, a green IT program logically follows three phases: assessment, planning, and implementation. This sequence is illustrated at http://www.processor.com/articles//P3024/31p24/31p24chart.pdf?guid=ED21050A20F84927AE47D721B647A602.

Some additional key points from the Processor article about the Forrester research:
1. Assessment services entail creating an overall green IT plan and developing an ROI model.
2. The detailed planning phase aims to identify specific green initiatives from a menu, including equipment procurement, recycling, and reuse to improve data center efficiency. It also can entail positioning IT to support a company’s overall green strategy through such things as telecommuting, building automation, or supply chain optimization.
3. Components of the Implementation phase are not summarized in the article, but are described in some detail.

The conclusion: Given IT’s voracious power demands and its role in equipment procurement and disposal, the greening of IT is a trend that will become more prominent over the next few years.

Celebrate Green IT in Philly October 20!

2009-09-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

A Celebration of Green Information Technology

REGISTER AT http://greeninformationtechnology.eventbrite.com/.

Hosted by the Academy of Natural Sciences Center for Environmental Policy (CEP)

What: Discover your role as a Green IT leader! Enjoy a fun and informative evening with other environmentally-conscious Philadelphia-area IT and technology professionals, welcoming the dawn of environmentally-sustainable IT. Learn how you can bring your passion for the planet to work, to help the environment, your company, and your career.

When: Tuesday, October 20, 2009; reception 6:00 to 6:30; program 6:30 to 8:00 PM

Where: Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Ben Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia. For directions, go to http://www.ansp.org/, click Visit, and click Getting Here.

Cost: FREE, but please REGISTER at http://greeninformationtechnology.eventbrite.com/.

Need more information? Contact David Calloway at GreenITDigest@comcast.net.

How One Local Firm Went Green, Powerfully and Profitably

Joe Tait will present his true Green Information Technology success story What began as a modest initiative to reduce wasted energy at NMS Labs in Willow Grove, PA,. It quickly grew into a company-wide campaign to become more efficient, effective, and cleaner. Instead of resisting, as managers had feared, most employees responded with 'Why didn’t we do this before?'
Joe is the CIO of NMS Labs. Throughout his career, he has built cost-effective, highly-motivated business and IT organizations supporting operations in a range of industries. Joe’s achievements include turning around operations, spearheading start-ups, and integrating IT functions after mergers.

Green IT vs. Climate Change by Quiet Riot

The performance troupe Quiet Riot, a.k.a. Bill and Dave Mettler, will take a 4 billion year joyride through the History of Oil, bringing us to our present twin challenges: Peak Oil & Climate Change. You will discover your role as a Green IT leader and learn of best practices you can take back to your organization to reduce carbon and save the world!

Quiet Riot use story, physical comedy, sound effects, and audience interaction. Their programs captivate audiences nationally at conferences, seminars, and workshops, and recently at events for Green Business, Eco-Economy, Transition Communities, and Peak Oil awareness.

About CEP and Green IT

CEP provides a non-partisan, science-based forum for public and private environmental stakeholders. Building upon its successful Town Square series and special events, CEP brings important environmental issues to the forefront.

Green Information/IT primarily means:

Using IT to reduce negative environmental impacts of business activities by helping organizations and enterprises operate and interact more efficiently and effectively
Reducing IT’s negative environmental impact by managing equipment and processes to reduce the resources needed, and ensuring safe disposal and re-use
Increasing business effectiveness, morale, and sense of community, while cutting costs

What are Smart Systems, briefly?

2009-08-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Smart systems are the monitors, feedback loops, automated processes, and networks that enable the system to respond effectively in real time to changing conditions and events. The responses may be guided by people using dashboards, or by the systems themselves, applying complex analytical logic and input from a vast array of sources. The network for a geographically distributed system is usually the Internet. It could also be a wireless cellular network, or a wireless or wired local network. Electric companies would like to see their Smart Grids used to link smart systems together.

Wikipedia defines a smart system as a device, but it's really the whole-- system.

"Smart Grid to dwarf the Internet"- Is Cisco Exec Kidding?

