BBC Radio 4's final Frontiers programme of the year tackled a fascinating subject: what to do if current efforts to reduce global warming prove to be too little too late. The only option will be geo-engineering – deliberately tinkering with the earth's climate and chemistry to change it for the better (as opposed to blindly tinkering with the environment with little thought to the consequences, as we do today).

The programme brought together experts to discuss proposals that might cool the planet – principally by reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface by a couple of percent. The proposals include mimicking volcanoes by injecting sulphates into the atmosphere using artillery shells, enhancing the reflectivity of clouds by squirting seawater into the atmosphere from floating platforms at sea, and the rather more science-fiction idea of releasing trillions of tiny sunshades in outer space at the orbitally-stable L1 Lagrange point between the sun and the earth.

Not practical, perhaps, but well worth a listen.

Posted by Editor on December 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

UK offices will waste enough energy to roast 4.4 million turkeys over the Christmas period due to employees' failure to turn off unused office equipment over the festive break.

That is according to research last week from printer giant Canon which estimates that the UK workforce's well documented love of always-on electrical equipment means that 43.6m KwH of electricity will be wasted between Friday 22nd of December and the second of January, when most UK offices will either re-open or return to normal staffing levels following the Christmas break.

That represents enough energy to microwave 268m mince pies or power 350,000 tree lights for the whole period - meaning that £8.66m will be wasted in electricity bills and almost 19,000 tonnes of CO2 will be unnecessarily emitted.

David Smith, marketing director of Canon Business Solutions, insisted that the headline-grabbing research had relied on a robust methodology.

He claimed Canon had calculated the figures by using total UK office equipment data from the National Energy Foundation and market research firm Infosource and turn off rates gained from a Canon survey of 100 firms – which found that half of PCs, 60 percent of printers and 100 percent of faxes will be left on over the Christmas period. It then used figures from the Carbon Trust on the typical energy consumption of office equipment to work out how much electricity would be wasted.

Smith said that equating the amount of electricity wasted with the number of Turkey's that could be cooked using that energy was an effective way of highlighting the scale of the problem. "We've used this tactic in the past where we've shown customers that upgrading from an old printer to one of our new multi-functional devices will save enough energy in a year to microwave 17,500 chickens," he said. "It is a very effective analogy for getting the message across."

Smith added that it was hardly surprising that so many PCs and printers will be left on over the Christmas period. "At Christmas people's minds are on getting out of the office," he said. "Also many people think they have switched off machines when they have just logged off or put them on stand-by."

But Smith insisted there were real benefits for firms in encouraging staff to turn off PCs and monitors, power down all office peripherals, turn off lights, and, in the longer term, upgrade to more energy efficient technologies.

"For most businesses there are big cost savings to be realised," he said. "But beyond that, green issues are being driven up the corporate agenda and if you don’t show that you are making practical moves to reduce energy consumption you are going to lose competitiveness, particularly in government contracts."

And with that warning ringing in its ears GBN is about to turn off its PCs and printers and head home to cook its own Christmas turkey.

Hope you have an enjoyable festive season and a happy New Year, and we'll be back in the New Year with plenty more green business stories.

Posted by James Murray on December 21, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Painfully aware that my recent trip to Vienna was not exactly a case of practicing what GBN has been preaching when it comes to cutting down on corporate travel I decided last week that I would pay to offset the carbon emissions generated by the two and a quarter hour flight.

I opted for the company ClimateCare, which I had heard from several sources has proved particularly effective at moving away from controversial re-forestry investments towards more beneficial energy efficiency and renewables programmes.

Upon visiting the site I also found ClimateCare's credentials had been bolstered still further by a recent independent consumer report from the Clean Air – Cool Planet not-for-profit lobby group. The study, which looked at 30 offset providers, branded ClimateCare one of the most impressive operators, ranking it first in four of the seven assessment criteria.

Convinced that despite some legitimate concerns about offsetting this was a purchase worth making I put my flight details into the online calculator and started wondering how big the price tag would have to be to ensure my financial concerns outweighed my ethical ones - I still had Christmas presents to buy after all.

A few seconds later I was pleasantly surprised to be told that offsetting the 0.29 tonnes of carbon produced flying to and from Vienna would cost me a grand total of £2.19 - I could offset the environmental impact of the flight for less than the price of a pint.

Even accounting for the fact that ClimateCare insists on a minimum offset order value of £5 (it's to do with the cost of processing the credit card apparently) it still cost me about half what I expected and amounted to a fraction of the cost of the flight.

A quick tour of the site proves that it is not just offsetting flights that is far cheaper than I thought. Offsetting 4,000 miles of driving an average car costs just £10, the average UK home can be offset for £40, while you can offset the 12 tonnes of CO2 that represents each individuals' portion of UK carbon emissions for £90.

My surprise at these offset bargains is not uncommon, according to Michael Buick of ClimateCare. "A lot of people think it is quite cheap," he said. "It may get more expensive as demand rises, but the fact is that a little bit of money goes a long way on renewable and more energy efficient technologies."

Buick pointed to ClimateCare projects such as the initiative to introduce more energy efficient wood burning stoves to developing world communities that cost just £50 each, last over five years and reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 1.5 tonnes a year.

"The Stern Review clarifies that it is far cheaper to reduce carbon emissions now than tackle the problem later," Buick argued. "There are still a lot of low hanging fruits, where relatively small investments have big impacts."

Promoting this message has been hamstrung by the fact that carbon offset firms cannot widely advertise the low cost of their products for fear of customer complaints that their money should go on projects, not marketing. But word of mouth and press coverage is gradually challenging the widely held perception that offsets are an expensive frippery, according to Buick.

Of course the surprisingly low cost of carbon offsets is not enough to win everybody round to the idea. Many firms will maintain that even if offsets would represent a fraction of their overall costs the total quickly tots up, while critics of the whole concept claim - with some validity - that offsets could convince people that they no longer need to reduce overall emissions.

However, advocates of the concept insist offsetting is not only cheaper than many people believe but can also deliver plenty of benefits in terms of limiting your environmental impact and improving firms' brand value and staff morale.

