Green ICT: Banking on a software solution to climate change
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Rikki Stancich
Information and communication technology firms are at the forefront of reducing our carbon footprint, and they are set to reap the rewards
As businesses scramble to reduce their energy consumption internally and across supply chains, the information and communication technology sector stands to gain significantly. Holding the keys to smart information management, green ICT systems are being heralded by governments and NGOs as the climate-change solution.
Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist to software giant Microsoft, says, "Software can deliver an alternative to fossil fuels." In other words, for ICT companies the nascent green market looks like a very attractive place to invest.
A report by Insight Research Corp valued green offerings within the telecommunications sector by tying a price to the abated carbon emissions, which amounted to $1.2 trillion over the next five years.
A slightly more conservative estimation of the green ICT market from the World Wildlife Fund, again in terms of emissions abated and energy-related cost savings to all other sectors, put the value of green ICT at $946.5 billion.
Both reports highlight abatement opportunities through improved logistics, smart grid technology for utilities, building energy management, remote office capabilities, environmentally optimised data centres, dematerialisation (turning physical products into digital products, as has been accomplished by iTunes) and ICT equipment recycling.
Market leaders like Hewlett Packard, IBM and Microsoft are ahead of the game in offering carbon-crunching ICT solutions - such as supply chain modelers that enable companies to visually manage and model energy data; server consolidation and virtualisation; and grid management technologies.
At present the ICT sector accounts for 2 per cent of global emissions, the equivalent of the airline industry, according to Gartner Research. But ICT compliance with existing and new legislation, such as the European "ecodesign for energy using products" (EUP) directive, due next year, means the sector is going green by default. According to Zoe McMahon, HP's environmental strategy manager: "Legislation like the EUP will cut the tail off the worst performers, ensuring that ICT's current impact is reduced."
Beyond the sector's own emissions, a recent report by the Climate Group found that the ICT sector could achieve global emissions reductions from industry of 7.8 billion tons of Co2e by 2020. That's five times the sector's own footprint.
Rather than second-guessing the market, Microsoft has adopted a partnership approach -providing a platform upon which companies can develop tailored applications. Fiat's new Eco Drive programme and the European Environment Agency's Eye on Earth portal are two such examples.
The Eco Drive solution runs off the Blue&Me platform, a communications system co-developed with Microsoft that has been installed in some 500,000 Fiat 500 and Grande Puntos since 2006. Drivers can download Eco Drive from the Fiat website and upload it to their Blue&Me system.
Eco Drive then gathers information such as the emissions and fuel consumption incurred during each car journey, as well as information relating to the driver's technique, such as acceleration, gear changes and speeds. The information is transferred via a USB key into the driver's PC, which generates a feedback report. The aim is to help drivers handle their vehicle more efficiently, which Fiat says could lower emissions by up to 15 per cent.
The EU's European Environment Agency recently leveraged Microsoft's Virtual Earth, a mapping, imaging and data-visualisation platform, to create the Eye on Earth portal. This website provides real-time monitoring of water quality on beaches in 27 European countries using a combination of country-specific environmental data and input from beach users. It is soon to be extended to include monitoring of soil, air and ozone quality and biodiversity.
HP says that 80 per cent of its clients evaluate environmental performances when making their purchasing decisions. "If we provide the most efficient solutions that both reduce costs and environmental impact it obviously puts us in a very good position as the [green ICT] market grows," says McMahon.
In March this year, HP re-launched its IT laboratories, HP Labs, to include sustainability as one of its five key research themes. Around 5 per cent of its $3.6 billion R&D budget is currently channeled into its seven research laboratories for long-term, strategic and blue-sky (visionary), research.
To date, HP's green ICT focus has been on generic solutions, such as smart building energy management with its Advanced Metering Infrastructure. This enables energy-demand management by allowing communications between end users and utilities, and integrating data collected from the meters into billing and accounting systems.
HP is also developing an Integrated Site Management tool, designed to monitor and control energy use, water consumption, sewage and air pollution at production or office sites. According to the company, a prototype test delivered site energy savings of 11.3 per cent.
