Green Data Center Blog

Economist Article on Problems with Energy Conservation, the "Rebound Effect"

The Economist has a well written article on the issues with Energy Conservation. It gives a good perspective from the holistic view of the potential energy savings from conservation and dives into details of implementing programs and energy saving appliances.

Anyone who is thinking of Green Data Center projects should read this article to get a good perspective on the issues on saving energy.

Here are a few highlights from the article.

Energy efficiency

The elusive negawatt

May 8th 2008
From The Economist print edition

If energy conservation both saves money and is good for the planet, why don't people do more of it?

IN WONKISH circles, energy efficiency used to be known as “the fifth fuel”: it can help to satisfy growing demand for energy just as surely as coal, gas, oil or uranium can. But in these environmentally conscious times it has been climbing the rankings. Whereas the burning of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming, and nuclear plants generate life-threatening waste, the only by-product of energy efficiency is wealth, in the form of lower fuel bills and less spending on power stations, pipelines and so forth. No wonder that wonks now tend to prefer “negawatts” to megawatts as the best method of slaking the world's growing thirst for energy.

The problem, analysts explain, is a series of distortions and market failures that discourage investment in efficiency. Often, consumers are poorly informed about the savings on offer. Even when they can do the sums, the transaction costs are high: it is a time-consuming chore for someone to identify the best energy-saving equipment, buy it and get it installed. It does not help that the potential savings, although huge when added up across the world, usually amount to only a small share of the budgets of individual firms and households. Despite recent price increases, spending on energy still accounts for a smaller share of the global economy than it did a few decades ago.

For all these reasons, homeowners, as Lord Stern pointed out in his climate-change report, tend to demand exorbitant rates of return on investments in energy efficiency—of around 30%. They generally want new boilers or extra insulation to pay for themselves within two or three years, says Mark Hopkins, of the United Nations Foundation, an NGO. Businesses are not quite so demanding, he says, but they still tend to put greater emphasis on increasing revenues than on cutting costs.

Similar stories crop up in the markets for new homes and offices, appliances and vehicles. Builders are not the ones who end up paying the utility bills, so have little reason to add to the construction costs—and hence the price of a home or office—by incorporating energy-saving features. The makers of appliances and cars also know that not all consumers and drivers will think as carefully about running costs as about the purchase price. By the same token, landlords have scant incentive to invest in energy efficiency on their tenants' behalf. And power companies are usually keen to encourage their customers to consume as much power as possible.

And, as Microsoft's Christian Belady has pointed out increasing efficiency does not necessarily decrease demand.  The Economist reinforces the idea of the "rebound effect."

However, no matter what methods governments adopt to encourage energy efficiency, the results may not be as impressive as they imagine. The culprit is something called the “rebound effect”. Falling demand for electricity or fuel brought on by an efficiency drive should lead to lower prices. But cheaper energy, in turn, is likely to prompt greater consumption, undermining at least some of the original benefits. What is more, consumers with lower electricity or fuel bills often put the money they have saved to some other use, such as going on holiday or buying an appliance, which is likely to involve the consumption of fuel and power.

Economists disagree about the size of the rebound effect, which is hard to measure. The British government commissioned two studies of the effect, from two different universities. The first found that it cancelled out roughly 26% of the gains from energy-efficiency schemes; the other put the figure at 37%. Either way, negawatts are worth pursuing. But they are unlikely to satisfy the world's thirst for energy to the extent their advocates assume.

Another good example of the rebound effect is in virtualization projects.

Why Green can have Difficulty at the Executive Level, environmental movement is not always guided by science

WSJ has a column written by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace who left in 1968 and now works for the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Why I Left Greenpeace

By PATRICK MOORE
April 22, 2008; Page A23

In 1971 an environmental and antiwar ethic was taking root in Canada, and I chose to participate. As I completed a Ph.D. in ecology, I combined my science background with the strong media skills of my colleagues. In keeping with our pacifist views, we started Greenpeace.

But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day today, this is a good lesson to keep in mind.

At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.