As a result any business that initially dismissed the idea of offsetting on the assumption that it would prove financially unviable should consider properly investigating exactly how much it would cost them - they might just be pleasantly surprised.

Posted by James Murray on December 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Consumers and home workers considering moving to so-called green energy tariffs are being urged to thoroughly assess the environmental validity of their electricity suppliers' schemes after a report last week warned that many green tariffs fail to live up to the environmental benefits claimed.

The study from the National Consumer Council (NCC) and consumer watchdog energywatch said that while interest in green tariffs is growing many of the environmental schemes available are too complex and guilty of overselling their environmental benefits.

The report - entitled Reality or Rhetoric? Green tariffs for domestic consumers - argues that while most energy suppliers now offer a green tariff the effectiveness of these schemes vary enormously.

According to the report, only some schemes work by ensuring all energy bought under the higher tariff is covered by power bought from renewable energy sources – which is what many people would expect from a green tariff.

Meanwhile, other green tariffs work by the supplier investing the premium the customer pays into renewables or energy efficiency projects. In some cases this sum is matched by the supplier, though this is not always the case. Further schemes work through carbon offsetting, where the supplier pledges to offset some or all of the energy the customer is using.

This confusion allows some firms to oversell the "greenness" of their tariffs, according to the report, letting consumers think they are dramatically reducing their environmental impact when their suppliers' ill thought out carbon offset schemes or small scale energy efficiency investments mean this is not the case.

NCC and energywatch said there was an urgent need for energy suppliers to be more transparent about how their green tariffs work.

"With consumers increasingly trying to do their bit for the environment, switching to a green tariff should be a simple way for them to make a difference," said Lord Larry Whitty, the NCC’s chairman. "But our investigation shows that it’s too easy for consumers to be confused and misled… That’s why we’re calling for a shake up in how companies market and sell their green tariffs, and for them to offer bigger environmental benefits. Even the better tariffs would only cut the CO2 emissions of a typical household by around 6 per cent."

Adam Scorer, energywatch director of campaigns, said that the watchdog had launched a new online guide designed to make it easier for consumers to compare the benefits of different suppliers' green tariffs.

But he added that the suppliers still needed to open their schemes up to independent scrutiny if they wanted to encourage greater customer confidence in their new green tariffs. "Together with NCC, energywatch will be pressing energy suppliers to sign up to minimum standards for green claims and have their tariffs and CO2 savings independently audited," he said. "That would mean no more unsubstantiated claims, and clear, accurate, comparable information about the environmental benefits offered and the carbon emissions saved if a customer signs up."

While the report focuses on consumer tariffs the same concerns are also likely to apply to many green tariffs aimed at business customers. As a result recommendations that customers should check the environmental credentials of their green tariffs apply just as much to the corporate world as they do to household customers.

"These are issues that need to be flagged up to the business community," said a spokeswoman for energywatch. "There is not enough transparency in the domestic market and the business market is even more complex. Corporate customers need to ask questions about what they are getting from a green tariff and make sure that everything is in the contract."

Posted by James Murray on December 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dell has won plenty of plaudits in the last few months for its environmental record, securing praise from Greenpeace for its phasing out of some harmful chemicals used in its machines and recently releasing new energy efficient servers and services.

But for one IT Week reader there remains a considerable flaw in the vendor's environmental policy.

Posting a comment in response to the recent story on Dell's Energy Smart 1950 and 2950 servers - which claim to reduce power consumption by 20 percent compared to standard models - one IT manager claimed that while the new servers may boast a more energy efficient Intel processor and new intelligent cooling technology the packaging used to deliver Dell's servers are "a far cry from recyclable".

"[In Dell's packaging] polystyrene rules and even though they are stamped "recycle" no one in the UK will recycle them," he wrote. "Meanwhile competitors' products arrive safely in eco-friendly recycled cardboard (which can be recycled again). Shame on you Dell! We need you to be Eco friendly beyond Intel's latest CPU."

A spokesman for Dell responded with a comment accepting that the reader had a valid point and insisting that the company was committed to limiting the environmental impacts of its packaging.

He added that the company had already reduced its total use of packaging and that it was investigating how to increase the amount that is recycled. He also claimed Dell was currently "doing some interesting things with reusable packaging that can ship multiple products at once".

Dell's rapid response to the criticism is to be applauded, but the justifiable censure for its packaging serves to highlight the risks any firm faces when it embraces an environmentally sustainable business model.

Business leaders are rapidly realising that environmental actions have to stretch right across every aspect of the business; otherwise, somewhat ironically, the company leaves itself open to more criticism than those who do nothing. This is the price firms have to pay for the good publicity that comes with sustainable business models.

However, the more philosophical environmentally-conscious firms will realise, as Dell appears to have done, that criticism for not doing enough should be a spur for more action rather than less, as it actually validates green policies by proving there is a customer base that really cares about these issues.

Posted by James Murray on December 18, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

"It's very warm," says the Austrian taxi driver. "Really strange for this time of year."

His comments seem a bit bizarre given that it is around midnight in Vienna and the temperature feels decidedly sub-zero. But the cab driver is adamant that it is far too warm, and he is concerned. "It's not good for the tourists, or the skiing," he observes.

He is not alone in voicing his fears. I am in Vienna this week attending HP's Software Universe conference and alongside talk of HP's new product roadmap the weather is one of the dominant topics of conversations as delegates who had come expecting a seasonal stroll round this beautiful city realise the hat and gloves they packed are proving completely superfluous.

The average temperature for Vienna in December ranges between three degrees and minus one, but for much of the month so far it has been three degrees or so warmer, resulting in no snow and prompting local papers to run headlines declaring "Spring in December". The world famous Christmas market does not look that Christmassy.

Of course the whole of Europe has been facing up to one of the warmest autumns on record, but whereas here in the UK the biggest problem has been poor sales of winter coats and some tragically confused hedgehogs, in the Alps the warm weather is rapidly becoming an issue of massive economic importance.

