Editors' blog
Hannah Bullock, 5 Nov 2008
The low winter sun that blinded me from behind the City buildings did look s...
Smarter bytes, slimmer footprints
Bill Thompson feels the weight of the online world – and points the way to virtual light.
When US Congressman Edward Markey was invited to address last December’s climate change summit in Bali, he felt he couldn’t justify the environmental impact of flying 10,000 miles to do so. Instead, he delivered his talk on ‘virtual Bali’, a computer-generated island in the online world of Second Life.
Yet, strictly speaking, even his appearance as an avatar had a real-world carbon cost. Second Life, along with every website, email, online video and downloaded podcast, exists in the memory, processors and hard drives of real physical computers. They all use electric power – much of it generated from fossil fuels.
“The internet could account for around 5% of global electricity consumption”
The media had a field day a little while ago when a rough calculation suggested that each avatar on Second Life used about as much energy as “the average citizen of Brazil”. Although subsequently revealed as an over-estimate, this certainly served to raise awareness that even virtual action has a real-world impact [see ‘Is virtual always virtuous’]. As yet, there is no authoritative data on quite how power-hungry the internet has become. But when a researcher on the Uclue paid answers service added up published figures for the consumption of networked computers, data centres and all the associated infrastructure and transmission networks, the result was startling. The sum worked out at a headline figure of 868 billion kWh per year – which is over 5% of total global electricity consumption.
“Computers are responsible for the same quantity of carbon emissions as the airline industry”
So much, then, for the assumption that computer and internet use is somehow automatically environmentally friendly because it is ‘virtual’. Worldwide, according to the UK’s wonderfully titled minister for transformational government, Tom Watson, “computers are responsible for the same quantity of carbon emissions as the airline industry. It is a serious problem that requires a serious solution.”
Many technology professionals remain blissfully ignorant of the true cost of computing – although as electricity prices rise, that blissful ignorance is fading fast. At the personal level, the introduction of smart meters should help make home and office users more aware of the energy consumption of PCs, screens, wifi routers and printers. Devices like the Wattson can even encourage geeks like myself to compete for greenie points, by allowing us to upload our usage data to an online community where it can be tracked against other users. You just have to hope this will spur savings of more power than is needed to run the servers supporting this forum…
Power down on the server farm
At what you might call the impersonal level, a key issue on computing’s carbon-cutting agenda is the energy hunger of the vast data centres which have emerged to sustain the growth of the web. Also known as server farms, these contain thousands of networked computers working together to provide the data storage and processing power needed by the likes of Google, Amazon, Yahoo! and eBay. And they use vast amounts of power, accounting for 1.5% of America’s electricity use, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Worldwide, say some estimates, the bill could grow from $18.5 billion in 2005 to $250 billion by 2012. Already, some companies are finding that the running costs of their data centres may even be their single largest expense apart from the payroll. And that, as Bob Worral of Sun Microsystems recently wrote in Forbes magazine, makes a powerful case for investment on more energy-efficient data centres.
It makes it a big business opportunity too. And, surprise surprise, the big guns in the industry are already training their sights on the big bucks that could come their way. While Intel and AMD promote the energy management features of their latest generation of processors, IBM has launched Project Big Green, a play on the company’s nickname of ‘Big Blue’, which includes new cooling technologies for servers, real-time monitoring of power usage and new designs for large data centres that will significantly reduce their carbon footprint.
It’s not just the chip and server manufacturers who are getting in on the act, either. Software developers and government energy agencies are involved too, sometimes working hand in hand. The US Department of Energy, for instance, offers DC Pro, a software tool which examines everything from power distribution to cooling systems to measure data centres’ overall energy efficiency.
The cooling aspect is crucial. Processors and other components generate a great deal of heat in operation. Until recently this was considered a waste product, and lots of extra power – as much as 63% of a data centre’s total usage – would be used to run air conditioning and cooling systems. Surely there was a smarter answer? While others focus on the hot chips themselves, computer giant HP has made a big splash with its Dynamic SMART Cooling system, which can slash both the power bill and the carbon footprint quite dramatically, thanks to integrated software and hardware management at the level of overall system design.
At the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge University, Andy Hopper and Andy Rice are working on a more radical approach: moving the server farms to locations where green power is easily available. Companies such as Google, says Rice, are already building data centres near hydropower stations for energy cost reasons, but the work he is doing relates more to harnessing renewable technologies whose output is intermittent, such as wind and solar.
“Tomorrow’s websites could be hosted in low-impact buildings, with renewable power on tap”
The physical location of a server is not entirely irrelevant in the internet age, but there is certainly no need to have computing power in the same building, street or even city as its users. Perhaps tomorrow’s websites will be hosted in low-impact centres carefully designed to blend in with windy hillsides and wave-beaten shorelines, generating at least some of their own energy needs – and allowing us to surf with a clearer conscience.
