|
 January
22-23, 2009, the California Institute for Telecommunications
and Information Technology (Calit2) and the California Public
Utilities Commission (CPUC) hosted the Greening of the
Internet Economy workshop on the University of California, San
Diego campus.
This event gathered hundreds of the foremost public policy
makers, industry experts, research leaders, and global
nonprofits to advance strategies for sustainability and energy
efficiency in the rapidly growing realm of Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT). (The ICT term was used
pervasively at the event.)
The scientific world, public policy-makers and most of the
general public, are moving beyond debate about whether human
beings are contributing to global warming and a rapidly
approaching global ecological crisis. The new world focus is
on how to reduce carbon emissions to fight global warming.
It’s time for the ICT sector to respond by reducing energy
usage dramatically, ensuring ICT elements are built “green”
and contributing solutions to help people at home and in all
industries combat this global crisis.
This symposium provided an unprecedented opportunity for
decision-makers in key sectors—investment, technology,
government and business—to identify ways to build an Internet
economy and infrastructure to ensure a more sustainable
future.
Google's Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl’s keynote described a
green ICT future, from the possibilities of "cloud computing"
and low-power devices to the potential of universal access to
personal energy information - and steps needed to achieve this
vision.
CPUC Commissioner, Rachelle Chong, co-hosted the event and set
up a discussion of public policy efforts to address green
issues. CPUC President Michael R. Peevey spoke. To meet
California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) goal of
reducing California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels
by 2020, we need powerful strategies soon.
 Smart
Green ICT Visions
Globally, it is estimated that ICT is responsible for 2-3% of
greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as airlines. With
current trends, ICT related greenhouse gas emissions are
estimated to roughly triple by 2020. We need strategies and
practices to reduce ICT emissions.
Smart Data Centers:
Electrons or photons transiting networks consume relatively
little energy. Roughly a quarter of CO2 emissions in ICT come
from data centers. According to the U.S. Department of Energy
and EPA, U.S. data centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity
in 2006, representing 1.5% of all U.S. electricity consumption
and double the amount consumed in 2000.
 As
little as 3% of the power produced for data centers is used to
actually route, switch and serve data. Roughly 5 watts are
produced for every watt used by ICT equipment.
We have tremendous opportunities to improve efficiency in data
centers. Strategies include:
• Virtualization to reduce the numbers of servers
• Better data center design and construction
• Better equipment design
• Better software design
• Locating data centers where zero emission power is produced
and connections to high-performance optical networks is
available
• Using “black box” portable container data center designs
which are very efficient
• Developing “Energy Star” –like certifications for data
centers and data center equipment
• More efficient cooling system designs
• Better metering, monitoring and control systems
• Better business practices and policies
• Proposed Data Center Energy Productivity (DCEP) metrics and
standards
• Improve Power Utilization Efficiency (PUE) performance
(historically around 3 and now approaching 1.08 with black
boxes)
Smart Hardware, Network and Software Design/Deployment:
 According
to the U.S. EPA, 11% of electricity consumption in the U.S.,
worth $10 billion annually, is due to standby power –
so-called “vampire” power for electronic devices.
We have tremendous opportunities to improve the energy
efficiency and energy management capabilities of ICT hardware
and software, including:
• Energy Star ratings and/or other standards and green buying
tools for ICT devices
• Solutions to reduce vampire power
• Network management solutions to enable business policies to
be systematically applied to ICT devices (such as the
Cisco Energywise)
• System designs to reduce data duplications
• Efficient software and operating system designs & code to
reduce “bloatware”
• Developing measurements and standards for computer code
efficiency
• Moving away from client-server models that require
power-hungry user devices toward “cloud computing” models that
allow low-power user devices (provided cloud computing data
centers are green)
• Developing business practices to optimize efficiency (e.g.
considering electricity consumption in buying decisions)
If serious attention and efforts did nothing more than reduce
the current and growing consumption of energy and production
of greenhouse gases by ICT related devices and operations, it
would be extremely valuable. However, when we explore plans of
most individuals, organizations and industries to reduce their
role in greenhouse gas production, we discover ICT is a key
enabler of many of their strategies.
