Press Covers Google Tax Breaks & Nosy Neighbors

Given the huge Tax Breaks Google has received in its negotiations with local gov'ts, the local press is covering the process for granting tax breaks.

Google tax deal goes up for vote

But Web company won’t announce before January whether it will build 200-employee site

By JIM DuPLESSIS - jduplessis@thestate.com

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Richland County Council will vote tonight on property tax breaks for a potential 200-job, $600 million Google data center near Blythewood, but the Silicon Valley company won’t announce before January whether it will build one.

The vote comes three months after Google paid $13.1 million for a 466-acre site along I-77. Local officials have dreamed the 80-mile stretch of highway connecting Columbia to Charlotte would become a magnet for high-paying jobs since it opened 26 years ago today.

As a result Google has been spending more time with local influentials like the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club to talk about their data centers.

Google's Data Center Strategy Revealed . . . At The Rotary Club

Posted by John Foley, Nov 30, 2007 01:24 PM

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For months, I've been trying to get Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to discuss its data center strategy. My approach was flawed. I could have gotten more information at a Rotary Club luncheon this week in Hickory, N.C.

Until recently, Google didn't talk to anyone about the data centers it's building around the world at a cost of about $600 million each, but company officials realized they needed to open up as the locals started asking questions about the tall fences, bulldozers, and dust being kicked up in their communities. So Google now talks strategy with the people directly affected.

As reported by John Dayberry in the Hickory Record, the manager of Google's under-construction data center in Lenoir, N.C., met yesterday with folks at the Hickory Rotary Club. Tom Jacobik told the group of about 100 that Google's data center there could be operational before the year's end or early in 2008. Among the tidbits gleaned: Google plans to employ approximately 200 people at the facility. (That seems to be the rule of thumb for new Google data centers.) Google's getting involved in IT skills education and retraining at local colleges. And Jacobik, one-time director of tactical operations for Oracle, is helping supervise construction of another Google data center in Charleston, S.C.

Last week, Google officials were in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where they addressed the Chamber of Commerce's quarterly meeting. Ken Patchett (he manages Google's data center in The Dalles, Ore.) gave a status report on Google's Council Bluffs facility, answered some questions, and dodged others. As reported by the Des Moines Register, Patchett also had breakfast at Duncan's Café on Main Street. (Check out the picture; I'll take two eggs scrambled, toast, black coffee.)

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How Hot is the Carbon Monitoring Topic - 150,000 hits in 2 days for carma.org

Many people in the IT profession think Green is a fad.  I mentioned IBM and Carma.org's Carbon Monitoring in this post.  An interesting data point is on carma.org's web site.

CARMA’s First 48 Hours


The numbers are just fantastic: 150,000 visitors from 187 countries in CARMA’s first two days. Just as important are the hundreds of comments and emails we’ve received with congratulations, suggestions, and questions. Thank you. We will begin sifting through them next week. In the mean time, continue spreading the word. There’s so much more to be done — and you’re at the heart of it.

At some point in the future data centers will start reporting the carbon emissions for their data centers. I know of some which have started to track the carbon emissions internally, preparing for the day their PR teams tell them they want to or need to publish carbon emissions for data centers.

After a few more days carma.org published a further summary including their press coverage.

By mid-day on Thursday CARMA was among the top stories on both the BBC Online and CNN.com…and our server was straining to keep up with the load, despite having been beefed up in advance of the launch.

Coverage ranged from the prestigious science magazine Nature to the liberal blog Daily Kos. Juliet Eilperin, reporting in the Washington Post, was among the first reporters to seek comment from utility companies identified in CARMA as major sources of CO2 pollution, including Southern Co., one of the biggest CO2 polluters in the United States, and the sixth biggest source of CO2 emissions in the world. Strikingly, the companies did not dispute CARMA’s findings.

Friction — special interests, corruption, and social and political Inertia — prevent the necessary adjustments, that is, stop the plates from sliding past one another. Information, injected in the right way and at the right time can be like a lubricant that enables the plates to suddenly slip. That happened this week: it’s reasonable to assume every CEO of every power company on Earth now knows just how much CO2 pollution his firm is discharging, and how this compares with his competitors. With this knowledge, the Earth moved. In the weeks ahead, power company investors, creditors, insurers, board members and customers will have the same information.

