Disney & Verizon join Green Data Center Movement

NetworkWorld writes about Disney and Verizon making green data center announcements.

Disney, Verizon go green in the data center

Disney, Verizon lay out IT energy efficiency plans at Green Grid event

By Jon Brodkin , Network World , 10/06/2009

Energy efficiency in the data center is a top priority for Disney and Verizon, technology executives from the companies said last week. But the industry is still in the early stages of understanding how best to measure effectiveness, they said.

Disney has a companywide goal to reduce electricity consumption by 10% between 2006 and 2013, and the data center has to play a big role in achieving that objective, says Denis Weber, director of IT critical facilities infrastructure for the Walt Disney Co.

Five tools to prevent energy waste in the data center

For Disney, energy efficiency is being achieved through a series of small improvements, Weber said in an interview with Network World.

"Some of it just comes down to cleaning the facility up," Weber says. "And I don't mean with a dust pail and so on and a broom, but cleaning the data center up from obstructions and ensuring that every one of our floor tiles is sealed properly for air flow. Blanking panels -- not only that we have them but that they're in the right spot. Variable speed fans and motors on our CRAC units, increasing temperature settings across the board. These are all things that are not unique to Disney. But we have done it and that's where we've started to make progress."

The green grid was able to leverage their NYSE closing bell ringing to pull Disney and Verizon.

Disney and Verizon officials discussed their energy efficiency programs at the New York Stock Exchange last week during an event hosted by the Green Grid industry consortium.

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VMware opens its Green Data Center

Seattletimes has an article on VMware’s new Wenatachee green data center.

VMWare opens a green data center in Wenatchee

Posted by Sharon Chan

vmware.jpg

While a tax law prompted Microsoft to move its cloud business Azure out of Washington state, the state just attracted a software company, VMWare, to build its data center in Wenatchee.

VMWare, a software company and Microsoft competitor in Palo Alto, Calif., opened a 61,000-square-foot data center in Wenatchee in January to consolidate several smaller labs and data centers the company was using to run and test its virtualization software. The company's chief executive officer Paul Maritz, is a former top exeuctive at Microsoft.

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Obama Orders Federal to Green its Data Centers in Executive Order

InformationWeek Government reports on Obama’s executive order.

Obama Orders Federal IT To Get Greener

An Executive Order mandates that federal agencies implement green data center strategies, double-sided printing, and PC power management, as part of a broader sustainability push.

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
October 6, 2009 02:55 PM

An executive order signed by President Obama requires that federal agencies take further steps to ensure that their IT purchases are energy efficient or otherwise environmentally friendly.

The mandates are part of Executive Order 13514, which sets sustainability goals for the U.S. government. Within 90 days, agencies are required to set a target for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 and to recycle or otherwise divert 50% of their waste by 2015.

"In order to create a clean energy economy that will increase our nation's prosperity, promote energy security, protect the interests of taxpayers, and safeguard the health of our environment, the federal government must lead by example," Obama wrote in the order.

The order means that sustainability will increasingly be factored into government acquisition of IT products and services. It's "going to make all of us look at what we do with IT with a new eye," said Jeff Eagan, electronics stewardship coordinator for the Department of Energy, during a panel discussion at 1105 Media's Virtualization, Cloud Computing & Green IT Summit in Washington.

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Apple Quits US Chamber of Commerce over GHG issue

Mercury News reports on Apple quitting the US Chamber of Commerce.

Apple quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce over global warming views

By Dana Hull

Adding momentum to the revolt against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Apple on Monday resigned from the business group because of its opposition to federal efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

Apple is the fourth company and the largest, as well as the first tech company, to part ways with the chamber as the debate over global warming legislation heats up in Congress. It is also the most significant defector because Apple is a leading American brand and consumers strongly identify with its products.

And the NRDC jumps in as well.

"Apple's departure is a clear signal that more and more of the chamber's members want it to download a new tune when it comes to climate change," said Peter Altman of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Apple further explains its position.

"Apple is committed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world," Catherine Novelli, Apple's vice president of worldwide government affairs, said in a letter to Thomas Donahue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. "We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases."

The move comes amid efforts by Apple to burnish its green image. The Cupertino-based company revealed its carbon footprint — or total greenhouse-gas emissions — for the first time last month, announcing on its Web site that 53 percent of the 10.2 million tons of annual carbon emissions it takes responsibility for comes from consumer use of its products.

The company has taken a broad view of greenhouse gas emissions, using a "life-cycle analysis" to calculate greenhouse gas emissions for each product, from production to transportation, consumer use and recycling.

"We believe it has resulted in the broadest possible measure of the carbon footprint for each of our new products," Apple said in response to a lengthy questionnaire by the Carbon Disclosure Project, which publishes emissions data for the world's largest corporations. "No other electronics company reports this information at the product level, but we think they should."

and news.com reports on Apple being a top green brand according to another study.

Report praises Apple's environmental efforts

by Jim Dalrymple

Apple won praise for its latest efforts to rid its products of harmful chemicals in a new report released Tuesday from environmental organizations ChemSec and Clean Production Action.

While Greenpeace seems to have completely missed Apple's environmental advances in its latest report, ChemSec and Clean Production Action's report, "Greening Consumer Electronics: Moving Away from Bromine and Chlorine," highlights Apple's efforts as one of seven companies who have come up with solutions negating the use of harmful chemicals. Apple was the only computer maker to make the list.

With Apple winning points as a green leader they are joining Wal-mart who has also strategically chosen to make green a competitive advantage.

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Google bypasses Utility for Smart Meters

gigaom posts on google’s latest power meter efforts.

Why Google’s PowerMeter Gadget Partnership Is a Big Power Play

By Katie Fehrenbacher | Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | 11:53 AM PT | 1 comment

With Google’s endless projects — from book search to a browser killer to Blogger — you’re probably wondering why I’m so excited about a new partnership deal for the company’s PowerMeter energy management tool. Well, here’s why: For the first time, consumers can now access PowerMeter via a gadget called the TED-5000, made by startup Energy Inc., and users don’t need to go through their utility or have a smart meter (a digital two-way electricity meter) installed to access it. In other words, Google has finally bypassed the utility with PowerMeter, which is an important step for both bringing consumer energy management products to the mainstream, and pushing utilities to more quickly embrace information technology networks and broadband.

Smart meters are great, but the problem is that just a little over 6 percent of households in the U.S. currently have them. While that percentage will grow dramatically in the coming years, it will take time, and PowerMeter’s former smart grid strategy would have meant the tool was only available to a small portion of the population for quite some time. The other drawback to the smart meter architecture is that utilities are installing smart meters attached to networks that aren’t exactly the most robust. Utilities commonly build networks that can significantly delay the time it takes the energy information to reach the customer — smart meters will often grab energy info every 15 minutes to an hour, but then the utility network will bring that data to the data center and display it back to the customer in a 24-hour period.

I wonder if this will bleed into corporate and commercial environments?

One point mentioned.

Utilities haven’t traditionally been very good at IT — they haven’t had to be — but that’s all changing, and next-generation utilities will need to be as proficient in running data networks as they are at managing power networks. Some forward-thinking utilities like San Diego Gas & Electric know that and are building multimillion-dollar wireless networks to manage their smart grid deployments. PowerMeter and the TED-5000 are just a small piece of that equation, but they’re an important first step in giving consumers easy access, and ownership over, their energy information.

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