I am at The Green Grid Technical forum event, and I had the pleasure of chatting with the keynote speaker Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D. His company is Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Robert's keynote is titled.

Policy Makers are Focused on You, Not the Real Problem

Regulators around the world are taking aim at IT in general, and data centers in particular, in their efforts to regulate reduced energy use and carbon emissions. But at the end of the day, we need more IT and innovation, not less. Rob Atkinson will discuss why policy makers should be concentrating on spurring digital transformation – incentivizing conversion of energy intensive atoms to energy savings bits. And why spurring fundamental clean energy R&D, rather than regulating IT efficiency, is the surer path to the needed low carbon global economy.

Robert is pro ICT

Points out of the irony of travelling to the conference on a plane and how video conference.

Teleworking is the fastest growing travel segment with the a positive environmental impact.

And a case for ecommerce for eBay and Amazon.

So what we should be doing given ICT has a reduction in energy overall. What is needed is 84% less carbon energy. And Robert says the focus on energy efficiency is a short term focus. We need low carbon energy.

Which reminds me what I renamed the Green Data Center Blog to Green (low carbon) Data Center Blog. When I hear guys like Robert talk I can easily see 5 years more of writing on the Green (low carbon) Data Center topic.

What are the low carbon technologies?

What should be done? A clean energy strategy is Robert's closing recommendation.