The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

My former colleagues ignored science and supported the ban, forcing my departure. Despite science concluding no known health risks – and ample benefits – from chlorine in drinking water, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have opposed its use for more than 20 years.

Patrick continues his venting.

Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride.

and closes

We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.

Keep this in mind if you are working on a Green Initiative and you are looking for executive support. Green has negative perceptions in some circles. 

Growth of Green Data Center News

Data Center Knowledge has a post about the boon times for Data Center News.

Data Center Knowledge hit a milestone today: according to FeedBurner, we now have more than 4,000 readers subscribing to our RSS feed. That reflects a broader upward trend in interest in data center news, which can also be seen in Google Trends, which shows that the number of U.S. news articles including the term "data center" has doubled in the past year:

Out of Curiosity I went to Google Trends and checked out Green Technology.  Here are the search and news results.

Add the two together and there is no shortage of Green Data Center news. I am up to about 200 subscribers in RSS feeds, and since I started blogging 6 months ago, my subscribers are growing about 50% a month.

Main thing is I am having fun, so it keeps me blogging.

Does Green Data Center Initiative work in Japan?

I ran into the ZDNET article

Hitachi tests its own green IT theories with new data center project

Hitachi Group is celebrating Earth Day with the groundbreaking of an expansion to its data center in Yokohama, Japan.

The new wing boasts technology advances that are part of the massive technology company’s CoolCenter50 project. It also plays into the company’s corporatewide Harmonious Green Plan, which calls for it to reduce 330,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2012 through various green IT products.

Hitachi’s green data center design plays off its own software and hardware ideas from all over the green IT spectrum, including storage virtualization and thin provisioning, data deduplication software, and its “ecology” server.

Here’s a visual depiction of the data center’s interior, showing how various functions, such as the electrical power facilities and the uninterruptible power supplies are located.

And, Hitachi Data Systems, Hu Yoshida who gave a keynote presentation at AFCOM's Data Center World, and has his own blog page.

Hu Yoshida

Hu Yoshida, the CTO of Hitachi Data Systems, provides his insight into industry issues, discusses in his own words storage best practices, and provides realistic solutions to real storage needs in today

CoolCenter50 and Harmonious Green

November 11th, 2007

In September of this year Hitachi ltd, our parent company announced a program in Japan that is known as CoolCenter50 which is targeted at reducing power consumption in their Yokohama and Okayama data center by 50% in 5 years. This effort encompasses all of the groups in Hitachi including, air conditioning, power generation, IT equipment and management software.

But, what set the tone for what is going on in Japan is this blog post by Forrester.

Japanese Systems Engineers - Too busy firefighting to do jury duty?

I want to thank Akky Akimoto of Asiajin for pointing out a story in Japan's Mainichi newspaper about Exemptions for Jury Duty in Japan (article in Japanese). Akky points out that "Systems Engineer" is one of the jobs in a special list compiled by Japan's law courts; a list of people who have valid reasons to be exempted from jury duty ...

Background: From May 2009, Japan will introduce a "lay judge system" in which ordinary citizens will help decide the outcomes of trials. Japan's supreme court anticipates that some citizens will try to dodge jury duty with excuses ranging from "I'm a beautician. New graduates are relying on me to style their hair and kimonos for the graduation ceremony season" or "I'm currently the top favorite hostess at the bar where I work."

In order to provide guidance to district courts regarding which excuses should be viewed with sympathy, the supreme court conducted some research and came up with ten examples of jobs and circumstances that may qualify as worthy excuses for declining to do duty as a "lay judge".

and, discusses what it means that IT System Engineers make the list of ten jobs excused from jury duty.

What should we infer from this?

- Japanese Systems Engineers are in short supply. They're stretched - working long hours and with little or no spare capacity. Japan's Ministry of Technology and Industry has acknowledged "There is a lack of skilled IT engineers, in terms of both quality and quantity." (2007 ASOCIO conference in Tokyo -- Katsuhiko Kaji, director, Information Service Industry Division).