Another focus is data centres. Recently, European and US banks have been running out of power and space for their existing data centres, given legislative requirements mandating the storage of live data. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the escalating energy demands of data centers, tied mainly to the cooling requirement, have more than doubled since 2000.
Like many other IT providers, HP is consolidating its clients' data centres, reducing the physical number of centres, IT infrastructures and applications used. Internally, HP has reduced its 80 centres to six and is now using less energy to drive more powerful and efficient servers.
With its "dynamic smart cooling" technology, which uses sensors to manage cooling, HP says it has achieved energy savings of up to 40 per cent in each data centre. "Its all about managing what you have, more intelligently," says McMahon.
To complement the consolidation of hardware, "virtualisation" solutions from companies like Microsoft and VMware also enable the resources of a single computer to be shared across multiple environments, freeing up storage capacity and reducing energy costs associated with data centre cooling systems by up to 80 per cent.
HP also promotes remote office capabilities. Seeking alternatives to business travel, HP teamed up with DreamWorks Animation SKG in 2005 to produce the video-conferencing market leader Halo Telepresence. The Halo Collaboration Studio, which comes with a hefty price tag of $349,000 (£176,000), allows real-time eye contact between users. Lack of eye contact was one of the biggest drawbacks of previous video-conferencing facilities.
"Going greener means getting smarter. To get smarter we need more information, intelligence and data," said Graham Whitney, chair of IBM's climate change programme. IBM's focus has been on industry-specific solutions for logistics, transport and utilities.
IBM's Carbon Tradeoff Modeler enables businesses to model variables contributing to supply-chain CO2 emissions. The tool models the variables driving emissions from both a manufacturing and distribution perspective, allowing businesses to visualise the outcome, or the carbon tradeoffs, of their economic decisions.
IBM has also focused on intelligent transport, developing and managing congestion-charge systems for the Swedish and UK road authorities. Its congestion-charge system for the Swedish Road Authority reportedly helped reduce traffic by 22 per cent and increased public transport usage by 40,000 users per day.
For utilities, IBM has been trialing smart grid "power plant to plug" solutions and is designing a software framework to speed the integration of technology into existing electricity grids.
By installing devices that allow a price information exchange to take place between the utility and the household, utilities are able to demand manage their energy supply. For example, on hot days a fluctuation in energy price would be wirelessly transmitted through a gateway device to a smart thermostat in the home, triggering the thermostat to lower by several degrees. In this way, utilities are able to mitigate demand spikes that could lead to blackouts.
During a trial run by GridWise, a Washington-based industry consortium, IBM's backend software designed to send information between consumers and the utilities, enabled a 10 per cent reduction in energy costs.
Powering the green ICT wave is a combination of market demand and regulation. In Europe, mandatory emissions trading schemes are forcing all industry sectors, as well as the regulators themselves, to seek intelligent solutions to track and manage energy consumption. This suggests that demand for green ICT solutions will continue to grow as more companies are affected by legislation.
But Molly Webb, lead author of Climate Group's Smart 2020 report, warns: "There is going to be an explosion in the number of people using ICT products and services, from today's one billion to 7 billion by 2020. The big challenge faced by the ICT sector today is how to double capacity without doubling its own energy consumption."
Even so, research has led the WWF to conclude that a doubling or even tripling of CO2 emissions within the sector should be considered "strategic" if ICT benefits are to be fully reaped elsewhere.
HP Labs has initiated research that uses nanowire photonics to increase the efficiency of solar cells by more than 20 per cent. While offering efficiency comparable to solar cells used in space applications, they can be manufactured at the cost of the cells used in pocket calculators.
Microsoft is currently developing the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for MS Dynamics AX dashboard, which is due to be released in the first quarter. The software is designed to help companies track their energy consumption and emissions by making environmental data collection a normal part of business.
IBM Research is developing new, non-vacuum, solution-based manufacturing processes for CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) solar-cell modules, aimed at increasing current efficiency from 6 per cent-12 per cent to around 15 per cent. The goal is to reduce the cost, minimise the complexity and improve the flexibility of producing solar electric power.
