I've been staring at Scott Adams WSJ article for two weeks, thinking how to leverage Scott Adams and his Dilbert character.  The article is about Scott Adams trying to save the earth in his greenest house construction.  Many of Scott's points can be applied to building a green data center.  Read the full article as you'll enjoy it and get a few laughs.

How I (Almost) Saved the Earth

No one said it would be easy to build the greenest house on the block. Scott Adams on perplexing energy bills, ugly lawns and the true meaning of 'green'

By SCOTT ADAMS

Let's say you love the Earth. You see an article in a magazine about a guy who built a "green" house using mostly twigs, pinecones and abandoned bird nests. You want to build a green home, too. So you find an architect, show him the magazine and say, "Give me one just like this."

Amanda Friedman for The Wall Street Journal; Dilbert Characters Copyright Scott Adams, Inc

Good luck with that.

Your architect only knows how to design homes using materials that his local planning commission is likely to approve. But he wants the job, so he tries hard to talk you out of using twigs, pinecones and abandoned bird nests. He tells you that no builder will build it. He tells you it won't get approved by the city. He tells you it won't stand up to earthquakes, hurricanes or termites. But you persist. You're saving the Earth, damn it. No one said it would be easy.

What is Green?

My point is that being green is hard. My wife and I recently built what is arguably the greenest home for miles around. OK, stop. This is a good time to define "green."

The greenest home is the one you don't build. If you really want to save the Earth, move in with another family and share a house that's already built. Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don't want. Don't brag to me about riding your bicycle to work; a lot of energy went into building that bicycle. Stop being a hypocrite like me.

I prefer a more pragmatic definition of green. I think of it as living the life you want, with as much Earth-wise efficiency as your time and budget reasonably allow.

Scott did what many do when looking to green the data center.  Where is the expertise?  And beware of the advice you get as most of the information will come from manufacturers who have a financial incentive to mislead you.

Throughout the building process I picked as many expert brains as I could to figure out what energy-related aspects of the house would be the most bang for the buck. Opinions sometimes varied, but here's what came out at the top.

Heating and cooling are the biggest energy thieves. And roofs and windows matter the most for heat transfer. Focus your research and budget there. Most of the information you find will come from manufacturers who have a financial interest in misleading you, and also of course from cartoonists who write opinion pieces after being misled by those same manufacturers. Good luck with your research.

One of Scott Adams is frustrations is the inability to model for what is best ROI on green.  You may say you can model the PUE and data center mechanical.  But, I challenge you to model 365 days a year with the actual IT hardware, software and load running in the data center.  Modeling without the load isn't worth a lot.  If you did model the load you could account for whether money should be spent on IT HW or IT SW to get the best ROI.

The next problem you discover when trying to build green is that there is no way to model the entire home's energy efficiency before it is built. It's as much guessing as engineering. Every home is unique. You can't be sure if, let's say, a whole house fan in the attic is worth the extra expense, assuming you do everything else right. We opted for the fan, which is designed to efficiently draw in the cool evening air. In practice, we don't use it because it makes a hum that I barely notice but my wife doesn't want to hear. I did not see that coming.

Scott jokes about his photovoltaic system.

We have a photovoltaic system for generating electricity. That's the most visible sign of a green home, and probably the dumbest. I expect the system to pay for itself in nominal dollars, perhaps in 15 years. But if I compare it with the most obvious alternative, it makes no economic sense. The smart alternative would have been to wait until the costs for systems like this drop by 50%, which will probably happen in a few years.

I confess that we put in the photovoltaic system partly for psychological reasons. I heard great stories of energy meters "spinning backwards" and I wanted in on that. But thanks to our local power company, PG&E, I've been unable to determine if the system is working at all. I know for sure that during the first four months I generated power for PG&E, gave it to them for free and then bought it back at full price. It had something to do with a delay in PG&E getting the right kind of meter installed.

Now we have the right meter, but no backward-spinning anything that I can detect. And I think I'm getting billed full price, but I can't decipher the impenetrable documents they send me.

and comes to the following realization.

Conclusion: Photovoltaic systems are a waste of money. But I'd do it again in a heartbeat, because I love the Earth, damn it. In my defense, the price of your future photovoltaic system will never come down unless idiots like me pay too much today. You're welcome.

and you can tell Scott gets pretty frustrated.

This would be a good time to point out that nothing you learn about green building materials will be supported by relevant data that is in the proper context for your particular home. But the rest of your life is probably a mess too, so you'll get used to it fast

the best laugh is Scott's closing.

Kidding aside, I do love the Earth, damn it. And if my only contribution to its well-being is joining the early adopters (OK, idiots) so that those who follow have better information and lower costs for green building, I'm OK with that. I just hope it's enough to make up for the squirrel I ran over this morning with the minivan.