Ski meets have already been cancelled and some resorts at lower altitudes have delayed opening by several weeks as everyone waits on the snow. Heavy snows could well fall any day, but already business has been lost and the resorts will spend the rest of the winter struggling to make up the shortfall. It hardly needs adding that for relatively small countries such as Austria and Switzerland a sizable chunk of their winter GDP is at risk.

Talking about one bad year to illustrate the impact of climate change always risks ridicule from climate change sceptics. "You're talking about weather, not climate," they argue. "There have always been annual fluctuations." But this is not just one bad year - although this season looks particularly miserable for Austrian ski hire companies – it is part of a wider trend that has seen Alpine ski seasons steadily shorten and glaciers retreat at a rapid rate.

The irony is that as the Alps' winter economy slowly melts away the resorts are trying to halt the inevitable with gas-guzzling snow machines capable of producing man-made "snow". Meanwhile, the more affluent European tourists hop on planes to Canada, the US and New Zealand in search of guaranteed slopes, resulting in yet more of the carbon emissions that have caused this problem in the first place.

So what is the relevance of this little local difficulty to business leaders?

Well besides the fact that the ski industry is a multi-million pound sector it could also be argued that it is the canary in the mine for many other parts of the global economy. Its travails act as a forceful reminder to corporate leaders in all sectors that tackling climate change, or at least incorporating it in their risk calculations, is critical to protecting investments and future profits.

There are many reasons why the past eighteen months have seen a surge in corporate interest in environmental sustainability, not least amongst them the increase in energy costs, the growing authority of the scientific evidence on climate change and the emergence of a generation of customers who factor green issues into purchasing decisions.

But there is another issue at play that for many observers proves so disturbing, and arguably defeatist, that they are unwilling to discuss it too openly. The fact is that potential business impacts from climate change are now so close that they are beginning to effect investment decisions.

For years a ski resort would be the surest of surest bets, a guaranteed money spinner for decades into the future as the global middle class continues its expansion. Is that the case now? Building a new ski run in the Alps now strikes as foolish a capital investment as erecting a retirement complex on the Florida coast. Who is going to spend millions on a new Alpine hotel when within a decade the ski season could have shrunk to a few weeks? Who will invest in a construction project in the Gulf of Mexico when climate scientists insist the number and intensity of hurricanes in the region will intensify?

Insurance firms – the sector of the economy with the most intimate understanding of risk – are already asking these questions and coming to worrying conclusions. Some have even stopped insuring many residences on America's eastern seaboard as they are willing to forego the premiums because the risk of having to shell out for storm damage is so high.

Any large scale capital investment that measures its expected returns over decades rather than a few years must now assess the new and profound risks posed by climate change and make decisions accordingly. As a result many traditionally safe investments suddenly look very shaky.

The silver lining to this rather depressing scenario is that once firms see previously good investments tainted the financial impetus to combat climate change becomes ever more apparent. As one exec at a major IT services firm recently explained: "We've invested really heavily in expanding our presence in India, the last thing we want to see is the country descend into chaos if the Ganges dries up."

Austria's currently green ski slopes may be hugely concerning for the country's economy, but perhaps they will serve to hammer home the message that not only should climate change be a central consideration in any firms' risk assessments but that failure to tackle the problem will also hasten the extinction of vast swathes of the global economy.

Posted by James Murray on December 15, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A recent IT Week story referenced Azul Systems and its approach to appliances that accelerate Java performance, noting that the startup was enjoying some success through its use of in-house processor designs that packs tens of cores on each chip. The net result of this is mightily impressive speed as well as very low power consumption and very small-format boxes.

However, as noted in the piece, the approach left Java pioneer Sun Microsystems underwhelmed. “In general, custom hardware tends not to win in the long term,” said Mark Reinhold, Sun’s chief engineer for Java SE. Sun also suggested that specialist vendors, such as Azul, would always struggle to compete with larger manufacturers because they lack the R&D resources to catch up.

Leaving aside the question of whether Sun’s view was coloured by the fact that it is embroiled in a legal dispute with Azul, the piece drew an interesting response from Azul, citing an analyst named Cal Braunstein of Robert Frances Group.

“Sun's comments on custom hardware not winning in the long term do not map to the facts,” Braunstein wrote. “Specialised hardware solutions have been the norm in the IT industry for decades. One only needs to look at supercomputers, cell and graphics processors, routers and switches, and storage directors. In fact, the Azul architecture parallels the supercomputer architecture. Both are processors designed to do specific types of processing while leaving the basic processing (such as input/output processing) to an attached general purpose processor.

“The second comment about there being so many resources at firms such as AMD, Intel, and Sun that others cannot successfully compete against them is inconsistent with reality. There are a number of other specialty chip manufacturers that are quite successful, including IBM, Nvidia, and TI. In fact, Sun uses Nvidia's graphic processors in their computers. Plus, if this statement were true, Linux would not exist or survive because of the number of resources at HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Sun. I know Sun does not believe Linux is going away.”

It seems there’s very little Sun and Azul can agree on at the moment but that’s probably just an indicator of how competitive the performance-per-watt game has become in today’s server rooms.

Martin Veitch

Posted by James Murray on December 15, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It may well be far too early to get a considered response from the IT community out of Prime Minister, excuse us, Chancellor Gordon Brown's recent pre-budget speech outlining a range of 'green' taxes and proposals to put this issue higher on the business agenda.

But what is clear is that all sorts of companies, from technology to public sector to what-have-you, need to start addressing their environmental impact. Well, so we've been told. Maybe it's time to hear the sceptic's take on all this?

One such seems to be Joseph Denne, Technical Director of Airlock, a London-based digital design agency. Is he completely alone when he voices this kind of concern: "The green bandwagon is in town. Everyone wants a ride on it - big business, politicians, local councils, the Chancellor - you name it, they're all pushing their 'green credentials'. While the awareness this creates is no bad thing, I find it weird that previously totally un-green organisations, have suddenly become environmental experts. How exactly does green car insurance work?"