Saving strategies
A recent European ‘Green IT Barometer’ survey, sponsored by Dell, says that companies with green computing strategies already in place can expect to reap savings averaging almost 15% in the next 12 months. Quick wins don’t come much quicker than turning computers off when they’re not being used. The latest generation of power management software, deployed over entire networks, gives organisations the ability to do exactly that – switching off workplace PCs according to schedules set by IT managers. As well as running software updates and backing-up unsaved work before shutting down (protecting against both virus and panic attacks), the software also measures and reports on total energy use, enabling organisations to determine just how much energy is being saved and how they can save more. Dell claims to be saving $1.8 million per year thanks to running 1E’s NightWatchman on its network of 50,000 computers. A quick calculation reveals the investment as a ‘no-brainer’ – saving around $36 per computer per year for an average installation cost of just half that amount.
Past performance suggests that a universal switch-off at work won’t happen any other way. According to the National Energy Foundation, an astonishing six million computers were left on over Christmas in 2006.
“Turning off every one of Whitehall’s 500,000 computers at night would have the same effect as taking 40,000 cars off the road”
The UK government has also put its commitment on the line. If the Cabinet Office’s Greening Government ICT report is anything to go by, “products that will enable active power management for all networked devices” should soon be installed across Whitehall and beyond. Speaking at the report launch in June, Tom Watson dramatised the impact in terms of carbon savings. “Turning off every one of Whitehall’s 500,000 computers at night,” he said, “would have the same effect as taking 40,000 cars off the road.”
Between now and 2012, Watson promised, central government would make the energy consumption of its ICT systems carbon-neutral. “We won’t achieve this just by offsetting, but by making serious changes to the way we do business,” he added. And by 2020 its ICT should be carbon-neutral over its entire lifetime, including manufacture and disposal. It’s an impressive aspiration. Achieved – and emulated across business and society – it would mark the transformation of an under-recognised problem into a flagship for a low-carbon world.
Hard wear
It’s not just software which needs to change; computer kit, too, from its manufacture to disposal, causes plenty of wear and tear to the planet. But change is afoot. Apple’s MacBook Air is PVC-free, has a recyclable aluminium frame and a mercury-free screen. Toshiba labels the different types of plastic used in its computers so that they can be separated out when the system is disassembled. And recyclability is part of Dell’s drive to make its computers the greenest ever. Even manufacturers without such lofty aspirations are beginning to realise that fulfilling their obligations under the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive will be a lot easier with well-designed hardware. – BT
Bill Thompson is a well-known technology critic and commentator on digital culture. Additional material by Jon Wallace.
It’s not just software which needs to change; computer kit, too, from its manufacture to disposal, causes plenty of wear and tear to the planet. But change is afoot. Apple’s MacBook Air is PVC-free, has a recyclable aluminium frame and a mercury-free screen. Toshiba labels the different types of plastic used in its computers so that they can be separated out when the system is disassembled. And recyclability is part of Dell’s drive to make its computers the greenest ever. Even manufacturers without such lofty aspirations are beginning to realise that fulfilling their obligations under the EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive will be a lot easier with well-designed hardware. – BT
AC DC
In 2006 Google opened up a long-overdue debate about PC power supplies. Questioning the reliance on a computer systems architecture that was largely fixed when the IBM PC was launched in 1981, its engineers advocate moving from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12V standard for all circuitry.
This would reduce power consumption drastically. The current mix of components and circuitry means that AC mains power, reaching home and business PCs via overspecified power supply units, is being shifted and stepped to supply a whole range of small and mostly DC voltages used to run processors, graphics cards and drives.
Meanwhile, new work on DC chips that have an onboard converter could enhance battery life, and therefore reduce the need to keep recharging mobiles and handhelds from mains supplies. – BT
In 2006 Google opened up a long-overdue debate about PC power supplies. Questioning the reliance on a computer systems architecture that was largely fixed when the IBM PC was launched in 1981, its engineers advocate moving from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12V standard for all circuitry.
This would reduce power consumption drastically. The current mix of components and circuitry means that AC mains power, reaching home and business PCs via overspecified power supply units, is being shifted and stepped to supply a whole range of small and mostly DC voltages used to run processors, graphics cards and drives.
Meanwhile, new work on DC chips that have an onboard converter could enhance battery life, and therefore reduce the need to keep recharging mobiles and handhelds from mains supplies. – BT
When lean means green
The common PC is, not to mince words, a ‘thick client’. Paradoxically, that’s because it has so much intelligence itself – so the commands it receives via keystrokes and mouse clicks can all be processed ‘locally’. It only passes data on to a central server for communications (such as emails) or remote backup.
A ‘thin client’ system turns that on its head. The local PC becomes merely a bridge between the individual user and the ‘remote’ server: it’s there that the commands are processed, with the results displayed back to the user on-screen. Everything appears the same but, with radically less processing to do, thin client PCs require much less energy. Typically, they run on just 7 watts, whereas a standard thick client PC might demand 70-150 watts when it is working, and 15 even in ‘sleep’ mode.
It means using more energy down the line where the work is done, but much less overall. A study by US research group Gartner showed that most PCs use less than 10% of their processing capacity – yet the energy they require remains largely the same as if they were running flat out. A thin client system simply allows organisations to take advantage of that gap, as central servers can be scaled up and down much more efficiently to meet demand.
According to Sun Microsystems, its thin client network deployed at the Rural Payments Agency last year makes annual savings of £174,000 and shrinks its carbon footprint by some 260 tonnes. “The mind boggles,” remarked Prince Charles at a business summit on climate change in May, when he cited a similar investment by recruitment company Reed, which saved 26% on its IT energy spend in the first year.
Wyse Technology, who provided that upgrade, estimates that a typical payback period for thin computing investment stands at eleven months. Not bad, considering that the servers used for processing have a life expectancy of seven to nine years – up to three times that of a standard PC.
The improvement in wireless communication technologies and infrastructure also makes it perfectly practical to use thin client terminals on the move – cutting not only capital, but support and maintenance costs too. – JW
The common PC is, not to mince words, a ‘thick client’. Paradoxically, that’s because it has so much intelligence itself – so the commands it receives via keystrokes and mouse clicks can all be processed ‘locally’. It only passes data on to a central server for communications (such as emails) or remote backup.
A ‘thin client’ system turns that on its head. The local PC becomes merely a bridge between the individual user and the ‘remote’ server: it’s there that the commands are processed, with the results displayed back to the user on-screen. Everything appears the same but, with radically less processing to do, thin client PCs require much less energy. Typically, they run on just 7 watts, whereas a standard thick client PC might demand 70-150 watts when it is working, and 15 even in ‘sleep’ mode.
It means using more energy down the line where the work is done, but much less overall. A study by US research group Gartner showed that most PCs use less than 10% of their processing capacity – yet the energy they require remains largely the same as if they were running flat out. A thin client system simply allows organisations to take advantage of that gap, as central servers can be scaled up and down much more efficiently to meet demand.
According to Sun Microsystems, its thin client network deployed at the Rural Payments Agency last year makes annual savings of £174,000 and shrinks its carbon footprint by some 260 tonnes. “The mind boggles,” remarked Prince Charles at a business summit on climate change in May, when he cited a similar investment by recruitment company Reed, which saved 26% on its IT energy spend in the first year.
Wyse Technology, who provided that upgrade, estimates that a typical payback period for thin computing investment stands at eleven months. Not bad, considering that the servers used for processing have a life expectancy of seven to nine years – up to three times that of a standard PC.
The improvement in wireless communication technologies and infrastructure also makes it perfectly practical to use thin client terminals on the move – cutting not only capital, but support and maintenance costs too. – JW
Beating the bloat
Software is driven by marketing deadlines. All too often, doing the coding so the programme runs quickly has taken a backseat to simply doing the coding quickly. Result: ‘new and improved’ operating systems usually need ‘new and improved computers’ to run them. The old kit becomes prematurely obsolete, contributing to the mountain of e-waste by an estimated 1.2 million tonnes per year in the UK alone. And ever more resources are used to produce the replacements.
This need not happen, says a report by the Office of Government Commerce. Drawing on tests carried out by the likes of Ofwat and the Ministry of Defence, it makes a convincing case for avoiding ‘proprietary’ operating systems in favour of open source alternatives, most notably that of Linux. Such software, says the report, is recognised as requiring “less memory and a slower processor speed for the same functionality” than the more commonplace operating systems from Microsoft. While computers running Microsoft typically have to be upgraded every 3-4 years, those running Linux won’t require an upgrade for 6-8 years, the report concludes.
Vista, the latest incarnation of Microsoft Windows, has attracted especially heavy criticism for its software ‘bloat’. According to the makers of Windows Sentinel, a third party tool to measure the efficiency of the operating system, it runs up to 40% slower than its predecessor, XP, on the same machine. In response, Microsoft has launched projects such as MinWin to streamline its code sets – a huge but essential task as battling the bloat becomes a sink or swim issue in an increasingly competitive market. – JW
Software is driven by marketing deadlines. All too often, doing the coding so the programme runs quickly has taken a backseat to simply doing the coding quickly. Result: ‘new and improved’ operating systems usually need ‘new and improved computers’ to run them. The old kit becomes prematurely obsolete, contributing to the mountain of e-waste by an estimated 1.2 million tonnes per year in the UK alone. And ever more resources are used to produce the replacements.