- Japanese Systems Engineers are tied up with "fire fighting". There have been some very high profile disasters with corporate IT systems in recent years. Most famously, the Tokyo Stock Exchange was brought to a comlpete stop on a few occasions because of bugs in the computer system created by Fujitsu. (And it's not the busiest stock exchange in the world - by a long shot). Many Japanese companies are struggling to cope with IT systems that have been cobbled together over the past few decades. When Forrester interviews Japanese IT executives, we find that too few are taking steps to make their IT infrastructure more flexible and more manageable (as I explained last year in my report: Japan Technology Investments And Priorities).

I have heard business leaders comment that it's hard to attract young Japanese people to work in IT. Jobs in IT are perceived as the modern day equivalent of "3K" jobs. ("3K" originally refered to jobs that were "kiken, kitsui and kitanai": dangerous, hard and dirty). Because of the long hours, tough conditions, and lack of glamour, few Japanese graduates dream of becoming Systems Engineers.

But who knows, maybe a jury duty exemption will put the sparkle back into the IT career track....

It's pretty hard to be Green when you are in fire fighting mode, and there are shortage of skilled IT engineers.

I admit. I have a bias on this article. Both of my parents are Japanese heritage, and I've gone to Japan over 20 times for business trips, working on multiple Japanese projects. And, my favorite sports are still Judo and Aikido.

ITBusinessEdge - Will Green Data Centers Endure?Ask the opposite question - Will Brown/Black Data Centers be extinct in 5 years?

ITBusinesEdge, posts a blog on Will Green Data Centers Endure?

Is green technology set to become a permanent fixture of the IT industry, or is it just a fad – and one that’s getting ready to “jump the shark?”

Probably a little of both.

At the moment, all indications are that enterprises around the globe are taking seriously the concept of the “green” data center. While some of it can be attributed to the desire of IT decision-makers to do what’s right by Mother Earth, it’s also true that doing what’s right goes hand-in-hand with adding cash to the bottom line.

The latest report on green technology from Datamonitor estimates that nearly 20 percent of top enterprises have adopted at least some sort of green technology, the vast majority of which is probably server virtualization. Three quarters of CIOs and IT managers say adopting green business practices, like reducing energy consumption and improving recycling practices for decommissioned hardware, is a top aspect of their data center strategies.

Professional organizations are also stepping up their efforts to devise and help implement green business practices. The Storage Networking Industry Association has teamed up with The Green Grid to develop educational programs and spearhead collaborative development efforts aimed at making the storage side of the house more efficient by reducing the power draw to both run and cool storage systems.

I have posted 210 entries to my blog in the 6 months I started blogging on Green Data Centers.  I would have never thought I could get these many posts on the subject, but it has been easy to find Green data center subject matter, and this is still the early adopter stage.  As energy costs increase and more people run into power and cooling issues the interest is going to grow quickly.

The other question to ask is Will Brown/Black Data Centers be extinct in 5 years?  Will data centers that are oblivious to their effect on the environment survive?  Will they be so inefficient that they'll become the equivalent of pre-catalytic converter cars that are polluting the environment and governments will target their retirement?  The data center construction industry would be ecstatic if government's obsolete data centers over 5 years old that have not been upgraded.

Dream Tool for Green Data Center, Detect Greenwashing Products

Barron's posted an article on Wall Street Redefined.

RELATIONSHIPS COUNT FOR LITTLE on Wall Street these days -- fortunately. A hedge-fund manager can no longer make up for bad performance by buying you a fancy dinner. An institutional salesman can't sustain fat commissions by reciting the morning meeting notes and taking you out on the links.

Contributing to this salutary pay-for-performance trend are "alpha-capture" databases that let money managers track the performance of ideas pitched by hundreds of brokerage salespeople and analysts. These systems take a more scientific approach to the traditionally haphazard process of allocating commissions to brokers. More important, the systems help investors find the outsiders who deliver "alpha," which is the Wall Street term for market-beating returns.

And continues...

BUT ALPHA-CAPTURE SYSTEMS can motivate institutional salespeople to cull their firm's best ideas. Buyside users of a system tell stockbrokers to enter ideas into a Web-accessible database, along with an investment thesis, trading strategy and conviction level. The ideas get time-stamped and both the broker and the money manager can subsequently track performance in real-time. The returns to an idea can be compared to hundreds of others in the system or to a benchmark. Portfolio managers can zero in on brokers or stocks that interest them. The phenomenon has been called a Wall Street version of fantasy football.