But dig a bit further and it turns out that Airlock, probably like a lot of organisations, has actually started doing its bit for the environment. "Airlock is a young firm, run by young people," Denne told GBN. "We've always been keen to do the right thing and are careful to work with clients that reflect our ethos. We are definitely no angels, but we did consider the environment early on and do offset our annual carbon emissions, which are around 45 tonnes per year."

"But we know this is still not enough," he added. "We are an interactive agency, which on the one hand is quite green - telecommuting around the globe, providing ways for people to see goods without leaving their homes - but we also use a lot of energy during the production of our work."

Overall, he says, "Technology is not the dirtiest of sectors, but when considering the energy consumption required and the issues surrounding disposal of old hardware, it's clear that we all still have a long way to go in the sector."

In fact this apparent green sceptic - like a lot of us? - is more turned off by attempts to grab headlines with spurious green announcements than lifestyle changes. As he says: "If you are really green and care more about the reality than the bandwagon, then get on and do something worthwhile. Green issues should be a standard part of modern life, not something to tax and brag about."

Posted by Gary Flood on December 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Lots of people believe that perks for companies that run energy-efficient datacentres are A Good Thing and lots of government agencies say they are keen to offer sweeteners for firms that can demonstrate they are good citizens when it comes to energy consumption. But one question has been left floating in the air: how on earth do you do it?

It is generally agreed that testing every CPU, disk drive, fan, screen and graphics card is impossible. Even testing at the server system level is deemed to be very tough. That leaves the option of holistic assessments of entire datacentres, probably through a third-party auditor.

“It might not happen in the near-term but in the long-term you need a standard way to quantify the efficiency of a datacentre to support a carrot-and-stick approach,” says Aaron Davis who sits on the board of IT power management and cooling giant APC.

“You’re going to have to have a metric that is simple to understand and you can’t play a game with.”

Davis’s solution is based on a straightforward subtraction calculation that exposes the wastage that is often at the heart of datacentre power issues.

“It’s how much power is going into a datacentre and how much is being used, because all the rest is overhead,” he says.

Separately, Davis says APC plans a software release for datacentres in the April to June period of next year that is a “completely autonomic” approach to managing power.

Martin Veitch

Posted by James Murray on December 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Amidst all the talk about the energy efficiency of IT equipment, it is often forgotten that much of the energy a machine requires throughout its life is expended not when it is in use but during the initial production process.

Improving the in-use energy efficiency of IT equipment is of course welcome, but some experts are now arguing that with so much energy expended when the machine is manufactured one of the best ways to reduce a firm's energy footprint is to buy fewer new products by ensuring that all existing machines are used for their entire useful life.

This represents a major challenge to the status quo whereby many firms update IT equipment every three years or so. But according to Darren Bland, managing director of second-use hardware broker Powercore International, more firms are realising there are environmental and business benefits in sweating assets for a few years longer and even buying in second hand kit when extra resources are required.

"The rate of replacement for equipment is crazy and many machines that are thrown out could be used for up to six years without any problems," he said. "It makes environmental sense to use a machine for as long as possible and if you do have to upgrade then it should often be put back on the re-use market rather than put in a skip."

Powercore provides refurbished IBM pSeries(RS/6000), iSeries(AS/400) and xSeries (Netfinity), HP Unix, Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu Primepower equipment as well as a range of storage kit to the second user market. The company claims that beyond the environmental gains of not breaking up products that could still be used, its customers are also getting business benefits from buying these older technologies.

"There is an obvious financial advantage," explained Bland. "It varies a lot by product, but you can get hardware that is only a year old and is half the price of the new version."

Beyond this financial benefit, Bland argued, that there are also technical advantages to buying in second use machines. "A lot of customers will turn to the second use market because they are running an old box that is still working perfectly well and they want to set up another box that is the same model for disaster recovery purposes," he explained.

Many high profile firms are also realising that they can break from the cycle of constant upgrades without any real damage to their competitiveness. Bland said several High Street retailers often buy second hand equipment as they know it will fulfill their requirements and cost them much less than cutting edge hardware. However, he admitted they would probably prefer to remain nameless because of the stigma associated with running old systems.

"There is constant vendor pressure to upgrade even when older versions of products are still fine," argued Bland. "When organisations as critical as the Navy and Air Traffic Control are running on hardware that is in some cases 15 years old you can see that equipment remains reliable for far longer than people think."

Posted by James Murray on December 12, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mark Anzani, vice president of System z hardware products at IBM, reckons that despite their massive power demands mainframes are a greener alternative to distributed server environments. In an exclusive interview with GBN he argues that mainframes are more energy efficient than rival datacentre technologies and outlines how IBM plans to improve their green credentials still further.

GBN: As head of hardware development in the US for IBM's mainframe technologies how important is energy efficiency when you are running development projects?
Mark Anzani: In the past year I've received more questions from customers than ever before on energy efficiency. Purchasers are really being driven by the economic and environmental need to cut energy demands. The other big issue is just the simple practicality of getting power and cooling capabilities into a datacentre. There are customers with datacentres in major cities like New York and London who have plenty of floor space sitting unused just because they can’t get enough power into the building.

And you’d argue mainframes can help with this problem?
When you hit a certain workload the larger servers or mainframe environments are more energy efficient on an [energy used per] unit of work basis than multiple servers working together. We took a look at the energy used for the same workload when run on distributed four-way Unix servers and on a z9 mainframe machine. The energy consumption of the z9 was ten times less.

Why is this?
One of the fundamental characteristics of mainframes is that they are good at running multiple workloads simultaneously and that they can deliver high utilisation rates. In contrast distributed servers tend to run at a very low utilisation rate. They are improving because of virtualisation but they are still very low.

What is it about the mainframe that makes it more efficient?
It is a very rough analogy but if you've got a trucking company that needs to ferry packages from one point to another it is more efficient to put 1,000 packages in one large truck than each individual package in its own mini cooper. The same priniciples apply between the mainframe and distributed environment – it requires less power to complete workloads when the whole workload is done in the same place.

