Stole the quote from Oscar Wilde, anyway reading all the recent articles such as the one from business week
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8NM9CTG1.htm which comes from IDC. Has very similar parallels with the problems that we are inheriting today concerning CO2 pollution. In a few articles people refer to early days of the industrial revolution circa mid 1800's when we started to build the large chimneys (smokestacks) which belowed out CO2 and many other even worse pollutants. Todays problems started 200-150yrs years ago. Only in the last 50yrs Governments produced standards, limits, CO2 ratings and taxes to slow this down. Lets say that two thirds of the way through the industrial revolution we started to realise the environmental impact.

Nowadays, we create, or bellow out data like it has no effect on our civilisation or environment. But as discussed earlier, storing data on the wrong media can have high environmental costs.

In 150yrs will we look back at the early days of the IT business the same way as we look back at the early days of the industrial revolution.

Will governments soon produce standards, limits, energy star ratings and taxes to stem the amount of data that we produce?

Forgive me if someone in a government think tank raises a tax per CPU watt output or GB. Lets see if they get voted in, but that is another story. This is the energy star system, just like we have the EU efficiency ratings for fridges.

Think of it this way:

IBM mainframe = First steam engines, Trevithick, the Rocket, George Stevenson. Amazing but dirty.
Amdahl and Hitachi = Better faster steam engines. Faster but still water cooled, dirty.
DEC computers = As always the American's mass produce "Great American Steam locomotives". More of them and less dirty.
UNIX servers = Now we are talking, everyong can build their own factory, remember "Open Systems". Faster, simpler, but not as dirty, not water cooled.
PC's = Model T ford, any colour you want as long as it Microsoft Windows. Dirt for everyone, going back to water cooling CPU's and GPU's, sad.
Linux = Custom cars, came in 60's and 70's was great fun and cool, but uniqueness had a maintenance cost. Cool but does not consider the dirty infrastructure it may be encouraging.
Multi-core Sun T2000 low power systems, with SunRays = Toyota Pirus (not really my SAAB Biopower). Clean and cool, just like a washing powder advert.

So we have gone full circle and are back to the future, it took "industry" 200yrs to get to environmental sensibilty. In the IT industry things move faster, lets say 4 times faster, so I think that it will take 50yrs to get where we are in comparison to the industrial revolution. To discuss the starting point for IT is another story, but similar parallels, Alan Turing in England with the Colusus or ENIAC in Manchester. Then the UK giving the technology to the US and off we go with Silicon Valley.

So by my judgement, if we are thinking about the environment in the IT business, we must be two thirds of the way through the IT revolution. As a rule of thumb (fun).

Now the actual real cool revolution going on now is the Biotech revolution, but I am too old for that.

Now that I have written about how to make a sustainable, low energy and balanced storage infrastructure I can explain what my domestic environmental projects are:

Good things:

House: heated geo-thermally. I have a heat exchanger in the cellar which takes the heat from the ground and produces all warm water and heating. We needed to drill 2 holes in the back garden going down 200m,this was done in 12 hours with a small drilling rig they could drive up my standard size driveway. However, the cost savings of this heating unit paid back in 4yrs, especially since oil prices have increased. I had to replace old heater when we moved in as it was about 40yrs old. My house is made of wood and 100yrs old, so heating is important. Even though the old part of the house is better built and insulated than the 1960's extension's.

Car: I drive a SAAB 9-5 Biopower, this runs off ethanol (E85), meaning I go to the brewery to get fuel. The car has 180hp with ethanol and 150hp when using petrol, yes I can mix and match fuel in the same tank. Did have a lovel Audi A6 Quattro with a V6, as soon as Audi make a ethanol version they can use me to test it. Actually where I live in Sweden the above is not too strange, lots of Sun employees drive ethanol cars. Sun car park is full of Biopower SAAB vehicles. I am proud of the Sun employees, I think we have the most eco-friendly Sun office on the planet. Can anyone challenge me on that.

Batteries: I only buy rechargeable batteries, to me batteries are high pollutants, much better to do this than recycle paper which is bio-degradable.

Lights: I only use Low energy high efficiency, low power Compact Flourescent Light (CFL) bulbs, these consume 80% less power than traditional edison type coil based light bulbs and last 4 times longer.

Paper: recycle all paper, we have about 20-30Kgs a month, most from adverts in the post.  Local council Danderyd (kommun) charges to take this away.  In London where I lived in Barnet, they did this for free (plus bottles, batteries and glass).  Can a London Borough be as green as a Swedish kommun, strange, does not follow conventional wisdom.

Bad things

I need to get a composting device so that we can put all of our waste food in it and use the mulch produced for the garden. Buying compost is very eco-unfriendly as it is not renewable. These composters are really easy and they produce really good mulch. One of my neighbours does it, as the local council charges on waste disposal he saves money on bills. The left over food that you put into it turns into compost, fish, prawns, pasta everything. Now and again you need to add a bit of peat. My in-laws do this in their summer house. Saves having to transport it to a rubbish bin 10kms away.

Future project: Would like to have some solar heating. Governments could fix this if they would allow people to put their excess electricity produced back into the general grid network.

The geo-thermal heating, low tax ethanol car and low-energy light bulbs actually save me money. Pay-back periods are much shorter now that the price of dead dinasaur juice increased. In the UK people talk about schools, house prices and the traffic. In Sweden people talk about taxes, heating systems and alcohol.

I have been trying to figure out how to explain to people that I meet why tape is still good, so here goes.  If you do not need to access your data in the next month and if you can wait 2 minutes to get it back then store your data on tape.  You will be saving the planet and saving your company money.








So we need to store data appropriately and drive at a speed were we do not overheat or run out of fuel.  This is how I like to see the gauge on my car, or manage your data in a well managed IT department.   Store your data on the appropriate media with appropriate environmental characteristics.  This is sustainable storage.





 
So the best way that I can explain the inherent problems with the store everything on disk proposal is with the following diagram.





This shows the high environmental cost of disk in the top left, requires lots of electricity to power it and then lots to cool it, large upward red arrow.  Tape requires little to power it and next to nothing to cool it.  This is at the top right, small green downward arrow.

As the amount of data that you produce over time increases, store the old data that you do not need on tape.  As the quantity of data you have increases reduce your storage costs.  Keep you data on sustainable media, that requires no power when you are not using it and has good capacity to weight ratios, that is TB per kilogram.  This is a cool archive.





Now I keep hearing that tape is a security exposure, well that is because people have not been keeping up with tape technology, nowadays all data on tape can be encrypted, with extremely strong encryption.    Thus if any tape is lost or stolen your data is safe, it cannot be read by anyone except the company that produced it.  Remember tape technology moves on just like other technologies. 

So, seat belts and airbags can be provided now, in case we have a crash and the tapes get lost we can use tape encryption to protect our valuables, also our data.
More about the weight of storage later and KG per Terabyte or Exabyte as we had to design for one customer.