GreenPeace targets Cloud Data Centers environmental impact and use of coal power

March 30, 2010 Dave Ohara

I blogged back in July 2009 asking what would be Greenpeace's target for environmental impact of data centers, speculating Apple, Google, Microsoft as a possible target. Well Greenpeace uses the Apple brand recognition and the iPad announcement to create awareness.

The announcement of Apple’s iPad has been much
anticipated by a world with an ever-increasing appetite for
mobile computing devices as a way to connect, interact,
learn and work. As rumours circulated – first about its
existence and then about its capabilities - the iPad
received more media attention than any other gadget in
recent memory. Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs
finally showcased his company’s latest creation before a
rapt audience in San Francisco. From their smart phones
and netbooks, the crowd feverishly blogged and tweeted
real time updates out to a curious world.

Whether you actually want an iPad or not, there is no
doubt that it is a harbinger of things to come. The iPad
relies upon cloud-based computing to stream video,
download music and books, and fetch email. Already,
millions access the ‘cloud’ to make use of online social
networks, watch streaming video, check email and create
documents, and store thousands of digital photos online
on popular web-hosted sites like Flickr and Picasa.

The term cloud, or cloud computing, used as a metaphor
for the internet, is based on an infrastructure and business
model whereby - rather than being stored on your own
device - data, entertainment, news and other products
and services are delivered to your device, in real time,
from the internet. The creation of the cloud has been a
boon both to the companies hosting it and to consumers
who now need nothing but a personal computer and
internet access to fulfill most of their computing needs.

Greenpeace has been making noise about Facebook's data center, and now has started the public awareness in this pdf.

I know of some companies that have a sigh of relief they are not on the Greenpeace list.

Some of you have noticed I made a change last week to the blog title and now have Green (low carbon) data center.

Green is such an overloaded term it made sense to clarify a focus on discussing low carbon as a goal of a green data center. Note the following in the Greenpeace pdf.

More cloud-computing companies are pursuing design and siting
strategies that can reduce the energy consumption of their data
centres, primarily as a cost containment measure. For most
companies, the environmental benefits of green data design are
generally of secondary concern.

Facebook’s decision to build its own highly-efficient data centre in
Oregon that will be substantially powered by coal-fired electricity clearly
underscores the relative priority for many cloud companies. Increasing
Key trends that will impact the environmental footprint of the cloud
the energy efficiency of its servers and reducing the energy footprint
of the infrastructure of data centres are clearly to be commended, but
efficiency by itself is not green if you are simply working to maximise
output from the cheapest and dirtiest energy source available. The US
EPA will soon be expanding its EnergyStar rating system to apply to
data centres, but similarly does not factor in the fuel source being used
to power the data centre in its rating criteria. Unfortunately, as our
collective demand for computing resources increases, even the most
efficiently built data centres with the highest utilisation rates serve only
to mitigate, rather than eliminate, harmful emissions.

Some people thought the hype about Facebook's coal power was a fad. No it is a trend and the start of evaluating the carbon impact of data centers.

Here is a sampling of other media coverage.

Coal Fuels Much Of Internet "Cloud", Says Greenpeace

New York Times - Peter Henderson - ‎5 hours ago‎

By REUTERS SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The 'cloud' of data which is becoming the heart of the Internet is creating an all too real cloud of pollution as ...

Greenpeace issues warning about data centre power

BBC News - ‎7 hours ago‎

Greenpeace is calling on technology giants like Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to power their data centres with renewable energy sources. ...

Data clouds called out for dirty energy

Marketplace (blog) - ‎5 hours ago‎

Environmental activities are concerned about server farms' use of dirty energy to keep sites like Google and Facebook running. ...

Greenpeace: Cloud Contributes to Climate Change

Data Center Knowledge - Rich Miller - ‎5 hours ago‎

The environmental group Greenpeace says data center builders must become part of the solution to the climate change challenge, rather than part of the ...

Cloud computing 'fuels climate change'

PCR-online.biz - Nicky Trup - ‎8 hours ago‎

The growth of cloud computing could cause a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions, Greenpeace has warned. ...

2020: Cloud Computing GHG Emissions To Triple

Basil & Spice - ‎9 hours ago‎

San Francisco, United States — As IT industry analysts label 2010 the “Year of the Cloud”, a new report by Greenpeace shows how the launch of quintessential ...

Greenpeace criticises coal-fuelled internet cloud

TechRadar UK - Adam Hartley - ‎10 hours ago‎

Eco-campaigners at Greenpeace have criticised the idea of an internet 'cloud' - with data centres built by the likes of Facebook, Apple, ...

The iPad, internet, and climate change links in the spotlight

Greenpeace USA - ‎13 hours ago‎

International — On the eve of the launch of the iPad, our latest report warns that the growth of internet computing could come with a huge jump in ...