If this is the case why do distributed server environments remain so popular?
Platform selection always starts at an application level and the person making the decision tends to go with what they are familiar with. That means they tend to start with Unix servers, but then as the workload increases they prefer to just add more servers. A lot of [the reliance on distributed servers] tends to be psychological.

Will that change?
I'd argue that now mainframes have better technology for application aggregation it is far easier to migrate these distributed server environments onto a mainframe that is more efficient in terms of both support and energy consumption. It is not that it is the sole issue but energy efficiency is a big part of the strong economic case for server consolidation.

Mainframes may be able to undertake a lot of work but they still have a very large energy footprint. What is IBM doing to lower the energy requirements of its mainframes?
We are constantly focusing on the passive power of the chips. We are looking at dynamic power management systems that allow you to automatically cut power to areas of the chips when those areas are not being used. It allows you to manage the total power demands far better. You'll see aspects of this technology in a couple of years – maybe earlier.

Where else can you make improvements?
Efficient management of data is another area we are focusing on. There are increasingly sophisticated technologies out there for compressing data so that the physical storage space required is lowered. Using that technology effectively is a good way of reducing the amount of storage kit you need and that helps your overall energy demands.

You may be able to cut the energy mainframes use but a lot of energy is still required to cool the machines. Are there any plans to tackle cooling requirements?
It's true that much of the power in a datacentre is used removing heat. We have already developed energy efficient frames that use chilled water to remove heat from server racks and we'll see those cooling techniques adapted for mainframe machines in the near future.

Posted by James Murray on December 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (3)

The scale of the disagreements within government about how best to tackle climate change have been thrown into the open today as reports emerged that the author of the recent report into the economic impact of global warming is to quit the Treasury.

Sir Nicholas Stern, the man behind the far-reaching Stern Review, is reported to be leaving the Treasury next March amidst rumours that he was being frozen out from Chancellor Gordon Brown's inner circle.

Stern said he had been planning the move for some time and had enjoyed working at the Treasury. But the announcement's timing, just a day after Brown issued a pre-budget report featuring only nominal concessions on the environment, seems designed to cause maximum embarrassment for the Chancellor.

The move is likely to stoke further criticism of Brown's lack of action over climate change.

Despite the scale of the warnings in the Stern Review and the central message that early action will prove more beneficial to the global economy than waiting, Brown appears to have accepted few of the recommendations in the report for green taxes and a major carbon trading scheme.

He has already resisted calls from the environment secretary David Miliband for a wide ranging package of environmental taxes and according to sources at the Treasury, cited in The Times this morning, his opposition to green levies is now so strong that he had to be persuaded to introduce even the modest rises in fuel and air passenger duty.

There is talk that a new carbon trading scheme will be introduced next year, but even this is not on the scale Stern's report called for. It is not unreasonable to assume Stern is leaving his post a very frustrated man.

So what does Brown's timidity mean for the business community?

There will be a temptation in some quarters to think that businesses are now off the hook when it comes to the environment. Despite all the recent sound and fury, major taxes on environmentally damaging behaviour seem as far off now as they were prior to the Stern Review. Carbon trading will gradually emerge, but many companies will forsee only minor penalties if they fail to tackle carbon emissions and will now feel free to continue with business as usual.

However, any exec making these assumptions could find that a number of factors combine to ensure that in failing to act they are doing long term damage to their business.

First up, while a strong tax and regulatory framework is needed to drive the reduction in carbon emissions, the market is going some way to incentivising cuts already. With electricity prices set to climb it is a foolish firm that is not taking action to reduce their energy bills.

Secondly, if the cliché is not too worn out, a week is a long time in politics. If Gordon Brown favours political expediency over environmental action there are no guarantees the next person who lives at No11 Downing Street will feel the same way. The Tories and Lib Dems both want far more green taxes and it is again a foolish firm that does not include in their long term risk assessments the liklihood that such a tax regime will eventually emerge.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Brown's calculation that he would gain more political capital from eschewing green taxes than introducing them may just have backfired.

His timidity has attracted fierce criticism with several of the papers running stories lambasting the lack of a clear green agenda in the pre-budget report. Moreover, the attacks on the Chancellor are not confined to the usual suspects in the green lobby. The opposition, major business figures, and huge swathes of the general population - all of which he would traditionally expect to oppose major tax hikes – are all expressing disappointment at the lack of a well thought out green policy.

It will be frustrating to many business leaders that they have to take the lead in reducing carbon emissions without a strong tax and legislative framework to help them on the way. But those that do take action are likely to improve their standing with the growing number of potential customers who disagree wholeheartedly with the Chancellor's business as usual attitude.

Posted by James Murray on December 8, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Storage giant EMC this week became the latest vendor to launch a new consultancy service and online toolset designed to help IT departments drive down their energy consumption.

The company said the new Energy Efficiency Services would see EMC consultants evaluate customer's datacentre workloads, configurations and cooling requirements right across the server and storage infrastructure and then develop a plan for optimising performance and energy efficiency through consolidation, virtualisation and storage tiering strategies.

The new service follows the launch of similar energy efficiency consultancy offerings from rival hardware firms such as IBM and HP. However, Mark Greenlaw, senior director of  marketing for EMC's Celerra product line, said that the company would be offering a broader consultancy service than many of the rival offerings which he argued were primarily focused on server consolidation and new cooling technologies. "[EMC subsidiary] VMware's virtualisation capabilities mean we can offer a lot of support around server consolidation," he argued. "But we also offer a full end-to-end service looking at areas like storage as well."

Separately, the vendor unveiled a new online tool for more accurately calculating the energy consumption and cooling requirements of its Symmetrix DMX-3, CLARiiON CX3 UltraScale and Celerra networked storage systems.

"One of the big problems with driving down energy use in the datacentre is that when you look at spec sheets they only tell you the provisioning you need when the machine is at peak load," explained Greenlaw. "Therefore firms tend to over provision the power to each device and over cool them as well."

He said that the new tool would allow datacentre managers to in put the actual configurations they are using for the machine and it will calculate the precise energy and cooling requirements it requires.