First Coverage's chief executive, Randy Cass, says his belief in the need for such systems originates in his experience as a portfolio manager at the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. "I've been there, trying to deal with massive amounts of information being firehosed at me," he says. To cope, most portfolio managers look for ideas from a few familiar people and firms.

When I read this, it would be a dream come true to have a tool like this to detect the Green Hype vs. Green Reality.  Having vendors enter their ideas into a web database could make them accountable for their products, detecting Greenwashing and holding the sales team accountable.

Are Green Data Center Consultants Really Worth It?

DataCenterJournal has an article by a Green Data Center Consultant Bill Masters, Are Greening Consultants Worth It?  And, offers his 5 top reasons for a professional Green Consultant.

1. Skilled greening consultants typically have a technology and energy background. That means they have expertise in power distribution, UPS, infrastructure, cooling as well as extensive knowledge with respect to load and performance benchmarking measurements.

2. Experienced greening consultants will take a holistic energy reduction approach to data centers. Most will conduct a comprehensive Data Center Analysis to evaluate your data center's infrastructure in addition to an IT analysis that's designed to pin point hardware and software inefficiencies.

3. A few of these consultants are aligned with the utilities in your area of operation. In many cases they have programs available to cover some or all of the greening costs associated with an aggregate or stand alone power savings programs.

4. The skilled greening consultant will act as your agent to work directly with the utility to see your greening project through from inception to completion.

5. Finally, the skilled greening consultant will only get paid a percentage of the verified energy savings calculation confirmed by the utility.

On first glance this made sense, but then I asked would I do it this way. No. If you really are Green you're about efficiency and eliminating waste. So, shouldn't your #' 1 job be to use the least amount of resources for maximum results?

Here are my three simple steps:

1. Awareness of where you are at and the ability to educate others.
2. Identify potential Green/energy efficiency projects and prioritize.
3. Figure out the most efficient path to take and define the measurements for success/failures along the way.

Don't Blame the Geeks, Management Deserves the Heat for Failure to Identify, says WSJ

The WSJ had an article about the failure of Wall St's Credit risks, and the blame does not fall on the geeks, but management. I liked the article because you can apply most of what is said to the issues of energy efficiency in the data center. Don't blame your energy geeks, its management that causes the energy inefficiency behavior.

The stereotype of a bank risk manager is a geek scrawling Greek letters on a whiteboard. But mathematical errors by the pocket-protector crowd aren't to blame for Wall Street's woes. Regulators from five countries just published a report analyzing 11 banks' risk management practices. From their conclusions, it appears the losses were due to amateurish management blunders.

First, the big losers didn't have effective firm-wide systems for collecting data on, and evaluating, their risks. They allowed business heads too much leeway in setting and enforcing risk limits, and didn't work to break down bureaucratic barriers that kept bad news from flowing upwards. The result was a profusion of disparate businesses indulging their own short-term appetites for profits, largely immune from having their performance evaluated on a risk-adjusted basis.

Those that dodged bullets were constantly updating and tweaking their models and used them to supplement, rather than replace, their market judgment.

It might have been more comforting if the regulators had been able to blame the mess on some poor quant's slide-rule mishap. Such a mistake could be easily corrected. The periodic recurrence of banker stupidity is a less tractable problem.

Will Higher Energy Efficiency Increase Consumption?

SearchDataCenter.com's Mark Fontecchio writes Has green computing increased data center energy consumption?

Some skeptics of the green computing wave say that more energy-efficient data centers won't necessarily minimize overall energy consumption. In fact, they say it will lead to greater energy use. There's an important factor missing from the equation, say green-computing detractors: increasing consumer demand.

Mark cites Christian Belady and Lewis Curtis in his article. On first read I've accepted Christian and Lewis's ideas when I read them a couple of months ago.