OMG+ Spanish & English Facebook pages promoting 100% renewable energy is 312,216 members

March 17, 2010 Dave Ohara

It has been interesting watching the growth of the 100% renewable energy page for Facebook.

Members

6 of 178,408 members

One member pointed out the Spanish page.

Eoin Dubsky Less than a month, and we're ** over 300,000 ** strong: 175,938 members here + 127,696 members in the Spanish language grouphttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=325301129292

The Spanish page is at 133,000.

Members

6 of 133,808 members

178,408 + 133,808 = 312,216

And still growing.

Many discount the power of a Facebook group. But, there are probably 300,000 more people know knew about this topic before it reached Facebook group. Maybe 312,216 in the data center world.

I am sure Facebook PR is hoping this issue will die away, but Greenpeace is going to work hard to keep this topic going.

Who is Monitoring Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere? Top scientific minds or cash strapped well intended individuals

March 10, 2010 Dave Ohara

Here is something that will leave you thinking. Who and what measures and monitors the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

The Orbiting Carbon Observation (OCO) satellite developed by NASA/JPL was supposed to do this, but it crashed after launch on Feb 24, 2009.

Scientists to NASA: We Need A Reliable Way to Track Global Emissions - 07.31.2009

By Keith Johnson

Forget all the haggling with China, India, and parts of the U.S. Congress—the real obstacle to a global climate-change treaty might be accurately measuring greenhouse-gas emissions in the first place.

That’s the warning from the National Academy of Science’s National Research Council to the head of NASA. The upshot? Without a sophisticated satellite that can track global emissions, it will be hard to know what everybody is really up to: “[C]urrent methods for estimating greenhouse gas emissions have limitations for monitoring a climate treaty.”

NASA had such a sophisticated satellite—the Orbiting Carbon Observatory—which failed to reach orbit in February. The space agency is considering trying again—thus the letter from the NAS pointing out just how useful such satellites can be.

The monitoring in OCO was simple.

The satellite carried a single instrument that would have taken the most precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide ever made from space. The instrument consisted of three parallel, high-resolution spectrometers, integrated into a common structure and fed by a common telescope. The spectrometers would have made simultaneous measurements of the carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen absorption of sunlight reflected off the same location on Earth’s surface when viewed in the near-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, invisible to the human eye.

Here is a video that gives you background on the OCO satellite

The Economist discusses the issue of monitoring greenhouse gases in length.

Monitoring greenhouse gases

Highs and lows

You might think that measuring the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would be a priority. If you did think that, though, you would be wrong

Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN NEGOTIATIONS on nuclear weapons the preferred stance is “Trust but verify”. In negotiations on climate change there seems little opportunity for either. Trust, as anyone who attended last year’s summit in Copenhagen can attest, is in the shortest of supplies. So, too, is verification.

Barack Obama was asked when he was in Copenhagen whether a provision by which countries could peek into each others’ assessment processes was strong enough to be sure there was no cheating. He answered reassuringly that “we can actually monitor a lot of what takes place through satellite imagery”. That statement conjured up thoughts of the sort of cold-war satellite system that America used to identify and count Russian missiles. But the president was being a bit previous; at the moment, no such system exists, because America’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), a satellite that would have fulfilled the role, was lost on launch this time last year. The purpose of OCO was to work out the fate of carbon dioxide that is emitted by industrial processes but does not then stay in the atmosphere—about 60% of the total.

The Economist author points out the problem with the system.

America is planning to build a new OCO. In the meantime, however, a small group of scientists labours away on Earth, doing its best to monitor emissions at ground level. At the end of February a number of these researchers met at the Royal Society in London, to discuss what they were up to.

Measuring gas levels day in, day out can look a little humdrum to outsiders, including those who hold the purse strings. They tend to prefer scientists to experiment and test hypotheses, not just tally things. But that attitude galls the greenhouse-gas measurers, and not only because it denies them money. It also ignores the fact that careful measurement is a way of discovering new things, not just of checking the status quo. Monitoring is not just a necessary handmaiden of science—it is the real thing.

And, what people do in the short term.

Indeed, for all the noise that is made about climate change, much of this research is done with next to no money. Asked how she paid for her monitoring of various greenhouse gases in Baden Württemberg, Ingeborg Levin of Heidelberg University replied “by stealing”—meaning not that she robs banks, but that the monitoring work is cross-subsidised by grants intended for other studies.

How broken is the discussion on GHG that there is no world-wide GHG monitoring system?

Let's hope the NASA budget gets approved for OCO 2.

Proposed reflight

Three days after the failed February 2009 launch, the OCO science team sent NASA headquarters a proposal to build and launch an OCO "carbon copy", which planned to have the replacement satellite launched by late 2011.^[16] On February 1st, 2010, the FY 2010 NASA budget request did include US$170 million for NASA to develop and fly a replacement for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.^[17]

OMG there are 138,279 members of Greenpeace's we want Facebook on 100% renewable energy

March 9, 2010 Dave Ohara

Gartner makes a prediction that THE social networking site is Facebook.