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Yahoo gets hit with 7.9 sales tax for Quincy Data Center

Yahoo had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new facility in Quincy with David Filo, co-founder attending. A recent finding by the Washington state attorney general removes a 7.9 tax break for this new data center.

The loss of the tax break could keep Yahoo from investing in future phases of the data center that opened Monday, Filo said.

"So far everything has worked out well," he said, noting the favorable economic, political and geographic conditions that have made building data centers in the middle of farm fields in Central Washington a sensible thing to do. The abundance of cheap power available in the region is the bottom-line benefit for server farms, but the rural tax break is so significant that Yahoo would not have built in Quincy had it not been part of the equation, said Laurence Mann, a Yahoo senior vice president.

The sales tax break would have saved Yahoo and other data centers the 7.9 percent tax charged on construction and equipping of a facility, said Mike Gowrylow, a spokesman for the state Department of Revenue.

Microsoft opened a portion of a 500,000-square-foot data center in Quincy in April. The tech company Intuit also is building a facility in Quincy.

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Carbon Emissions Monitoring

IBM has announced a Carbon Emissions Monitoring program and another interesting Carbon Monitoring site is http://carma.org/.  It would be interesting to hear what the folks at CARMA think about IBM's announcement.

IBM to count carbon emissions for cash

Posted by Martin LaMonica

IBM has partnered with two other companies to build an application that they say can accurately measure corporate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The software, called GreenCert, is built on IBM's infrastructure software and tools from C-Lock Technology, which can accurately measure reductions in greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide. The companies are expected to detail the application on Wednesday.

Many companies are undergoing initiatives to reduce their carbon emissions, as part of corporate social responsibility or environmental programs.

Having a method to measure and certify those reductions is significant because it will allow those companies to sell those carbon offsets, according to IBM. The application is part of IBM's Big Green Innovations initiative to develop clean technologies.

And another interesting site is Carbon Monitoring for Action.

At its core, Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions in the United States and about one-quarter of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy.

CARMA is produced and financed by the Confronting Climate Change Initiative at the Center for Global Development, an independent and non-partisan think tank located in Washington, DC.

The objective of CARMA.org is to equip individuals with the information they need to forge a cleaner, low-carbon future. By providing complete information for both clean and dirty power producers, CARMA hopes to influence the opinions and decisions of consumers, investors, shareholders, managers, workers, activists, and policymakers. CARMA builds on experience with public information disclosure techniques that have proven successful in reducing traditional pollutants.

For several thousand power plants within the U.S., CARMA relies upon data reported to the Environmental Protection Agency by the plant operators themselves as required by the Clean Air Act. CARMA also includes many official emissions reports for plants in Canada, the European Union, and India. For non-reporting plants, CARMA estimates emissions using a statistical model that has been fitted to data for thousands of reporting plants in the U.S., Canada, the EU, and India. The model utilizes detailed data on plant-level engineering and fuel specifications. CARMA reports emissions for the year 2000, the current year, and the future (based on published plans).

Constructing a carbon emissions database of 50,000 power plants in every country on Earth takes a team effort. The methodology and data behind CARMA were developed over many months as part of the Confronting Climate Change Intiative at the Center for Global Development in Washington DC.

The primary architects of the CARMA database are David Wheeler and Kevin Ummel — with assistance provided by a dedicated team at the Center for Global Development. CARMA.org was created by the talented professionals at Forum One Communications, a web strategy and development firm that helps not-for-profit, foundation, government, and commercial organizations make an impact on important social issues.

CARMA Team Photo

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Local Government more aggressive on Low Carbon Economy

In a google blog,

The Climate Group released a report on state and regional Low Carbon Leaders showing that emissions reduction targets set by local governments are often more ambitious than commitments pledged by national governments under the Kyoto Protocol. ICLEI convened a series of local government climate sessions as parallel events to the Bali meetings.

In having discussions with other people who work with the Public sector, there is wide agreement that local gov'ts are leaders in this area. So, even though many enterprises with the PR teams are getting the attention in the news, don't dismiss the efforts by the local communities.

It is important to monitor where your energy comes from in your local area as this defines your carbon emissions and whether you are using renewable energy.

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