— Climatechangecorp
Information and communication technology firms are at the forefront of reducing our carbon footprint, and they are set to reap the rewards
As businesses scramble to reduce their energy consumption internally and across supply chains, the information and communication technology sector stands to gain significantly. Holding the keys to smart information management, green ICT systems are being heralded by governments and NGOs as the climate-change solution.
Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist to software giant Microsoft, says, "Software can deliver an alternative to fossil fuels." In other words, for ICT companies the nascent green market looks like a very attractive place to invest.
A report by Insight Research Corp valued green offerings within the telecommunications sector by tying a price to the abated carbon emissions, which amounted to $1.2 trillion over the next five years.
A slightly more conservative estimation of the green ICT market from the World Wildlife Fund, again in terms of emissions abated and energy-related cost savings to all other sectors, put the value of green ICT at $946.5 billion.
Both reports highlight abatement opportunities through improved logistics, smart grid technology for utilities, building energy management, remote office capabilities, environmentally optimised data centres, dematerialisation (turning physical products into digital products, as has been accomplished by iTunes) and ICT equipment recycling.
Market leaders like Hewlett Packard, IBM and Microsoft are ahead of the game in offering carbon-crunching ICT solutions - such as supply chain modelers that enable companies to visually manage and model energy data; server consolidation and virtualisation; and grid management technologies.
At present the ICT sector accounts for 2 per cent of global emissions, the equivalent of the airline industry, according to Gartner Research. But ICT compliance with existing and new legislation, such as the European "ecodesign for energy using products" (EUP) directive, due next year, means the sector is going green by default. According to Zoe McMahon, HP's environmental strategy manager: "Legislation like the EUP will cut the tail off the worst performers, ensuring that ICT's current impact is reduced."
Beyond the sector's own emissions, a recent report by the Climate Group found that the ICT sector could achieve global emissions reductions from industry of 7.8 billion tons of Co2e by 2020. That's five times the sector's own footprint.
Rather than second-guessing the market, Microsoft has adopted a partnership approach -providing a platform upon which companies can develop tailored applications. Fiat's new Eco Drive programme and the European Environment Agency's Eye on Earth portal are two such examples.
The Eco Drive solution runs off the Blue&Me platform, a communications system co-developed with Microsoft that has been installed in some 500,000 Fiat 500 and Grande Puntos since 2006. Drivers can download Eco Drive from the Fiat website and upload it to their Blue&Me system.
Eco Drive then gathers information such as the emissions and fuel consumption incurred during each car journey, as well as information relating to the driver's technique, such as acceleration, gear changes and speeds. The information is transferred via a USB key into the driver's PC, which generates a feedback report. The aim is to help drivers handle their vehicle more efficiently, which Fiat says could lower emissions by up to 15 per cent.
The EU's European Environment Agency recently leveraged Microsoft's Virtual Earth, a mapping, imaging and data-visualisation platform, to create the Eye on Earth portal. This website provides real-time monitoring of water quality on beaches in 27 European countries using a combination of country-specific environmental data and input from beach users. It is soon to be extended to include monitoring of soil, air and ozone quality and biodiversity.
HP says that 80 per cent of its clients evaluate environmental performances when making their purchasing decisions. "If we provide the most efficient solutions that both reduce costs and environmental impact it obviously puts us in a very good position as the [green ICT] market grows," says McMahon.
In March this year, HP re-launched its IT laboratories, HP Labs, to include sustainability as one of its five key research themes. Around 5 per cent of its $3.6 billion R&D budget is currently channeled into its seven research laboratories for long-term, strategic and blue-sky (visionary), research.
To date, HP's green ICT focus has been on generic solutions, such as smart building energy management with its Advanced Metering Infrastructure. This enables energy-demand management by allowing communications between end users and utilities, and integrating data collected from the meters into billing and accounting systems.
HP is also developing an Integrated Site Management tool, designed to monitor and control energy use, water consumption, sewage and air pollution at production or office sites. According to the company, a prototype test delivered site energy savings of 11.3 per cent.