Smart Transportation:
 The
more we can replace physical travel with networked virtual
experiences, the more we can reduce energy consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions. “Move electrons and photons, not
atoms.” Strategies include:
• Networked connectivity to enable more people to work from
home and reduce commute consumption and waste
• Networked connectivity to enable remote access to education
services
• High-performance videoconferencing solutions, like Cisco’s
Telepresence, to reduce the need for business travel
• Networked distribution models to reduce trips to video
stores and shipping of digital content
• Networked sensor and control device systems to improve
traffic flow and management and reduce waste
• Networked transportation information kiosks to make public
transportation options more appealing (e.g. by showing real
bus and train arrival times)
• Better implementations of computing and software
technologies to efficiently manage vehicle operation and
provide efficiency feedback to vehicle operators
Smart Buildings:
 There
is a lot of talk about green buildings, built to optimize
energy efficiency. However, there is also an enormous need to
make existing buildings more efficient.
Smart building infrastructure includes networked sensors,
controls and software to manage, among other things, responses
to weather conditions, energy shortages and building occupancy
patterns – saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions.
Providing real-time feedback mechanisms, as well as easy to
operate controls of things that affect power consumption, to
owners and managers can significantly affect behavior.
Smart Energy Grids:
 According
to The Climate Group’s Smart2020 report last June, the largest
opportunity for ICT to decrease global carbon emissions is
“Smart Grids,” deploying and efficiently operating sensor,
software and control systems to monitor and manage the
production, transmission, distribution and consumption of
electricity.
They quantify the opportunity at 2.03 gigatons of carbon
dioxide equivalent, worth $124.6 billion.
Ultimately, we need zero emission energy production and
distribution systems, but smart energy grids can help us get
there.
Smart Policy:
Smart public policy is essential to quickly address the global
warming crisis and our need for energy independence.
 We
need to stop using oil and combustion engines. We need zero
emission electricity everywhere. We need all electric vehicles
plugging into a zero transmission grid, or we need hydrogen
vehicles using hydrogen produced with zero emissions. We need
quality public transportation systems and quality, affordable
education.
In the ICT world, smart public policy would include an
extremely progressive policy for ICT infrastructure. We have
had essentially no ICT infrastructure policy in the U.S. in a
decade, and, as a result, we are not only losing our
international competitiveness, we are failing in education,
innovation, prosperity. A truly progressive ICT policy is
something like affordable underground fiber everywhere there
is a copper wire today and as the backbones of progressive
wireless service providers.
Smart ICT Infrastructure Policy would enable tremendous
progress in our efforts to combat global warming while
radically improving our standard of living.
Smart ICT Education:
 In
the closing session, MPICT Executive Director, James Jones,
said to the group: “This event has done a great job of
bringing together and, hopefully, motivating thought leaders
around these important issues. Hopefully, some great ideas,
policies and rules are going to come out of this. But at some
point, they have to be implemented if it’s going to make a
difference. I’d like to just point out a great tool we have in
our tool chests in the State of California, which is the
California Community College system. There are 109 colleges.
There are hundreds of thousands of students engaged right now.
Tuition is $20 a unit if you want credit. It’s free for
non-credit. It’s the most cost-effective way to push knowledge
and skills out into our community, and we need a workforce
that’s going to get up on the rooftops or in the data centers
and touch real gear and make real change happen. So, let’s
keep that in mind as we develop our plans for implementing
change.”
CALIT2 Director, Larry Smarr, responded: “I couldn’t agree
more… Let’s get several hundred million dollars into the
community colleges, in a competitive way, through competitive
proposals, for training a whole new generation of green-collar
workers, the people who are going to install, maintain,
support… because until
that’s there, you can want to do all kinds of things, and you
can have companies that have solutions, but there’s just not
enough human power to do it.”
http://greeninternet.calit2.net/archive.php
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