"Many firms are using a storage device that can hold 500 disk drives and they may have only 200 disks in it," added Greenlaw. "But they'll still be working off the power requirements on the spec sheet and over cooling the machine."

The company said the new tool will be made available free of charge to all EMC customers and prospects.

Posted by James Murray on December 8, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It takes quite some doing to annoy two diametrically opposed sides of a debate, but somehow Gordon Brown has managed it.

In one timid swoop the Chancellor's pre-budget report yesterday managed to disappoint both those old school business leaders who have not yet twigged that financial and environmental gains are compatible, as well as the massed ranks of green business campaigners, including many senior corporate leaders, the Lib Dems, Cameron's Tories and a large chunk of Labour's own backbenchers.

The decision to raise fuel duty by 1.25 pence received the expected criticism from hauliers, while the doubling of air passenger duty was dismissed by the CBI as "a blunt tool that does not really reflect the environmental impacts of air travel".

Meanwhile, those in favour of green taxes also trained their sights on the Chancellor arguing that such modest tax increases, coupled with his refusal to reintroduce the fuel levy escalator and his dismissal of higher taxes on gas guzzling cars, meant these so-called green taxes would have absolutely no effect on people's behaviour.

In fact, they argued, green taxes have actually fallen as a proportion of overall taxes since 1997 and the latest increases amount to less than 0.1 percent of GDP as opposed to the 1 percent of GDP that Sir Nicholas Stern said would be required to actually reduce carbon emissions.

Tax experts agreed that the increases were in no way sufficient to impact people's actions while environmental groups like Friends of the Earth also put the boot in claiming the report did "little to show that the Government is prepared to face up to the challenges of global climate change".

Having said only a month ago that the Stern Review was of critical importance Brown has now badly disappointed the green business lobby. As one senior business exec moaned, he has taken "baby steps where we were expecting big leaps forward".

However, if rumours around Whitehall are to be believed the government is not ignoring the Stern Review completely, it is simply choosing to focus its carbon reduction efforts almost exclusively around carbon trading.

According to reports this week ministers are warming to the idea of introducing a carbon trading scheme that will apply to around 5,000 organisations with electricity bills of over £250,000. Firms will be given a carbon allowance and those that exceed it will have to buy extra carbon credits from those companies that don’t use up their full allowance.

Brown hinted such a scheme was in the pipeline in his speech yesterday, claiming he wanted to make "London the world centre of carbon trading".

By introducing a wider carbon trading scheme Brown could argue that firms would be incentivised to slash their carbon emissions and that he was adhering to Stern's recommendations that the mechanism countries use to tackle climate change could be determined by the political environment.

Behind closed doors he could also remind his backbenchers of the fuel protests of a few years ago and point out that carbon trading schemes are unlikely to lose anyone many votes – something that can't really be said of green taxes.

Large businesses can therfore expect to to soon face a trading framework that will result in financial penalties if they pollute and financial windfalls if they reduce their carbon emissions.

This is in many ways encouraging for firms already pioneering green business models, though from a purely environmental perspective it looks like a remarkably high risk plan.

The first problem is that, as the EU has found, setting the right carbon emission allowances for each individual firm is less than easy – set it too high and the impact on carbon emissions will be negligible, too low and the pro-business lobby will go mad.

Monitoring and policing over 5,000 firms will also prove tricky and the scheme will only work if the government is willing to face down objections and dish out massive fines for any company that exceeds their carbon allowance without buying extra credits.

Also extending the scheme to 5,000 organisations - even if they are 5,000 of the largest in the country and account for over a quarter of the carbon emissions from the public and private sector - means the UK's massive midmarket sector is still under no pressure to embrace greener business models.

The government will of course claim that it will further expand the scheme once it is established, with the idea of personal carbon allowances even being floated. But all of this takes time and it is worth noting that one of the central tenets of the Stern Review was that it would be more cost effective to act sooner rather than later.

These numerous challenges mean that Brown would be foolhardy to put all his eggs in one basket and eschew green taxes and subsidies in favour of a complex and largely unproven new carbon market. Taxes and subsidies may be "blunt instruments", but they are simple to implement and can have a massive effect. It may be politically expedient, but Brown should think very carefully before dismissing them outright.

Posted by James Murray on December 7, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of my colleagues this morning received a rather exciting parcel in the post. It contained a small plastic Christmas tree with lights that can be rather ingenuously powered through a USB socket and it had been sent by a PR company that obviously felt the best way to promote a story about Christmas decorations disrupting WiFi signals was to send us some cheap festive tat.

Now despite this Christmas tree looking like what one of my other colleagues rather mean-spiritedly referred to as "plastic landfill crap" and despite almost everyone in this most environmentally aware of offices noting the complete waste of electricity it took to power the lights it actually looks rather seasonal and has been merrily flashing away for most of the day.

It would, in the words of Oscar Wilde, take a heart of stone not to laugh, and it would take a particularly puritanical killjoy to demand it be turned off in the interests of the environment.

I mention this because, according to a major new survey of over 500 UK consumers, a similar scenario is being played out in homes up and down the country as environmental concerns that hold sway for much of the rest of the year are temporarily put on hold in favour of some well-earned seasonal cheer.

The survey, carried out by market research firm Leapfrog Research and Planning, revealed that many UK consumers now have fairly well established green intentions with nine out of ten recycling and turning off unused lights, three quarters buying energy saving lightbulbs, and almost half trying to buy products with less packaging.

As Leapfrog director Chrissie Wells observed: “Even though some people may over-claim the extent to which they behave responsibly, this study clearly shows that people feel an obligation to help the environment and know what they should be doing."

However, the study also revealed that many of these good intentions will take a back seat during the festive season with only 15 percent claiming they would buy ethical or eco-friendly gifts, three quarters claiming they would buy more food and drink than was needed and two thirds saying that having decorative lights on was important.

Of course it would take a real misanthrope, or alternatively a Liberal Democrat MP, to begrudge people Christmas lights and a few left over sausage rolls in the name of environmental sustainability.

