What Every Tech Pro Should Know About 'Green Computing'
For most companies, the movement is about saving money, not the environment. But it's getting better at both.
By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Forget Al Gore and his Oscar for a global warming documentary. To gauge how today's trendy green movement is affecting computing, skip Hollywood and head to Wall Street.
There, Green Computing isn't a save-the-planet-for-our-kids movement. It's about the other green: cutting operating costs as the demand for computing power soars. It's a movement grounded in measurable, near-term results. "The top priority at hand is data center efficiency," says Sabet Elias, CTO of investment bank Lehman Brothers, which last year boosted energy efficiency 25% and set a goal of another 35% by next year.
It's not just financial services companies, with their huge processing needs, that stand to benefit from green computing. Companies in every industry, from nonprofits to consumer goods, are paying much closer attention to their power bills, as the amount spent on data center power has doubled in the past six years. "The CFO is getting the bills, and IT is the biggest user of energy," says Robert Rosen, CIO of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disorders. IT execs like Elias and Rosen say they're happy their conservation efforts have a social good, but they measure their progress in dollars saved.
Still, IT execs would be wise to keep an eye on more than the economics of energy-efficient computing. Energy consumption has gotten so huge--U.S. data centers consume as much power in a year as is generated by five power plants--that policy makers are taking notice and considering more regulation. A group of government and industry leaders is trying to set a clear standard for what constitutes a "green" computer, a mark that IT execs might find themselves held to. Global warming concerns could spark a public opinion swing--either a backlash against big data centers or a PR win for companies that can paint themselves green. IT vendors are piling on, making energy efficiency central to their sales pitches and touting eco-friendly policies such as "carbon-neutral computing."
One under-the-radar example of what's changing is a long acronym you'll start hearing more: EPEAT, or the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool. EPEAT was created through an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers council because companies and government agencies wanted to put green criteria in IT requests for proposals. EPEAT got a huge boost on Jan. 24 when President Bush signed an executive order requiring that 95% of electronic products procured by federal agencies meet EPEAT standards, as long there's a standard for that product.
The tech industry's environmental impact is gaining attention. The United Nations estimates that 20 million to 50 million tons of computer gear and cell phones worldwide are dumped into landfills each year, and it's the fastest growing segment of waste, says Greenpeace legislative director Rick Hind. At most, 12% of PCs and cell phones are recycled, he says, putting chemicals such as mercury and PVC into the environment. "The good news is that computer companies are talking about greenness, touting green programs," Hind says.
CIOs will keep setting IT strategy against their bottom lines, but they're sure to face more questions about whether there's a chance to meet environmental goals at the same time. Here's a practical guide to what's happening in Green Computing, and why IT people should care.
Center Of The Problem
Data centers are the SUVs of Green Computing: impressively powerful, expensive to operate, usually woefully energy inefficient--and a big, fat potential target for environmental critics.
Energy consumed by data centers in the United States and worldwide doubled from 2000 to 2005, according to Jonathan Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford University and staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Data center servers, air conditioning, and networking equipment sucked up 1.2% of U.S. power in 2005. The biggest reason for the power surge: double the number of low-end servers, Koomey says.
As a result, some companies are chasing cheaper data center power. Google is building a data center on Oregon's Columbia River to tap hydroelectric power, while Microsoft builds nearby in Washington for the same reason. Financial services company HSBC is building a data center near Niagara Falls. Some such efforts are hardly green, however. Wyoming's trying to lure data centers with the promise of cheap power from coal-fired plants.
But chasing cheap power isn't practical for most companies. For Lehman Brothers, proximity to New York City is crucial because automated trading programs can't spare the milliseconds it takes for data to travel to upstate New York and back, though a remote data center could work for certain batch jobs. At lighting products company Osram Sylvania, the data center isn't so time sensitive, but the company wouldn't consider the hassle of building a remote center to lower power costs. "Finding the talent pool and network services you need aren't easy if you move too far away," says operations manager Dan Wilson. For these companies, Green Computing means staying put and cutting costs. Fortunately, environmentally friendly options are rising as fast as energy prices.
Green Light
At too many companies, power's still on one budget and tech equipment on another, so IT pros don't pay much attention to power consumption when buying gear, Koomey says. For companies that have the budgeting figured out, the next step is deploying the technologies Elias is putting to use at Lehman Brothers: server virtualization, grid computing, multicore processors, improved cooling, and "aggressive" use of blade servers. Koomey adds to that checklist power-supply appliances that more efficiently transfer power to servers, and building materials such as tiles with air holes that help with cooling.
Virtualization is one of the most effective tools for more cost-effective, greener computing. By dividing each server into multiple virtual machines that run different applications, companies can increase their server utilization rates and shrink their sprawling farms. This approach is so energy friendly that California utility PG&E offers rebates of $300 to $600 for each server that companies eliminate using Sun or VMware virtualization products, with a maximum rebate of $4 million or 50% of the project's cost, whichever is less.