2009-08-21T14:49:00.000-07:00

Cisco predicts Smart Grid to dwarf the Internet. June 25, 2009 by Chris Morsella in Green Economy Post's Smart Grid.
http://greeneconomypost.com/smart-grid-communications-networking-3319.htm.

Well, this turned out to be more of a ranting commentary than a summary of the article that inspired the rant. So, since I call this blog a Digest, here's the summary:

Basically, the article is summarized in its subtitle, "The Keystone of the Smart Grid is Real-Time Information and Making Good Use of It".
The author reports that Marie Hattar, vice president of marketing in Cisco’s Network Systems Solutions group, told Martin LaMonica, Senior Writer at Cnet, that “Our expectation is that this network (the Smart Grid) will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than the Internet."
Big Tech firms like Microsoft, IBM, Google, and Cisco are launching and buying start-ups to create and run the Smart Grid. This market is filled with things familiar to IT people, such as "end-to-end communications networking, data gathering, (and) mining and decision making."

My bone to pick is with the direction most of the Smart Grid money seems to be going. I'm hoping Hattar of Cisco's prediction is as off-target as that of her boss CEO John Chambers, who foresaw that "e-Learning will make email look like a rounding error." I do e-Learning, and it has indeed done well, and saves increasing millions of tons of carbon due to reduced training-related travel. But it's e-learning that has remained the rounding error compared to e-mail, not vice-versa.

If we're lucky, the smart-grid-that-rules-all-things prediction won't pan out, either.

Is it a sacrilege for an environmentalist and clean energy advocate to say such a thing?
Not if we look at the trends. Today, increasing efficiency usually means creating things closer to where they are used. This includes electricity. And, localized production of electricity is cheaper than ever, and getting cheaper. By contrast, the cost of moving large amounts of electricity long distances is going to go up, not down. That's because of the major infrastructure overhaul that it will take to make it possible.

The Department of Energy seems to be bucking this trend by supporting the big utilities in their hundred-plus year campaign to make sure most of our electricity is shipped in from somewhere far away. Electricity is like any commodity, in that shipping a long distance eats up a lot of the value it started out with. But with electricity, it shows up at the end of the pipe: what comes out is a lot less than what went in.

Producing electricity in mega-quantities may be a lot less expensive per megawatt than producing it, say on a county, municipality, or even neighborhood level. But, once you add up the costs of transportation, infrastructure, maintenance, and environmental degradation, it looks like not such a good bargain.

As Morsella points out, the utilities have kept power flowing to us, reliably and admirably, for longer than any of us have been alive. But, how progressive have they been? We can thank for that reliability the generations of in-the-box thinking of conservative managers, to whom "out of the box" would be tantamount to "out of control." This reliability has come at the cost of stodgy (not stogie, they're passe', even in utility boardrooms) policies and procedures. Continuing to follow this path, however much we improve it with real-time information dashboards and feedback mechanisms, exposes us increasingly to big-project cost overruns, systems that become obsolete long before they've been paid off, or even completed, and the security risks inherent in enormous, complex systems that nobody understands, but everybody depends on.

Remember "Too Big To Fail"? That was just earlier this year, folks, and it's not limited to financial institutions. There, too, managers jumped too fast from a slow-moving freight train onto a lightning-fast Acela without knowing where it was going, or how to work the controls when it veered onto a dead-end siding that ended in a neighborhood densely populated with policyholders, shareholders, and taxpayers. The result has not been pretty.

Big systems, old thinking. The Obama DOE still seems populated by the old, centralized command-and-control thinking of the big utilities. They want to spend many, many billions to upgrade the old electric highway, and create centralized, large-scale solutions such as hundred-acre solar arrays and hundred-turbine wind farms. A big part of that investment should go to improving energy efficiency, and supporting thousands of local power-generation initiatives. Energy sources that are interdependent— neither independent, nor dependent— will be most able to withstand disasters both natural and unnatural, such as terroristic threats. For more on that, see http://greeneconomypost.com/smart-grid-dark-side-1249.htm.

We have an effective model of interdependent cooperation. Fortunately, most of the Smart Grid solutions being developed will adapt easily to more localized implementations, maybe even making them more feasible. One place where a million little safeguards interface with a large centralized system is in the networked personal computer. Security is built into the software, at all the end points and at every point in between. It's not perfect, but it draws on the dedication and ingenuity of tens of thousands of dedicated volunteers to quidkly identify and neutralize most security threats, keeping most from getting out of hand.

The smart grid can replicate that model, but it will need to be considerably more robust. At the sign of a major threat, it must be able to break itself into thousands of independent sub-systems, running smoothly on their own until the threat passes. On the internet, instant contact with anywhere is vital. We don't need that level of connectivity for our electricity, we just need to get it from somewhere.

What's this mean to people in IT?
It was a painful adjustment for IT folks when the era of centralized mainframe control ended, and decentralized minicomputing took off. But, we adjusted. And we adjusted again, however painfully, to the teeming onslaught of personal computers, and again when those PCs united into the mighty Vox Populi Commercia of the World Wide Web. We're adjusting again to new business realities; indeed, many of us are among the rabble storming the Bastille of Business As Usual. So we're no strangers to change and increasing decentralization. In fact, many of us are leading it. So who's best qualified to usher in the dawn of the Smart Grid? The utilities, or us?

Green IT Back on the Rise? from Biz-Tech 3.0

2009-08-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

Green IT Back on the Rise?
Aug 19, 2009, in Biz-Tech 3.0, in CIO Insight Blogs.
http://blogs.cioinsight.com/biztech30/content/green_it/green_it_back_on_the_rise.html
Biz-Tech 3.0 blogger Brian Watson has been tracking Green IT for much of its on-again, off again way. He now feels it's reaching critical mass to become part of the landscape, something every self-respecting CIO has to at least be pretending to do something about. Of course, if they really know about it, they're already working with the CFO to make it real throughout not just their enterprise, but their supply chain.

The last person a CIO wants to hear about Green IT from is the CFO. (That line's from me, not from the article.) For the past three years, most green initiatives were extensions of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) campaigns, driven by Directors and CEOs. Now, the CFO grapevine is buzzing about the cost savings and efficiency gains of Green IT. CFOs are jumping onto that shiny new, solar-powered bandwagon. And that means Green IT is not just on the rise, it's here to stay.

My observation: How far can this CIO interest go, when 70% of CIOs don't pay their own electric bills? As much as they may want to reduce energy consumption, untill it's in their measurable objectives, how much can they really do?

eWeek links on Green IT and Green Computing

2009-08-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

eWeek has a section for Green IT and Green Computing. Here are the links, with my brief review and commentary for each. These aren't comprehensive, they're just the ones that jumped out at me.

From www.echannelline.com:
The Business Case for Sustainable IT . Solution providers can make a compelling case for green IT to small and midsized businesses. Referencing Forrester's Christopher Mines' 2008 study, Going Green goes hand in hand with increasing efficiency and effectiveness of both the IT function and the enterprise as a whole. Generally, activities that are environmentally unfriendly are often also ineffective or obsolete.

Are Solution Providers, VARs and IT Consultants Ready for Environmental Certific
A Gartner study points out that most solution providers can claim only the energy efficiency of the products and solutions they sell. Within a few years, Green IT certification standards will expand to include the environmental friendliness of full supply chain and lifecycle management and business practices, as well as stringent energy reductions.

From IBM:

Improving Business through IBM's Smart Energy and Environment Policy (Sponsor)

This December 2008 white paper frames Green IT within the context of business process transformation, summarizes some IBM initiatives, and hints at ways IBM can help their customers go green. As author Ellen Johnson concludes, "Green is the new Black."

From eWeek:
IBM, CalTech Use DNA for Future Microchips
What's the connection? Processors today use an immense amount of energy. And, although they're made in spotless "clean rooms", making them is a dirty, toxic business. This article describes a way to work with nature to make processors immensely smaller and more powerful, yet be cleaner to create and operate.

5 Steps to Green IT
Oh, this is scary. Although it doesn't come out and list the 5 steps, it does bring a lot of attention to e-waste and energy consumption. Mountains of computers and cell phones still go into our municipal solid waste stream, and they're just about the most toxic stuff in there. To quote the article: "More than 1,000 chemicals used during electronics production, such as lead, mercury and cadmium, have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems and other illnesses."

