Evaluating Green Ratings reveals areas for improvement

Green/sustainability is a hot topic and there are now bunches of company that will rate your enterprise for being green/sustainable.  Given this is all relatively new, how good are these companies?

Here is a report prepared that rates the raters.

Rate the Raters, Phase Three

Uncovering Best Practices

22 Feb 2011 – Report

Corporate sustainability ratings are going mainstream, but how they work in practice remains somewhat of a mystery. For phase three of Rate the Raterswe conducted in-depth evaluations of 21 ratings, in an attempt to shed light on this important area. The 21 ratings we focused on were a representative sample of the 100+ ratings that we inventoried in phase two.

Our phase three work revealed numerous examples of good practice, which are detailed in our report. We are starting to see efforts to reduce the survey fatigue that companies face. A greater number of raters are soliciting feedback and direction from external experts, many through formal advisory panels. And we observe a few raters opening up their black boxes to let us in on their methodologies. Yet we found many areas in need of improvement as well, and offer a number of recommendations to raters for the future.

The above is phase three.  Here the other phases.

See phase one and phase two for further background and context.

CNET news also covers this report.

Green rating agencies fall short, report says

by Candace Lombardi

• When it comes to grading companies on their sustainability, some leading organizations fall short as far as transparency and methodology. That's according to a white paper released this week by SustainAbility.com, an organization that is both a think tank and a consulting firm for corporations looking to improve green standings and sustainability practices.

(Credit: SustainAbility.com)

SustainAbility.com issued a video Tuesday along with its report discussing how 21 of the leading eco-ratings organizations it investigated based on 13 criteria (see chart) appeared to be insufficiently evaluating the companies they target. Its partners include the United Nations Environment Programme and the Global Reporting Initiative , while its clients include Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Shell.

Data Center in a Water Tank, an empty one

Water is becoming a hotter topic in data center discussion.  I've been blogging on water and data centers from day 1 when I started this blog, and it is now much easier to get answer on how much water a data center uses each day.  When I asked that question three years ago, people wouldn't know and push back why do you care.  Because, water is a scarce resource that is going to get more expensive.

Most of the time when people were discussing water it was whether water should be brought to the rack.  Here is something you don't see much is a data center in a water tank.

Altamonte Springs, Fla., Turns Empty Water Tank into Primary Data Center

This former water tank provides a hurricane-proof home for Altamonte Springs’ primary data center.

February 23, 2011 By Elaine Pittman

During the 2004 storm season, Altamonte Springs, Fla., was pummeled by Jeanne, Charley and Frances — three hurricanes that forced IT staff to protect the city’s data center equipment from the strong winds and onslaught of rain. The data center resided in City Hall, which the city says is vulnerable to hurricane damage.

Here is a bit more information about the above structure.

So before each hurricane approached, the IT staff dismantled the data center, boxed up the equipment and relocated it into a decommissioned water tank. With 8-inch thick concrete walls designed to hold 770,000 gallons, the water tank protected the technology. Because the equipment was disconnected; however, city staff couldn’t access their network.

C3 Energy Resource Management looks closer to announcing, job postings for sales, finance and HR

I was talking to some environmental friends at The Green Grid and one of the companies we chatted briefly about is www.c3-e.com

Energy Resource Management

C3 Mission

C3 enables organizations to maximize profitability and
cash flow by optimizing their enterprise energy strategy
and carbon footprint.

Curious I went to their site and saw they have positions open for sales, finance and HR which means they should be closer to announcing.

• Sales
  • Account Executives
• Services
  • Account Managers
• Marketing
  • Director of Marketing
• Finance
  • Senior Accountant
• Human Resources
  • Human Resources Director

Hara would seem like the natural competitor to Hara.  Here is Hara's engineering positions open.

Engineering

Flex Developer
San Mateo, CA

Java Developer
San Mateo, CA

Java Developer
San Mateo, CA

Software Development Manager
San Mateo, CA

Here is C3-E.

Software Engineering

• Data Design Engineer
• Release Engineer
• Data Modeling Engineers
• Analytics Engineers
• Server Software Engineers
• Client Software Engineers
• Software Developers

I am much more impressed with C3-E than Hara.  I can't find anyone I know who knows what the Hara technology is.  But, Hara is in the cloud.

Hara EEM: Cloud Infrastructure

Rich customer experience and lower cost of operations

Hara™ Environmental and Energy Management (Hara EEM) is powered by a state of the art cloud infrastructure that brings together analytics, integration services and standardized content to provide a rich customer experience and reduce total cost of operations. With this cloud-based delivery model, there is no software to install, no hardware to buy and users can start getting value out of the application in days instead of weeks and months.

For customers interested in alternate deployment and delivery models, Hara EEM is also architected to be location-independent from a deployment perspective.

Analytics

Hara EEM provides a rich set of reports and dashboards to slice and dice your environmental and energy information from various perspectives. Our easy to use user interface allows users to get to the information quickly and focus on decision making, instead of data entry and learning the application.

Integration

Hara EEM supports multiple multi-mode data gathering using automated and manual means. Customers can leverage a comprehensive set of web services to integrate Hara EEM with existing systems within their enterprise.

Content

Customers need outside content such as emission factors, best practices, incentives and rebates in order to make decisions related to various sustainability efforts in their organizations. Hara EEM provides pre-packaged content and a seamless user experience that combines customer specific data with standardized outside content.

When you get to the resource center for more information you need to provide information for a sales rep.

Test of SEO for GreenM3 on a search for "dell c6145"

Dell announced the Dell C6145 server on Feb 14 and I didn't get around to posting until Feb 15.  The normal rule is the first to post has a higher chance of a high ranking in Google Search.  I was getting some hits on my post yesterday and decided to do a Google search for "dell c6145".

Making sure I was not logged in the Google Search page.  (When you are logged in the search results will be personalized.)  Here are the search results.  My post is #5 after 4 Dell sites.

The next 5 are as follows.

My theory of why my post gets higher results than others is I try to pull together a variety of sources, not just one, at least two, and in this case four.  Two are videos, two are sites with original content.

Most in the media wouldn't point to four links driving content off their site.  But, as I joke I have media status, but that doesn't mean I behave like media.

Oh yeh, and the number of people who read this blog supply the traffic.  Thanks for reading the Green Data Center blog.

Policy Makers have bad aim, not focusing on the real problem

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.