The actual rebate may be far more modest, and it won't drive a virtualization project's return on investment. Swinerton Construction estimated it would get a $3,200 rebate from PG&E when it implemented VMware virtual machines, but it ended up with only $800 after PG&E's complicated calculations for power use, senior network administrator Sean Saulsbury says. But the project already has saved the company $140,000 this year, including servers it hasn't had to buy and $50,000 in power and cooling savings.
More-efficient processors are another critical energy-saving element, as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Sun Microsystems all have gotten the green religion. Where chipmakers used to compete entirely on speed, now they also compete on performance per watt. Sun's betting on multicore chip efficiency to fuel interest in new high-end servers. Its 32-thread Niagara 1 chip, Ultrasparc 1, consumes 60 to 62 watts, while the Niagara 2 chip due in the second half will have 64 threads yet run at 80 watts, says chief architect Rick Hetherington. When Intel launched its quad-core Xeon chips beginning in November, it noted that they could deliver 1.8 teraflop peak performance using less than 10,000 watts, compared with 800,000 10 years ago using Pentium chips.
How big a difference can more-efficient processors make? Princeton University's plasma physics lab, funded by the Department of Energy, cut 75% of its annual power and cooling bill--from $105,000 in 2003 to $27,000 last year--while improving processing power three to four times. The lower energy use also means it's emitting about 28 fewer tons of carbon dioxide, says Paul Henderson, head of the lab's systems and network group. It did so by replacing a cluster of 200 servers based on AMD Athlon chips with Sun X2100 servers based on dual-core AMD Opteron chips.
For every kilowatt of energy consumed by a server, roughly another kilowatt is chewed up to cool it today. Highmark, the largest health insurer in Pennsylvania, uses about 150 blade servers, which reduce the space needed, but their heat and density suck up the cooling. Highmark uses a system that detects air temperature at the server racks and "tunnels" cooled air to the equipment using special racks from Wright Line, rather than cool the entire room. (Highmark takes the environment seriously enough that the toilets in its eco-designed data center are flushed using rainwater collected from the roof.) Other vendors, such as DegreeControl and, beginning this summer, Hewlett-Packard, offer cooling systems that rely on sensors to direct cooling to the needed spot.
Osram Sylvania's Wilson says most companies aren't interested in paying more up front, and they are watching energy improvements closely enough to know if they pay off. "You really need the discipline and patience to do this every day," he says.
Energy Ratings
Beyond their energy-guzzling, data centers are like SUVs in another way: They've caught policy makers' attention. Beginning this summer, the EPA must report to Congress national estimates for energy consumption by data centers, along with recommendations for reducing their energy consumption. It's just one of several ways lawmakers are looking to soften the environmental impact of computing.
"Voluntary guidelines" isn't exactly the rallying cry of an environmental revolution. Yet two forthcoming guidelines embraced by U.S. regulators, combined with tough laws from the European Union on hazardous materials, could go a long way toward forcing Green Computing onto businesses.
Let's start with EPEAT. Bush's directive to use EPEAT for government buying guarantees these standards will get some traction. But businesses will likely find them useful when they need a shorthand way to buy green.
EPEAT was developed over the past three years by 100 stakeholders, including electronics manufacturers, with funding from an Environmental Protection Agency grant. They cover only PCs and monitors today but will likely be extended to servers, routers, printers, and maybe even cell phones.
The standards dictate 23 required criteria and 28 optional criteria for IT vendors covering eight broad categories, including energy conservation, recycling or disposal, packaging, and reduction or elimination of dangerous materials such as PVC, mercury, and lead. Some 350 products from 14 vendors are EPEAT-compliant, though none at the highest, gold rating.
EPEAT's energy-consumption criteria are based on the EPA's Energy Star requirements for PCs, and the "sensitive material" criteria require companies to meet the European Union's tough standards for limiting the hazardous chemicals and components used to make them.
The Energy Star ratings on PCs are just like those on refrigerators and washing machines, but the PC standard has become largely irrelevant for businesses, as the last update came five years ago. That will change in July, when the EPA issues new, more demanding specs for energy efficiency of PCs and high-end CAD/CAM workstations.
PC energy savings can make a difference to companies. Union Bank of California expects to reduce its energy costs 10% to 12% annually just by buying more energy-efficient PCs, says Julie LeDuc, the bank's VP of IT product procurement.
The EPA could have an even bigger impact by putting Energy Star ratings on servers, since they're the biggest electricity hogs in IT. The agency is developing tests to compare server energy consumption, but it doesn't expect to have methods ready until the end of this year.
