Green IT 2.0 scope and approach
discussed by Forrester analysts. …
June 12, 2010
May 25, 2010
HP Uses Bio Fuels for Rural Data Center Power
Data Centers are moving to rural areas where land and labor are less expensive. There are often farms and lots of cows ... and therefore lots of cow manure.
A significant cost of operating data centers is the electric bill.
" ... data centers ... building them in rural areas, which happen to have an excess of animal waste. The heat from a data center could be used to improve the process by which the waste turns it into methane, which can be used in place of natural gas or diesel, HP's researchers maintain. "
"... average dairy cow, ... produces approximately 120 pounds of waste a day. It would take 10,000 cows to produce enough energy for a data center big enough to support a bank. "
Via: Fierce CIO LINK
May 11, 2010
Dell packages computer equipment with compostable bamboo cradles for delivery
Dell will package your computer equipment for delivery in certified compostable bamboo cradles. The packaging has been certified for its composting performance. Bamboo grows fast and can be harvested sustainably. Dell sources its bamboo from China. The company is focusing on creating a sustainable footprint for its value chain, which includes improving the waste stream generated from the packaging of its products. …
… “The packaging recently received American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) D-6400 certification. This certification confirms the packaging, made from mechanically pulped bamboo from a Forest Stewardship Council-certified bamboo forest in China, will compost and biodegrade at a rate comparable to known compostable materials when added to a hot, active compost pile.
The certification also assures that the compost resulting from the packaging’s degradation process is of good quality and can sustain plant growth.” …
Via Dell: Bamboo Packaging Certified Compostable.
April 20, 2010
Alcatel-Lucent Green Touch
Green Touch is a program at Alcatel-Lucent that focuses on green aspects of technology. " ... looking at how the world of telecommunications is responding to the urgency of preserving our natural environment. ... Green Touch ... a consortium of telecoms operators, manufacturers, universities and non-profit organisations with a mission to conceive and demonstrate the effectiveness of this revolutionary low-energy network - all within the next five years… "
To see the associated video follow the link and look for "Innovation at Work / Green Touch" LINK
Via: Alcatel-Lucent LINK
March 05, 2010
Office Energy Efficiency Achieved at Volkswagen through Focus on Print Scan Copy and Fax Equipment
Volkswagen Group has achieved run-rate savings of 9.26 million kilowatt hours per year after it optimizes its office equipment infrastructure for energy efficiency. This achievement has taken almost five years and have delivered an almost 90% energy savings as compared to 2005. ...
... "Volkswagen has made progress in terms of costs, energy efficiency and the environmental balance sheet by replacing more than 52,000 fax machines, printers, photocopiers and scanners with fewer than 17,500 multifunction devices throughout the Group, and then integrating these new devices into a unified IT infrastructure. Seven energy-efficient standard devices take the place of 832 different models of office equipment.http://bit.ly/aIUj9yThus Group IT at Volkswagen reduced the pool of devices by 66 percent and eliminated around 35,000 single machines. Stacked on top of each other, they would form a tower 14 kilometers high. The new devices automatically report problems and toner levels to a service center. This enables optimal route planning for the maintenance personnel. Advantages: repairs and maintenance are carried out as needed, storage of consumables on site is no longer necessary, and toner cartridges are always changed in an environmentally friendly way without non-specialist staff needing to get involved. " ...
February 16, 2010
HP's Green Data Center in the UK
H-P's newest data center in Wynyard England is cooled ENTIRELY by wind blowing off the nearby North Sea. The North Sea is cold and so are its winds. It is H-P's greenest data center yet ...
The " ... new 360,00 sq. ft. Wynyard center is 40 percent more energy-efficient than conventional data centers ..."
" ... Traditional data centers use thousands of me
gawatt hours per year ... if they were classed as a separate industry, they would be the sixth-largest user of electricity ... "
Other energy saving / carbon saving features of the Wynyard data center are: " ... harvesting rainwater ... to maintain proper humidity levels in the air that’s brought in from outside ... light-colored server racks because they reflect light, allowing for 40 percent less lighting to be installed compared to using black cabinets."
"HP had previously announced that it plans to reduce the combined energy consumption of operations and products by 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2010."
Via: SmartPlanet LINK
January 19, 2010
Iceland's LEED GOLD Data Center
" ... data center developer Verne Global ... announced it is constructing the first international data center in Iceland ... converting a former NATO command center into a data center."
" ... designed to take full advantage of Iceland's infrastructure and environment ... the data center, whose total footprint is about 430,600 square feet, will be designed around LEED Gold standards ... will deploy innovative practices of HVAC and adaptive reuse of the world-class facilities already in place."
" ... will benefit from the large amount of free cooling available in Iceland, as well as its renewable energy sources and constant power rates."
" ... Verne Global is breaking new ground in using Iceland's natural green resources to mitigate both increasing emissions and rising energy costs."
Via: Web Host Industry Review LINK
November 26, 2009
IBM's Approach to Zero Emission Data Centers
Data centers are BIG energy hogs ... withe energy to run them, generating hot CPUs that then need A/C to be kept cool.
"... IBM, which continues to develop technology that could, one day, lead to zero-emission data centers. ... key ... lies in a new cooling technology that IBM is currently toying around with."
"High-performance liquid cooling allows data centers to operate with coolant temperatures above the free cooling limit in all climates, eliminating the need for chillers and allowing the thermal energy to be reused in cold climates. ..."
" ... thanks to this ... cooling technology, IBM has to use less energy than it otherwise would have ... system reuses about 75 percent of the energy initially put into it. It’s that loss of only around 25 percent that makes the whole thing so efficient."
Via: CrunchGear LINK
November 09, 2009
IBM's Green Data Center
Data centers are huge power users ... power for the servers ... that creates heat that then needs more power for A/C to keep things cool. Even with advances in technology such as blade servers and VM-type servers the energy density and energy demands are increasing. IBM has been working on ways to instrument data centers " ... uses networked sensors and liquid cooling to lower energy use." Using data from actual IBM data centers provides real world variable data that helps improve the overall process. Via: ZDNet LINK
June 30, 2009
Power Management Principle for PCs and Laptops
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is implementing a consistent set of energy management settings across its technology assets in support of its green IT strategy and under the company's broader corporate sustainability initiative. ...
... "In support of the new Green IT initiative, power settings on all Fairmont workstations and laptops, which are centrally managed by the brand, will be set to automatically power down after one hour of inactivity. By adopting this power management principle, Fairmont expects to reduce its energy consumption by 2,692,683 KwH per year, resulting in a savings of 1,356 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of avoiding the burning of 3,155 barrels of oil annually. " ...Via Fairmont Hotels & Resorts: Fairmont Announces Green IT Strategy: