ITEEx News to Use - Green Computing

I recently read Thomas L. Freidman’s latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded.

If you have not read his book, I highly recommend it. Whether you believe in all his remarks or not, is not important, what is important is that it gets one to think of the addiction we as Americans have on oil and the potential impact to our economy, our national security and our way of life.

After reading the book and reviewing my own carbon foot print, I have to begin to take notice to how I am negatively impacting the environment and contributing to the petropolitical climate.

Friedman explains how the world has gone from primitive man, to the agriculture age, to the industrial age, to the information age and according to him, we are entering Energy- Climate Age. He is ringing the bell loud and clear, if we do not get a grip on our dependency on oil, our way of life is in serious jeopardy. So being green is no longer the domain of the hippy fringe do gooder, but is the domain of mainstream America.


Since he wrote the book, a lot has happened:
• On a challenging note:
o the world economy has gone into chaos, we are suffering the steepest decline in our economy since the great depression
o employment is up and fear of a continued downturn is very prevalent
• On a good note:
o we had a major election, with the greatest voter turn out in our Nation’s history and we elected our first African-American president
o The price of a barrel of oil plummeted from over $140 to $66 and the price of a regular gallon of gas has dropped dramatically.

But I asked the question “Is the drop of the price of oil and gas, really a good thing?” Personally I think NOT! I believe it is just a temporary lull, until the petrodictators adjust supply and/or the economy adjusted itself, and demand begins to increase again.

The only true way to rid ourselves of the impact of wild swings in the price of oil is the development of new sources of clean renewable energy and conservation.

The forma challenge is longer term, regardless of your politics, there are challenges in driving innovation to create cost effective alternatives to dirty, old oil. Solar, geothermal, wind and hydro are still not cost effective and become even less cost effective at $66 a barrel. As the price of oil drops, sad as it may seem, we lose our resolve to address the issue. The challenge of creating clean, renewable energy is a marathon, not a sprint.

Having said that, what can we do, we can conserve! We can significantly reduce our use of energy. Clearly it works and it has been proven to us in just the last month. The price of oil has plummeted because demand is down because of the downturn in the world economy. There is a direct correlation between demand and cost of a barrel of oil. We can do the same thing on a sustained basis, with conservation.

So how can we in IT make a contribution? Please read on!

First some facts, did you know:
• Sources of electricity in the United States
o 50% from coal
o 20% from nuclear
o 15% natural gas
o 7% from hydro
o 3% from oil
o 2% from wood and geothermal
• France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, interesting the US generates twice as much nuclear electricity as France, but because of the size of our economy , it only represents 20% of our total supply
• A barrel of oil = 42 gallons
• American’s consume 21 million barrels of oil a day, over half is imported
• 14 million barrels goes to transportation, the rest to heating structures and the manufacturing of plastics and fertilizers

OK, so where does IT come in?

So here are more facts related to IT:
• Consumption of electricity by data centers doubled between 2000 and 2005
• IT is the largest consumer of electricity in most corporations, just data center usage in 2005 represented 1.5% of all electricity consumed
• Every kilowatt of energy consumed by a server requires nearly and equal amount of energy to cool it.
• The average PC, including the CPU, monitor and printer uses about 200 watts of energy

Since most of us in IT are not focused on the development of new clean alternative energy sources, what can we do?

Conserve! Conserve! Conserve!

It is not only good on reducing our dependency on foreign oil and petrodictators!

It is not only good for our environment!

Clearly, it reduces of cost of operation and contributes to our company’s bottom line!

If you are a user of technology (and who isn’t), here are some thoughts:
• Desk Top Technology – you can decrease energy consumption by as much as 80%, by addressing the following:
o Understanding and integrating products that comply with EPEAT standards
o Purchasing Energy Star products
o Encouraging end users to shut down unused electronics, especially after work hours and weekends, this alone could drop the cost per PC from $250 in energy consumption to $30 per year.
o Enable power management features
o Implementing strong recycling programs
o Reduce the amount of printing
o Purchasing recycled paper products
• Data Centers are the SUVs of IT!
o Buy Energy Star products
o Virtualization – fewer servers doing more
o Recycle

Most importantly, get your organization to think Green! How many times when you were a kid and left a light on in the house did you hear your mother say “ what do you own stock in the energy company?” I think we need to ask the same question inside our organizations.

I believe with the implementation of the policies and programs above, we can significantly reduce our consumption of energy in the process we will become a good corporate citizen and a good citizen of a clean world!

Please take the following survey below.



Think Green!!


Bill Waas
CEO
ITEEx