Another focus is data centres. Recently, European and US banks have been running out of power and space for their existing data centres, given legislative requirements mandating the storage of live data. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the escalating energy demands of data centers, tied mainly to the cooling requirement, have more than doubled since 2000.
Like many other IT providers, HP is consolidating its clients' data centres, reducing the physical number of centres, IT infrastructures and applications used. Internally, HP has reduced its 80 centres to six and is now using less energy to drive more powerful and efficient servers.
With its "dynamic smart cooling" technology, which uses sensors to manage cooling, HP says it has achieved energy savings of up to 40 per cent in each data centre. "Its all about managing what you have, more intelligently," says McMahon.
To complement the consolidation of hardware, "virtualisation" solutions from companies like Microsoft and VMware also enable the resources of a single computer to be shared across multiple environments, freeing up storage capacity and reducing energy costs associated with data centre cooling systems by up to 80 per cent.
HP also promotes remote office capabilities. Seeking alternatives to business travel, HP teamed up with DreamWorks Animation SKG in 2005 to produce the video-conferencing market leader Halo Telepresence. The Halo Collaboration Studio, which comes with a hefty price tag of $349,000 (£176,000), allows real-time eye contact between users. Lack of eye contact was one of the biggest drawbacks of previous video-conferencing facilities.
"Going greener means getting smarter. To get smarter we need more information, intelligence and data," said Graham Whitney, chair of IBM's climate change programme. IBM's focus has been on industry-specific solutions for logistics, transport and utilities.
IBM's Carbon Tradeoff Modeler enables businesses to model variables contributing to supply-chain CO2 emissions. The tool models the variables driving emissions from both a manufacturing and distribution perspective, allowing businesses to visualise the outcome, or the carbon tradeoffs, of their economic decisions.
IBM has also focused on intelligent transport, developing and managing congestion-charge systems for the Swedish and UK road authorities. Its congestion-charge system for the Swedish Road Authority reportedly helped reduce traffic by 22 per cent and increased public transport usage by 40,000 users per day.
For utilities, IBM has been trialing smart grid "power plant to plug" solutions and is designing a software framework to speed the integration of technology into existing electricity grids.
By installing devices that allow a price information exchange to take place between the utility and the household, utilities are able to demand manage their energy supply. For example, on hot days a fluctuation in energy price would be wirelessly transmitted through a gateway device to a smart thermostat in the home, triggering the thermostat to lower by several degrees. In this way, utilities are able to mitigate demand spikes that could lead to blackouts.
During a trial run by GridWise, a Washington-based industry consortium, IBM's backend software designed to send information between consumers and the utilities, enabled a 10 per cent reduction in energy costs.
Powering the green ICT wave is a combination of market demand and regulation. In Europe, mandatory emissions trading schemes are forcing all industry sectors, as well as the regulators themselves, to seek intelligent solutions to track and manage energy consumption. This suggests that demand for green ICT solutions will continue to grow as more companies are affected by legislation.
But Molly Webb, lead author of Climate Group's Smart 2020 report, warns: "There is going to be an explosion in the number of people using ICT products and services, from today's one billion to 7 billion by 2020. The big challenge faced by the ICT sector today is how to double capacity without doubling its own energy consumption."
Even so, research has led the WWF to conclude that a doubling or even tripling of CO2 emissions within the sector should be considered "strategic" if ICT benefits are to be fully reaped elsewhere.
HP Labs has initiated research that uses nanowire photonics to increase the efficiency of solar cells by more than 20 per cent. While offering efficiency comparable to solar cells used in space applications, they can be manufactured at the cost of the cells used in pocket calculators.
Microsoft is currently developing the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for MS Dynamics AX dashboard, which is due to be released in the first quarter. The software is designed to help companies track their energy consumption and emissions by making environmental data collection a normal part of business.
IBM Research is developing new, non-vacuum, solution-based manufacturing processes for CIGS (Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide) solar-cell modules, aimed at increasing current efficiency from 6 per cent-12 per cent to around 15 per cent. The goal is to reduce the cost, minimise the complexity and improve the flexibility of producing solar electric power.
— Climatechangecorp