But the report also highlights that there are some practical steps both firms and government should take to make it easier for consumers to limit the environmental damage they cause as a result of their Christmas cheer.

The survey found that over half of respondents thought recycling collection points are not large enough to cope with Christmas waste and 40 percent claim councils do not make it easy enough to dispose of Christmas trees, which given they must know Christmas is coming strikes of pretty awful planning.

Similarly, the survey also hinted that there is a large potential market for ethical goods and services at Christmas with over half of respondents claiming it is hard to find gifts that are not over packaged and more than a third arguing that eco-friendly gifts are too difficult to find. 

Maybe it is this pent up demand that will help provide us with a more environmentally sustainable Christmas in the future.

Most people, like us at VNU Towers, will simply take the path of least resistance at Christmas and plug in their USB powered plastic Christmas tree - and who can blame them. But if some innovative firm wants to pioneer a biodegradable novelty Christmas tree for our desks next year they might just find a market for it.

Posted by James Murray on December 6, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Having already won plaudits for its free recycling service and moves to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in its machines, Dell has this week further bolstered its green credentials with the launch of two new servers boasting significantly improved energy efficiency.

The PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 now include Dell's branded Energy Smart technology, which has been pioneered in some of its desktop products and aims to improve energy efficiency through new low-flow fan technology and more efficient power supplies that throttle down when not required; dual core Intel Xeon processors; and a new component architecture designed to improve air flow around the machine.

As a result Dell claims the two new servers deliver up to 25 percent greater performance per watt while also reducing power consumption by a fifth compared to previous models.

Firms can use the servers to slash their energy bills, Dell said, or increase the density in their datacentre by deploying four PowerEdge Energy Smart servers within the same "power envelope" as three standard servers.

The two new servers are now available worldwide and are priced at £1,669 for the 1950 version and £2,069 for the 2950 version both excluding VAT and packaging.

Eric Velfre, enterprise director for Dell EMEA, said that the two new servers formed a key part of a portfolio that he argued was now increasingly environmentally friendly. "The optimised Dell Energy Smart PowerEdge servers, combined with Dell OptiPlex desktops and Dell's industry-leading services, partnerships and sustainability programmes deliver on our commitment to drive energy efficient solutions," he added.

The move, coming hot-on-the-heels of recent energy efficiency announcements from both HP and IBM, further highlights the growing importance of energy consumption to corporate customers. But with all the leading hardware vendors now offering energy efficient product options it will be interesting to see if they will now expand this technology across their entire portfolios.

Posted by James Murray on December 6, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

It appears the UK government is not the only one busy commissioning reports on combating climate change, the German government has now got in on the act with two major new study's on the viability of a leftfield plan that could deliver clean energy to the whole of Europe within the next forty years.

The two reports from the German Aerospace Centre – Concentrating Solar Power for the Mediterranean and Trans-Mediterranean Interconnection for Concentrating Solar Power – investigate how vast new solar farms in the deserts of North Africa could potentially solve Europe's emerging energy crisis and help slash the continent's carbon emissions.

Satellite-based studies cited in the report show that deploying relatively simple concentrated solar power (CSP) systems over just 0.3 percent of the deserts in the Middle East and North Africa would provide enough power to meet current and future demands from the EU, the Middle East and North Africa.

The reports also argue that the technologies to achieve this are already well established and proven. CSP plants work by using mirrors to heat water, thus generating steam capable of powering turbines and generating electricity.

The report claims CSP is considerably more effective than photovoltaic solar panels, which tend to be at the mercy of the weather, and cannot store power effectively. In contrast CSP systems can store unused heat in tanks of molten salt, which can then be used to power the turbines at night. Equally, because the system is turbine based hybrid plants can be set up so that if there is a protracted period of overcast weather - in itself unlikely in North Africa - traditional fuels can be used to heat the water and drive the turbines.

Desalinated sea water can also be produced as a byproduct of the process, providing clean water for irrigation or air conditioning purposes.

The reports argue that with vast swathes of North African desert available for the same price as a London broom cupboard the strategy is economically viable. The technology is also expected to become cheaper as producers of the mirrors used in the CSP plants begin to exploit greater economies of scale and the report estimates that the cost of using CSP plants to produce power equivalent to that gained from one barrel of oil will ultimately fall to just $20 – much less than the current $60 a barrel you pay for oil.

So if a technology that is essentially some giant mirrors and water pipes can all but halt global warming in its tracks why are solar farms not springing up across the Sahara as we speak? 

Well, there is one rather large problem. Europe's power grid is currently built on alternating current cables, which are unviable for transmitting electricity all the way from North Africa as too much would be lost on the way. As a result the plan will only work if Europe switches to a High Voltage Direct Current grid whereby only 3 percent of the power is lost per 1,000km. In theory, this means power could be transmitted all the way to the UK with just 10 percent lost along the way, but as you can imagine moving to a completely different power grid doesn’t come cheap.

The German reports estimate that establishing a suitable transmission grid capable of delivering 100GW of solar power would cost €400bn. However, spread up until 2050 this would equate to just €13bn a year and the report argues much of the amount required could be raised through commercial investment with government's being called upon to provide just €10bn.

A scientific body called the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation has also been formed to promote and further investigate the idea and confidence is mounting that while the whole scheme sounds a bit space age it is a technically, economically and environmentally viable replacement for fossil fuels or nuclear power.

Convincing governments and energy firms to plough money into the scheme may take some doing, but as the German government's reports show it is something they are already actively considering.

Posted by James Murray on December 5, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (4)

The government has taken a fair bit of flak in recent months for its willingness to propose corporate taxes for firms that pollute while refusing to be drawn on incentives for those firms that embrace environmentally sustainable practices.

However, the issue is not quite as clear cut as some business lobbyists have made out. Did you know, for example, that there is already a major tax break in place for firms that deploy energy efficient technologies?

Don't worry if not, because as reported in IT Week today you are certainly not alone. According to datacentre services firm Comtec Power, many IT and facilities directors are completely unaware of the incentive despite the fact that much of the equipment used in their datacenters and office buildings - such as air conditioning, heat and power systems, lights, cooling devices, insulation and environmental monitoring systems - could qualify for tax relief.

