Technology and the Environment DD's Eco Notes

Yesterday the President signed the bill "H.R 5646":

H.R. 5646, which directs the Environmental Protection Agency to study the energy consumption of Federal and private computer data centers

Our Washington team worked hard, along with others in our industry, to get this through the House over the summer, and then through the Senate this fall. We were interested in this bill for a number of reasons:

1. It helps to raise awareness to the growing issue of datacenter energy consumption
2. The EPA has a strong history of facilitating the energy discussion between producers and consumers. If you've ever looked at an energy sticker on an appliance or the MPG sticker on a car, then you know what I mean.
3. The federal government is the largest IT consumer in the world. Bringing energy into their procurement process would have a positive impact on their energy usage, would setoff a big ripple through the industry, and I believe the results would set a strong example for other large IT consumers.

The EPA report that is called for in the bill will be out in 180 days or so, and I'll report out on it then.

While I hope you are going to have some nice office activities around the holidays, the title of this post was meant to be literal - what is going on in your office building on December 25? How about Jan 1?

For most of us in the US and other locations abroad, the answer is "pretty much nothing". In fact, at Sun, many of our engineering facilities are closed for the whole week in between Christmas and New Year's Day.

So back to the question - what is going on in the buildings that day? Are desktop machines humming along waiting to provide instantaneous response to someone typing on their keyboard? Are printers at the ready in case someone gets the urge to breakaway from college football (that's what we do New Year's Day here in the states) to come to the office and print out a business document?

The Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, NH) reports about a successful program to turn stuff off over Thanksgiving at UNH:

By "powering down" -- turning off computers, lights, office equipment and electronics -- for the Thanksgiving holiday break, UNH faculty, staff and students saved more than 34,000 kwh, $4,721 in energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions reductions equivalent to removing two cars from the road for one year.

Now in the 24x7x52 world we live in, everything can't get shutdown. Our chip development team will keep our compute farm in Sunnyvale busy every nanosecond of the holiday weekend working on next generation chip designs. But think about it - turning everything off what you can for one week can lower the power bill for that stuff by 1/52nd, or just under 2%. That may not blow your socks off, but remember that the Kyoto Protocol only targets a 5% reduction from 1990 levels by 2008-2012, so depending on what goals you're managing to, it's not insignificant.

So before you leave your office for your holiday break this year, think about what will happen there while you're gone and turn off everything that you can. Your office equipment deserves a break, just like you do.

Can Energy Efficiency Be as Sexy as Solar?: "It's long been axiomatic that energy efficiency is the awkward stepchild of renewables -- that is, that it's sexier to install cutting-edge renewable-energy technologies like solar panels than to engage in more prosaic (and less-visible) measures to get more value out of each BTU or barrel."

This is the start of an excellent post on Worldchanging by Joel Makower. Almost 30 years ago then-president Jimmy Carter tried to get us to take efficiency seriously. It wasn't a popular idea then, and it still isn't today.

The two biggest things to tackle are transportation and buildings. However, I'd add a third major category, namely electronics in the form of servers, desktop systems, cell phones, network switches and all of their related accessories.

When President Carter made his plea to the American public, the first two categories would have sufficed. But today our entire economy and way of life is just as dependent on electronics as it is on buildings and transportation. So this is the challenge we're trying to rise up to meet here at Sun. We've really just gotten going, but I think we're getting some momentum.

Read Joel's article and lets give efficiency a chance!