Their argument goes like this: The more efficient a product, the more you use it, and it ends up consuming more resources overall than it did when it was less efficient. Christian Belady, a former technologist at Hewlett-Packard Co. who now works at Microsoft, compared data center energy consumption to the cost of gasoline. If the price of gas were to decline as significantly as the price of compute performance per watt has for IT equipment, you'd probably put a generator in your house and run everything on gasoline instead of electricity.

Coincidentally, I found articles about Boeing's planes

One of the concerns voiced about the advent of the new, more fuel-efficient aircraft (as well as its apparent popularity, as orders are outpacing analysts’ earlier projections) is the potential for a “rebound effect” similar to that seen with increases in fuel efficiency in light-duty vehicles—i.e., the decrease in fuel consumption (and thus, operating costs) leads to an increase in vehicle miles travelled.

and Cars on the same subject of increased efficiency will increase consumption.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the money spent on transportation infrastructure was directed to building more and bigger highways. We could have subsidized bullet trains and more light rail systems, but we didn't.

Now, many of the environmentalists, politicians and scientists who made the case for boosting vehicle fuel efficiency are turning their attention to the problem of how much we drive -- and the legacy of 20th century land use and transportation choices.

So, do I agree with Christian and Lewis. I think the issue can be looked at another way like the Rashomon Effect. There are multiple forces driving increases in data center services with many of the services free.  So, even though the data center operators decrease their costs by having higher efficiency, the cost impact is not visible to the user. Given most data centers don't monitor their power bills, I don't think they even know they are more efficient, so the analogy of gas efficiency doesn't necessarily apply.

Let me propose another question

Is being Green (traveling less, using the web more) driving up data center consumption?

To stir things up I'll send this post to Lewis and Christian. Plus, I am going to have dinner with Lewis Curtis this week, and we can this subject. Maybe, I can find out how his latest Green Data Center presentation went at TechReady 6. 

On a side, it would be interesting to know if Prius drivers do drive more. I found this poll. And, I may ask this question given I am writing this blog from a Toyota Dealer.  :-)

View Poll Results: How many miles do you drive your Prius

<5,000 miles/year

4
2.72%

5,001 - 7,500

13
8.84%

7,500 - 10,000

17
11.56%

10,000 - 15,000

36
24.49%

15,000 - 20,000

26
17.69%

20,000 - 30,000

34
23.13%

30,000 - 40,000

15
10.20%

>40,000

2
1.36%

Voters: 147. You may not vote on this poll

Can you Feel the Energy Efficiency?

I was in a late night IM session with Microsoft's Lewis Curtis and we were discussing Power Management.  In my past life as a Microsoft employee, one of my jobs was program manager and software evangelist for Windows 2000 power management feature so I know the features, and even though Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 have improved their power management capabilities. I wonder if they're still missing the target.

The problem is if you save let's say 50% of your energy consumption on your laptop because it sleeps/hibernates more aggressively, does the user feel like they are saving energy? The Toyota Prius works, because the Dashboard gives you real time feedback on how efficient you are. As a Prius driver you can make a conscious decision on how energy efficient you are.

So, is what is needed is an energy efficiency user interface?  Addressing the issue of "Can you feel the energy efficiency?"

On the desktop, the one company who I think may do this would be Apple. They have ability to develop the HW, modify the OS, make BIOS changes, and the hardest part make sure the drivers work in the right way. Plus Steve Jobs will do something if he thinks it feels right. It's not logical, but it sells the user experience.

What do you think the UI should be for the Data Center?  Is it Power Usage Effectiveness, PUE? Do the users care about PUE, or do they need something else because PUE works for total data center operations? I want to discuss this with a few who have energy monitoring in data centers to get their opinions.

OK, a few confessions came up when I was writing this.

1. I worked on the Mac Portable while at Apple. (PC World rated the Macintosh Portable as the seventeenth worst tech product of all time)
2. I don't own a Prius.  But, I only drive 3,000 miles a year for the past 15 years.  So, my environmental impact would be bigger if I bought a Prius and didn't drive it much.
3. In hindsight, I could have done a much better job on Win2K power management features.
4. I need to work on my blog post for greenest thing I've done.