Under the scheme, there is a list of over 9,000 technology products all of which promise to deliver enhanced energy efficiency to firms' facilities. Many of these products also qualify for an Enhanced Capital Allowances (ECA) tax break that permits the purchaser to deduct 100 percent of the capital expenditure and associated installation costs against taxable profits. The ECA can be claimed as part of normal income or corporation tax returns calculations.

The Carbon Trust, which runs the scheme on behalf of DEFRA, argues that it allows firms to improve their cash flow and shorten the payback period for the investment. Its calculations show that a firm spending £10,000 on qualified products and paying 30 percent tax could reduce its tax bill by £3,000 in the year of investment.

The list is also updated monthly as new energy efficient products reach the market.

Smaller firms that may still balk at the investment in new equipment can apply for interest free loans of up £100,000 from the Carbon Trust.

It is a scheme that the government, currently under fire from the Tories for not taking enough action to create a strong regulatory and tax framework for businesses to embrace green practices, would do well to publicise far more aggressively. 

Posted by James Murray on December 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Industrial firms that do the most to cut their carbon emissions could enjoy major financial gains after the European Commission this week ordered an overhaul to the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that is likely to drive up the market value of carbon credits.

Under the scheme, which was introduced last year, heavy industrial and energy firms are allocated carbon dioxide emission allowances. Those that don't use up their full allocation can sell the remainder to those firms that exceed their allocation in the form of carbon credits. Any firm found to be exceeding their allocation with out having acquired the extra credits required will face EU fines.

The EC had hoped the creation of a carbon market would provide the ideal mechanism to ensure it meets its emission reduction requirements under the Kyoto protocol. However, the scheme has faced criticism during its first year with member countries being accused of setting their emission caps too high, ensuring the EU will not meet its Kyoto targets and reportedly leading to a slump in the price of carbon credits to as little as £6 a tonne.

Other critics argued too many firms were buying carbon credits from offsetting projects in the developing world, rather than taking action at home.

The EC has now moved to make the scheme more stringent proposing a limit on the number of credits firms can buy from the developing world and this week instructing nine countries, including Germany, Ireland and Sweden, to reduce the carbon allowances they are planning to grant for 2008 to 2012 by almost seven percent.

Of the 10 EU nations presenting their plans for the second stage of ETS only the UK was granted approval. France, meanwhile, withdrew its plans before they were reviewed, pledging to come back with a tougher emissions allowances.

The EC's actions are expected to increase the scarcity of carbon credits, driving up prices and providing a greater incentive for firms that cut their carbon emissions and higher penalties for those that fail to do so. 

Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, said that the decision sent "a strong signal that Europe is fully committed to achieving the Kyoto target and making the EU ETS a success".

Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is expected to next week announce plans to expand the trading scheme in the UK to incorporate other sectors besides heavy industry as part of his pre-budget report.

However, environmentalists argued that while the latest news was encouraging emissions allowances needed to be cut still further if Europe is to meet its Kyoto targets. Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK, argued that the UK still needed to do more to tackle emissions. "Whilst the UK was the best of a bad bunch the government has ducked a key opportunity to tackle its rising carbon dioxide emissions," he said.  "Failure to get tough on industry has meant that the UK will not meet its long standing domestic target to reduce emissions by 20 per cent by 2010."

Meanwhile, some critics would be forgiven for asking if everyone at the EC is on the same page when it comes to tackling climate change after the European Parliament this week approved a €54bn science research fund but made less than €4bn available to energy and environmental technologies.

Over €9bn has been made available to IT R&D with the EC arguing that investment here is likely to underpin improvements in many different sectors. However, firms developing specifically environmental and renewable energy technologies are likely to be disappointed.

The move also comes just days after the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, which represents 25 major companies, wrote to EC president José Manuel Barroso urging greater support and improved incentives for firms developing low-carbon technologies.

Posted by James Murray on December 1, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1)

After years of hype about the benefits promised by grid computing systems capable of ensuring firms only deploy computing power as and when they need it, experts predict next year will see a major breakthrough for the technology.

I know, I know, that is a sentence that could have been written at the end of every year since the mid-nineties. But according to Ian Osborne, project director of the DTI and Intellect's joint Grid Computing Now! knowledge transfer initiative, grid computing's time is finally coming and it is being driven by the technology's ability to deliver sizable improvements to firm's energy efficiency.

"You simply can’t ignore your energy bill as an IT director anymore," said Osborne. "And that means you've either got to replace all your infrastructure or find a way to get more computing power out of your existing systems without increasing power demands – grid and in particular virtualisation allows you to do that."

Osborne argued that internal grids - whereby firms use virtualisation and middleware technologies to link distributed hardware into a grid that can be treated as one central machine - allows firms to drive up the utilisation rates of their hardware, ensuring they no longer have to buy in new systems that would further increase their energy and cooling needs.

"Currently most PCs are running at 5 percent utilisation and most servers less than 20 percent," he said. "A grid approach can help you drive up that utilisation."

According to Osborne, setting up an internal grid also lays the ground work for firms to take advantage of utility computing services from suppliers such as Sun Microsystems and Amazon. These utility computing systems allow firms to buy in extra computing capacity as and when required. In theory, this approach further enhances firms' energy efficiency - partly because specialist suppliers should be optimising their datacentres to achieve extremely high utilisations rates and partly because it means the customer does not need extra hardware sitting around in case of a peak in demand for computing power.

Despite the recent growth in this sector any prediction that utility and grid computing is about to enjoy a surge of interest is certainly to be treated with suspicion given the number of false starts the technology has endured. However, Osborne is right to suggest that the environmental and commercial pressure on IT directors to improve their energy efficiency is likely to make many of them reconsider the advantages grid systems can offer.

Anyone interested in finding out more about the business case for grid computing can register to attend a web seminar on the topic being run by Grid Computing Now! next Tuesday.

Posted by James Murray on December 1, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)