I wrote 2 weeks ago about the idea maybe Facebook should have bought a Bloom Box to diffuse the decision that the company will buy coal based electricity.

Feb 22, 2010

Maybe Facebook should have bought a Bloom Box to diffuse Greenpeace’s campaign against a coal powered data center

Thanks to Matt Stansberry’s reporting on SearchDataCenter, attention was drawn to Facebook’s Prineville Data Center being coal powered.

Tiered energy rates bring higher prices for new customers
By 2012, BPA will charge tiered rates for power. Customers that signed 20-year contracts in 2008 will pay tier-one (i.e., inexpensive) pricing for their current electricity demand. These customers use most of the power produced by the dams.

Matt Stansberry broke the news on this topic and has demonstrated the force one person can have, especially a press writer.

Greenpeace decided to start a Facebook page on getting Facebook to run their data center on 100% renewable energy. They had a goal of 10,000 members of the group. It was 6,700 on Feb 22, 2010.

There is even a Facebook site for this topic with over 6,700 users.

In 2 weeks it is now 138,279

Members

6 of 138,279 members See All

Liat Shoval

AyaMichaelovich

Leah GreenBen-Avraham

SébastienAertgeerts

RinatKorbet

MichalShimoni

How many more members will there be in 2 more weeks?

This gives a whole different way to think of the value of a green data center. If Greenpeace is successful in getting Facebook to convert to 100% renewable energy and pay a premium over coal who is next?

I've always said the problem with data centers is they have big targets painted on them for environmentalist as they have high concentrations of electricity use and are run by rich companies.

InfoWorld writes about Open Source Data Center Initiative

March 5, 2010 Dave Ohara

Mike Manos and I were interviewed by James Niccolai from IDG for an article on the Open Source Data Center Initiative.

Group seeks to open source data-center design

The Open Source Data Center Initiative wants to pool engineering resources that others can build on and implement

By James Niccolai | IDG News Service

A new industry group is trying to apply open-source principles to the design and construction of data centers, which it says could accelerate the use of new technologies and increase competition in the industry.

The Open Source Data Center Initiative, announced this week, will act as a repository and test bed for mechanical and engineering advances in data-center design, which it hopes will be submitted by small engineering firms, graduate students doing research with federal grant money, and others.

One of the points made to counter Mike’s point on engineering firms.

The data center industry is "dominated by a handful of large engineering houses" that are wedded to mechanical and engineering designs that are "largely considered proprietary," he said. Those companies don't have enough incentive to educate their customers about simpler, more standardized alternatives, he said.

"When you think of all the great things we've been talking about at data center conferences, about moving to greener designs and driving efficiency with new technologies -- a lot of that innovation is being held back because competition for those ideas is not out there," Manos said.

is from an engineering firm.

Not surprisingly, large engineering firms reject the idea that they are holding back the industry. Bruce Edwards, president of CCG Facilities Integration, one of the largest engineering companies, said data centers have seen significant innovation in the last 10 years, in areas such as electrical power delivery and cooling.

"It's not like we're sitting there parceling out the work; we're at each others throats," he said.

He also questioned the need for another industry group. "The idea that a nonprofit, collaborative, noncompetitive model will be a powerful engine to drive innovation -- I'm not convinced of it at this point," Edwards said.

In the short term since we have made the announcement on Mar 2 and Mike wrote his blog post on Mar 3, I’ve been contacted by multiple interested parties, Mike has a list, and the ARG Investment group has a list. Part of our strategy has been how to viral, and we need to start small and grow.

One of the other points James Niccolai makes which is right on mark is the educational focus of what we are doing.

The group will also play an educational role, he said. It will publish real-world data about the cost of implementing projects, such as a fresh-air cooling system, so that customers have "more transparency" when making decisions.

The discussion with James has helped us clarify the educational aspect. We need to go back to Mizzou and discuss the education models in more detail and how we can optimize the educational aspect of what we are doing.

I would personally like to thank James for taking the time to explain what we are doing on the Open Source Data Center Initiative, and I look forward to his asking of more tough questions.

“Study, reflect, be inspired, act and enjoy!”

Mike, I and the rest of team are having a blast, and we have a list of people ready to join the effort.

Disclosure: My wife was an IDG VP, and she left IDG 10 years ago. James and my wife had no connection as she was in Sales and he is in editorial, and overlapped maybe one year in 1999. One of her jobs was working on advertorials for InfoWorld, and she takes pride in the InfoWorld publication. Currently, my wife and I have no business relationships with IDG. And, she’ll kick me for letting it be known she was a VP. :-) One of the advantages I have is a supportive spouse who worked on the high tech executive viewpoints and will listen to my crazy ideas on how to change the IT world.