—Scott Adams is the creator of 'Dilbert.'

After spending two days in The Pacific Institute seminar, there are some interesting ideas I like that identifies a problem in implementing new data center projects that  support a green data center.  One is the concept of sabotage.

Many Six Sigma implementations fail because of
sabotage. Not overt resistance, but the silent, subtle,
“so maybe this program will go away” kind of
resistance. People won’t likely be aggressive, but
will instead display what we call passive-aggressive
behavior. For example, a Six Sigma implementation
imposed exclusively top-down can create a
counter-force – a bottom-up, nonproductive
“push-back.” If this happens, there can be much
waste, frustration, and many false starts.

The following article is written by Ron Mevdev on six sigma projects, and much of what he discusses applies to the problems of implementing changes in data centers.  Rarely do you hear someone speaking on the issues of people in data centers. Why?  Because the data center speaker system is dominated by vendors and products who sell to data center builders and operators.  This group of vendors in general are selling how to solve problems by buying things, and the people factor is rarely discussed. Yet, some of the top data center executives are excellent people managers, building a team.  Urs Hoelzle and Olivier Sanche are two examples of people who have a loyal following.

I think Urs and Olivier understand this paragraph well.

SOLVING PROBLEMS AT THE ROOT CAUSE
But sometimes problems can be tenacious. Often
there’s a complexity that includes the most interesting
variable of all – people. If we want to change
for the better, a fundamental understanding of
how people think and how their beliefs affect their
performance must be factored into the equation.
An appreciation of the basics of human behavior
and performance enhances analysis. Better yet, it
helps managers and employees solve their own
people problems.

Greening the data center requires people to change their behaviors and thinking.

Which is why it is so hard.

Do your people sometimes feel like this crowd living in the past?  So many people are comfortable staying with what has worked in the past. How far back in history should you go and feel safe you can copy?  Last year, 5 years, 10 years?

The data center industry is complex and difficult to figure out. Listening to many insider conversations where discussion of reality and smart decisions are discussed, I sometimes feel sad that others can't figure out how the system can be gamed against those who build their first data center.

Two examples of games played are illustrated in two blog posts by Seth Godin; one, payola in the system, and two betting on dumber

First the Payola post.

Payola

For twenty years, the Billboard charts were easy to manipulate. By paying radio stations and some retailers, record labels could push an act to the top 40, which would increase sales. People liked buying what they heard on the radio, and the radio played what they thought people were buying.

Billboard changed their methods about twenty years ago, and overnight the acts on the list changed. Suddenly, it became clear that what we were listening to wasn't what we thought it was, and as a result, the marketing of music changed forever.

What gets read on the web can be manipulated as well.

Manipulating social networks is easier still. There are firms that manipulate which stories are posted and which blogs are linked to, and for years there are firms that have worked to manipulate which links come up higher on the search results as well. As these signposts become more, not less, important, there's a significant market opportunity for someone who can, as Billboard did, clean up the charts and make the payola worthless or at least more transparent. In the meantime, be skeptical.

I get exposure to the web eco system as I research and write this blog, interviewing people and getting contacted by the public relations companies.  The ones who get the most exposure are many times the ones with the biggest marketing budgets.  A good example is the data center analyst community.  Those vendors with the biggest budgets get the most time allocated by the analysts.  The more time and money spent allows more opportunity to differentiate the vendors vs. the competitors.  If you don't pay, then an analyst won't spend much time with your companies technology.  The analyst will try to be objective, but their time is allocated based on who has paid for research.

Betting on dumber behavior is another problem.

And most benefit when they work to make their customers dumber. The less they know about options, the easier they are to manipulate, the more helpless they are, the better they do.

The post wants to point how one marketer can change the system by focusing making customers smarter. But...

The vast majority of marketers, though, take the opposite tack. Ask them for advice about their competitors, they turn away and say "I really wouldn''t know." Ask them for details about their suppliers, and they don't want to tell you. Ask them to show you a recipe for how to make what they make on your own, and "it's a trade secret." Their perfect customer is someone in a hurry, with plenty of money and not a lot of knowledge about their options.

What is a solution to this problem.

You've already guessed the punchline--if just one player enters the field and works to make people smarter, the competition has a hard time responding with a dumbness offensive. They can obfuscate and run confusing ads, but sooner or later, the inevitability of information spreading works in favor of those that bet on it.

Look for smarter companies.

A few benefit when they make their customers smarter. The more the people they sell to know, the more informed, inquisitive, free-thinking and alert they are, the better they do.

But first question you need to ask is do you want to be smarter? And, wiling to go through the pains of learning and making mistakes.  You can't be smart without realizing when you are dumb.

or are you in a hurry?

Their perfect customer is someone in a hurry, with plenty of money and not a lot of knowledge about their options.