Beyond Green IT
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that
makes the existing model obsolete.”
- Richard Buckminster Fuller
Q: What’s the Idea?
A: Greening the Ethernet
A few years back, Green IT was concerned with the relative environmental friendliness of the components inside computers, the processes used to make those components, and the energy efficiency of the units themselves.
More recently, Green IT is concerned with power usage in data centers. That’s because the aggregate carbon footprint of Data Centers in the US is greater than the airlines, accounting for over 2% of our Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. Plus, the collective Data Center footprint continues to grow as more people go online, and more companies institute policies to reduce travel and utilize sophisticated video conferencing instead.
The power consumption of Data Centers and their related carbon footprint is huge because the servers, routers, and switches suck up a tremendous amount of electricity and generate an enormous amount of waste heat which, in turn, requires even more electricity to run the cooling units to dissipate that heat.
So far, greening this data infrastructure, or IT, has been concerned with efficiencies that can be obtained within the existing mind-set of servers, routers, copper wires, and air conditioners. Typical initiatives have included raised floors, the placement of fans, reduction of the number of underutilized servers, cogeneration, insulation, and even the placement of server farms in modular trailers in close proximity to hydroelectric facilities in the cold north (where air conditioning is free). Lately, the urban-located industry has also been revolutionized with a breath of fresh air; IT leaders cite the innovative use of cold air. Now, when it’s colder outside than in, they turn off the air conditioning and import and filter that free cold air.
Some of these ideas are basic, albeit expensive to implement. A recent article in Environmental Leader cited “major savings” by reconfiguring the Data Center with overhead air-conditioning inputs and a concrete floor, which provides cold mass that draws chilled air down through the server racks, cooling the equipment as it falls, in accordance with the laws of physics, thereby reducing the electric load required to drive cold air with fans.
Yet all of these solutions are rather like polishing a big fin ‘59 Cadillac, with the intention that a smoother surface will deliver better gas mileage. Perhaps what’s needed is “a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” One new model is to reduce the number of circuits by aggregating them onto fewer (and different) data lines; a smart solution that will reduce or eliminate as much equipment (heat) as possible, while introducing a technology that requires less space, less electricity, and deploys new equipment that generates substantially less heat. Beyond Green ITTM does just that. It accomplishes savings on multiple levels by Greening the Ethernet, or network portion, of enterprise computing.
Benefits:
1) Installation: This idea, Beyond Green ITTM, is important because it can reduce the cost of installation by as much as 40%. What does that mean in dollars and sense? Well, if a legacy installation of switches, routers, and cabling for a new data center were to cost $10 million, the cost to install this new idea, Beyond Green ITTM, could be, depending upon the specifics of the installation, as low as $6 million.
2) Manpower Efficiencies: Due to the reduction of equipment (through the elimination of switches and repeaters in multiple riser closets distributed across the campus of a typical LAN), Beyond Green ITTM can dramatically reduce the manpower needed to maintain an active legacy Ethernet system. With Passive Optical Networking (PON), Beyond Green ITTM can deliver manpower savings of as much as 80%.
2) Reduced Power Consumption: Once installed, Beyond Green ITTM can (again, depending upon the specifics of the installation) dramatically cut electric power consumption and hence operational costs by as much as 80%. Thus, if the power bill for a legacy installation had previously been $10,000 per month, it could be reduced to as little as $2,000.
3) Additional Benefits. Beyond Green ITTM offers speeds up to 2.4 Gigabits downstream with no jitter and with latency near instantaneous. 9 Gigabit speed is projected in the near future. With Beyond Green ITTM, “local” network is redefined in terms of miles, meaning that it distributes data as much as 40 miles (or more, depending upon the specific configuration) without additional data closets, switches or repeaters. Plus, this technology converges voice, video and data on a network that is not only far more secure, but also more reliable.
4) Carbon Footprint, Carbon Credits: Reduced power consumption equals reduced carbon footprint. Regardless of one’s personal opinion of carbon legislation, the smart companies are preparing for this inevitability. It may be 2009, it may be 2010, but it is coming. The Obama Administration has implemented a brilliant “pincer” strategy whereby the EPA will promulgate regulations if Congress fails to produce legislation. Few Congressional Leaders and Senators will choose to abdicate their legislative imperative to EPA regulation. Why? Because failure to participate in such pivotal economic and environmental legislation is the shortest path to un-election. Riffing off the Gentrys’ 60’s hit, they are all literally, “dancing in a frying pan.”
But I digress… Once the inevitable carbon legislation is enacted, all companies will be looking for ways to cut carbon. And the smart ones are done looking, they’re already implementing!
In most cases, cutting carbon will be regarded as an outright capital expense to be earned back, or as the least expensive alternative between action and the punishing cost of inaction. For example, a dirty industry might need to invest in scrubbers to pull carbon from their smokestacks. But there’s another way, an opportunity path where two ways diverge in a carbon world. One way is the expense path, while the other is the profit path. The expense path, which really is the bumpy road of begrudging compliance, differs substantially from the profit path for which the first step is early implementation of Beyond Green ITTM.
All industries and companies have a substantial IT department. So let’s look at a dirty industry, since they are typically regarded as the most difficult to bring into profitable compliance. What if a coal-fired electric generator’s first carbon cutting action were to go after the IT sector? Well, doing this would deliver immediate substantial infrastructure efficiencies, plus savings in the installation, while routine operational costs will be reduced across the board. So instead of an added expense, they can implement an investment with a near-term ROI.
But remember, the initial driver was to obtain a compliance-driven reduction of their carbon footprint, thereby earning carbon credits. So here is where Beyond Green ITTM gets sweet: the operational savings, plus any applicable energy efficiency rebates, coupled with the capital value of reduced carbon emissions, will deliver a positive return that can be applied to other carbon reducing initiatives - which means that, by first implementing Beyond Green ITTM, a company’s first play in the carbon market can be regarded as the down payment on a new business unit, which will deliver the first trickle of an income stream that can be allocated to defray the cost of other, otherwise more costly, carbon reduction measures. It just makes sense.
5) Why is Beyond Green ITTM Important? The critical point of the previous section (4 above) is that under cap and trade legislation, or any other carbon regulation, carbon reductions can have a substantial income component; it is simply a matter of strategy. Because of the substantial manpower efficiencies, electrical power savings, and carbon reductions, Beyond Green ITTM couples this strategic income component with an almost immediate ROI. Thus, the initial investement in carbon reduction pays for itself and provides an income stream for further, lucrative, carbon reductions. Carbon reduction can become a business unit for nearly every intelligent entity. Wake up and smell the carbon!
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This paper is available in downloadable PDF format at:
www.jonwarrenlentz.com/downloads/BeyondGreenIT.pdf
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Beyond Green IT (tm), Economy, Energy, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.