Among the strictest regulations on the computer industry are the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive, or ROHS. Introduced last year, the directive, which covers hardware sold in the EU, restricts the use of six toxic substances, including lead and mercury. China and India are expected to adopt versions of ROHS within the next year. The EU has two other significant green-tech rules: the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment regulations, which require sellers to take back any product they sell for recycling; and Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals, which aims to improve the management and risk assessment of dangerous chemicals. The United States has no federal computer recycling mandate, but California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act is a "cradle to grave" program aimed at reducing hazardous substances in electronic products sold in that state. It includes a recycling fee of $6 to $10 paid by the buyer of PCs and monitors. Other states are likely to follow.
ROHS standards are slowly becoming de facto requirements, as the United States makes them part of the EPEAT standards and vendors look to standardize products worldwide. "There's a global marketplace for IT, so when there are new regulations by the EU, we all benefit," says Andrew Fanara, the EPA's Energy Star products team leader.
Vendor Frenzy
IT vendors also are applying green standards to their own operations. There are lots of reasons: new revenue opportunities, regulations, fear of a customer backlash, or just the desire to act like good corporate citizens. It's also good PR: Vendors are trying to make the case that "a key difference between us and our competitors is that we're more concerned about the environment," says Adam Braunstein, a Robert Frances Group analyst.
Salesforce.com in January announced an initiative to "offset its carbon footprint"--that is, compensate for the 19,700 tons of carbon emissions created by everything from its data centers to employee travel. That effort includes a partnership with Native Energy, a Native American-owned company involved in renewable energy projects, and $126,000 invested in five projects to develop alternative energy sources, including windmill and methane farm. Sun created a Sun Eco office a year ago to oversee all of the company's green programs, including telecommuting but also core products such as low-power servers. It's touting its Project Blackbox--a data center in a shipping container--as not just portable but also 20% more energy-efficient than today's data centers.
 Cisco also pulled most of its green initiatives under one umbrella, the Eco Board. Its efforts include using its own high-end videoconferencing and other IP tools to cut company travel by 20% a year--2 million miles--which the company estimates will lower its CO2 emissions by 10%, or 72,000 tons, says Laura Ipsen, VP of global policy and government affairs, who co-chairs the Eco Board. Cisco also is working with San Francisco, Seoul, and Amsterdam, to find ways to reduce CO2 through broadband and other networking technologies that support telework.
Dell in February launched "Plant A Tree For Me," where consumers pay an extra $2 for a laptop or $6 for a desktop to plant trees aimed at offsetting the equivalent computer emissions. It launched www.dell.com/earth to tout its green policies. HP says it has offered recycling since 1987, and today lets consumers send back equipment from HP or competitors. It keeps products such as old Digital Equipment VAX and Alphaserver machines available for parts, for instance. HP set a goal in 2004 to take back 1 billion pounds of product for recycling by 2007, and it brought in 164 million last year.
Reuse, Recycle—And Relax
Recycling PCs has never been a huge priority for U.S. businesses. But some companies are finding a new motivation: security.
With rising concerns about identity theft and data breaches, companies need to know there's no sensitive data left on machines before they're trashed or recycled. That led Union Bank of California to more secure disposal that also proved to be more green.
The bank hires a company called Intechra that erases data from drives and removes asset tags and other forms of corporate identification, then refurbishes them for resale or grinds them up to recycle the material. None of it goes in a landfill. Union Bank pays $20 to $30 per PC for disposal and gets back 50% to 60% of any resale value, which is about $200 to $300 on high-end notebooks and $50 on desktop PCs. "Without this, we'd have to have an internal team scrub the old systems," procurement VP LeDuc says.
Telecommuting
IT can directly help reduce greenhouse gases if it enables telecommuting, though it's one of those things that goes in and out of fashion. The federal government, for instance, since 2001 has required agencies to have a formal policy to let eligible workers telecommute, but many have been slow to act, often because managers aren't sure how to deal with remote reports.
At Sun, 14,219 employees work from home two days a week, and 2,800 work from home three to five days a week. Some use "drop-in centers" closer to home that save an average of 90 minutes in commute time. About 40% of employees use the telecommuting program to some extent. That saves 6,660 office seats, cutting Sun's real estate costs by $63 million in the last fiscal year, says Sudboh Bapat, Sun's Eco VP and distinguished engineer. Reduced commuting by Sun workers avoided an estimated 29,000 tons of CO2 emissions, he says.
Gartner estimates that 12.6 million U.S. workers teleworked last year more than eight hours a week. But Gartner thinks that number will grow just 3% this year. Not exactly on pace to save the planet.
That's the reality of corporate green initiatives.
Companies will push telecommuting if it helps them retain employees or cut office expenses. They might tally car emissions after the fact, but it won't drive many business decisions. "Green Computing is on the radar screens of CIOs, but it's not primarily motivated by eco-friendliness," says Jim Noble, CIO of Altria, parent company of Philip Morris and Kraft Foods.
"The primary motivation is technology's cost." The good news for Mother Earth is that there are a lot of money-saving, eco-friendly steps just waiting for IT execs to take.
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