Top 10 Resources for Green IT . ...
Lists resources for the Small Business Owner. These are:

The Dept. of Energy's Green Power Network (GPN)
NERIC (National Electronics Recycling Infrastructure Clearinghouse)
Computer TakeBack Campaign
IBM's Green IT web site
Verdiem, power management software vendor
EnergyStar
GreenBiz.com
PlanetMetrics. A suite of carbon-based performance indicators, with improvements indicated

EPA Small Business Gateway. Resources for getting started, environmental assistance, technical help, and tips on saving money and finding other resources.
Is Green IT Dead? Video interview with Steve Schultz, Storage IO analyst in Princeton. By becoming more economically efficient and productive. Literally by shifting and addressing the business issues, becoming more efficient and more focused...green gets funded for free.

The Green IT and Green Computing Article Archive has lots more articles, but one caveat: eWeek's Green IT section picks up articles that have nothing to do with Green IT. Some examples are "No Funds for Deadly Asteroid Discovery" and "NASA's New Inflatable Heat Shield".

Hosted Services Go Green, Save Green

2009-06-16T07:44:00.000-07:00

Source: http://www.easterntechnologycouncil.org/downloads/etc/eTechTimes/eTT_may/eTT_MAY09_Dept-BusinessTech.html.

Summary:
Hosted Services bring cleaner air and a cleaner planet. Having your own data center is not only expensive, it presents a host of environmental problems. Hosted services, says Scott Kinka of Evolve IP (www.evolveip.net), can avoid a wide range of costs and environmental challenges.

A data center consumes a lot of energy, and creates a large carbon footprint. A carbon footprint is “the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product,” Kinka quotes from the UK Carbon Trust 2008. If you use a lot of computers, powering and cooling them make up a big chunk of your organization’s total carbon footprint.

Most firms cram their servers into a spare closet in an office building, and buy lots more expensive, dirty energy trying to keep them running cool. In a few years all that expensive equipment gets obsolete. It then becomes just another tangle of un-bio-degradable scrap in a landfill, maybe leaking mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and a plethora of other toxins into somebody's groundwater. And at every step, it spawns a minefield of potential liabilities, as regulators seek to make us more responsible for cleaning up after ourselves.

To summarize the points in his May '09 Tech Times article:

The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of any technology solution includes not just the hardware and software, but the maintenance staff and fees, power, and environmental support for the equipment itself, as well as isolating the impact it has on nearby "wetware"; i.e., humans.
One typical digital PBX (phone system) server consumes roughly 700 watts of power. Since that's almost as much energy as running a small space heater, a toaster, or seven 100 watt light bulbs, it generates a lot of heat that must be removed into the atmosphere, further increasing the global warming effect. And of course, what's a phone server without a voice and email server, file server, and several routers, each running at several hundred watts?
A shared facility is optimized to bring servers on- and off-line quickly, as demand changes. Many more applications can run on far fewer servers. (In another source, I found that a single-application server typically runs at one tenth of its capacity.)

My Questions:

I’ve read that 10% is typical for an application server in a corporate data center. How much energy would a server running at 10% capacity consume, and heat produce? What percent would optimal capacity be? It would be helpful to see studies that compare and illustrate various cases. I’d guess that shared servers in a corporate data center are a bit better optimized. Do utilization rates compare to a hosted center?
At what scale does it make sense to consider moving to a hosted solution? This could be either in terms of benefit:cost ratio (revenue available, earnings at risk) or as a measure of operational and infrastructural overhead.
At the other end, at what point does a firm tend to exit the hosted solution, and build its own data center/server farm? And, what cost and risk factors are most likely to be ignored in this process?

IBM duo slashing power use at data centers

2009-06-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

Source: http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/06/16/focus2.html.

Summary:
Data centers are those mysterious buildings loaded with electronic machinery and mostly devoid of people. In 2006, data centers consumed 1.5 percent of all the power produced in the United States. Three years have passed, and their numbers have only grown, along with their energy consumption.

All that energy is expensive and dirty, and IBM's Project Big Green is working to reduce it. Last year, the firm's Gerstner Award for Client Excellence went to Chris Molloy and Mike Hogan for helping the firm and its clients diminish their collective carbon footprint.