This need not happen, says a report by the Office of Government Commerce. Drawing on tests carried out by the likes of Ofwat and the Ministry of Defence, it makes a convincing case for avoiding ‘proprietary’ operating systems in favour of open source alternatives, most notably that of Linux. Such software, says the report, is recognised as requiring “less memory and a slower processor speed for the same functionality” than the more commonplace operating systems from Microsoft. While computers running Microsoft typically have to be upgraded every 3-4 years, those running Linux won’t require an upgrade for 6-8 years, the report concludes.
Vista, the latest incarnation of Microsoft Windows, has attracted especially heavy criticism for its software ‘bloat’. According to the makers of Windows Sentinel, a third party tool to measure the efficiency of the operating system, it runs up to 40% slower than its predecessor, XP, on the same machine. In response, Microsoft has launched projects such as MinWin to streamline its code sets – a huge but essential task as battling the bloat becomes a sink or swim issue in an increasingly competitive market. – JW
Smart cuts
Crucial as it is to make and use computers more efficiently, this is not where ICT can offer its most important contribution to combating climate change. The really big story is about how it can improve efficiency in other sectors with far greater footprints. The world could save an astonishing 7.8 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2020 – in other words, cut 15% off the projected total for that year – by the application of ‘SMART ICT’ to manufacturing processes, home and office space, the energy sector, and transport and logistics.
That estimate comes from a report published by the Climate Group in June, entitled (almost inevitably) SMART 2020 – where we also get the acronym spelled out, as ‘Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology’. One of its specific examples is the smart energy grid, where information flows directly from consumers’ smart meters to their energy providers. These can then fine-tune the way they meet demand, and so cut down the need for excess capacity to safeguard against unexpected surges in consumption. This could save India 30% in power transmission and distribution losses alone – and is also attracting heavy research investment in the US in the wake of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.
HP, which is ramping up its efforts to take advantage of the enormous opportunities at hand for green ICT, gives prominence to smart technology in its own recent report, Low Carbon IT Solutions. This highlights the potential for cutting carbon through ‘dematerialising’ everything from documents to music, where sales have gone virtual so fast the industry has been transformed. The benefits, at least for its carbon footprint, are clear: downloading 56 minutes of digital music requires half the resources of buying the CD online, says Forum for the Future in Connected – ICT and sustainable development , and is two and a half times more energy-efficient than shopping for it on the high street.
You can’t dematerialise trucks, trains and planes, of course, but there’s still a role for smart thinking here, too. Supply chain management tools can make significant cuts in the footprint of large freight movements, says the report. – JW
Crucial as it is to make and use computers more efficiently, this is not where ICT can offer its most important contribution to combating climate change. The really big story is about how it can improve efficiency in other sectors with far greater footprints. The world could save an astonishing 7.8 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions by 2020 – in other words, cut 15% off the projected total for that year – by the application of ‘SMART ICT’ to manufacturing processes, home and office space, the energy sector, and transport and logistics.
That estimate comes from a report published by the Climate Group in June, entitled (almost inevitably) SMART 2020 – where we also get the acronym spelled out, as ‘Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology’. One of its specific examples is the smart energy grid, where information flows directly from consumers’ smart meters to their energy providers. These can then fine-tune the way they meet demand, and so cut down the need for excess capacity to safeguard against unexpected surges in consumption. This could save India 30% in power transmission and distribution losses alone – and is also attracting heavy research investment in the US in the wake of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.
HP, which is ramping up its efforts to take advantage of the enormous opportunities at hand for green ICT, gives prominence to smart technology in its own recent report, Low Carbon IT Solutions. This highlights the potential for cutting carbon through ‘dematerialising’ everything from documents to music, where sales have gone virtual so fast the industry has been transformed. The benefits, at least for its carbon footprint, are clear: downloading 56 minutes of digital music requires half the resources of buying the CD online, says Forum for the Future in Connected – ICT and sustainable development , and is two and a half times more energy-efficient than shopping for it on the high street.
You can’t dematerialise trucks, trains and planes, of course, but there’s still a role for smart thinking here, too. Supply chain management tools can make significant cuts in the footprint of large freight movements, says the report. – JW
Bill Thompson is a well-known technology critic and commentator on digital culture. Additional material by Jon Wallace.
13 October 2008
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