IBM Science Meeting

ICT and Climate Change A Foundation for Innovation in Canada Bill St. Arnaud CANARIE Inc – www.canarie.ca [email_address] Unless otherwise noted all material in this slide deck may be reproduced, modified or distributed without prior permission of the author

Climate Forecasts MIT
MIT report predicts median temperature forecast of 5.2C
11C increase in Northern Canada
http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.php?publication_id=990
Last Ice age average global temperature was 5-6C cooler than today
Most of Canada was under 2-3 km ice
With BAU we are talking about 5-6C change in temperature in the opposite direction in less than 80 Years

Climate Change is not reversible
Climate Change is not like acid rain or ozone destruction where environment will quickly return to normal once source of pollution is removed
GHG emissions will stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years and continue to accumulate
Planet will continue to warm up even if we drastically reduce emissions
All we hope to achieve is to slow down the rapid rate of climate change Weaver et al., GRL (2007)

80/50 rule – 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050
(Commitment made by G8 countries)
j 15 - 20 tons/person 1 ton/person 2008 2050 ? 2100 2 tons/person Source: Stern 2008 Our Challenge

CO2 emissions from Information, Computer, Telecommunications (ICT)
It is estimated that the ICT industry alone produces CO2 emissions that is equivalent to the carbon output of the entire aviation industry 2-3%
ICT emissions growth fastest of any sector in society, doubling about every 4 – 6 years
ICT represent 8-9.4% of total US electricity consumption, and 8% of global electricity consumption
Projected to grow to as much as 20% of all electrical consumption in the US
http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724
Future Broadband- Internet alone is expected to consume 5% of all electricity
http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/people/rst/talks/files/Tucker_Green_Plenary.pdf
*An Inefficient Tuth: http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/event_detail.aspx?eid=2696e0e0-28fe-4121-bd36-3670c02eda49

IT biggest power draw Heating, Cooling and Ventilation 40-50% Lighting 11% IT Equipment 30-40% Other 6% Sources: BOMA 2006, EIA 2006, AIA 2006 Energy Consumption Typical Building Energy Consumption World Wide Transportation 25% Manufacturing 25% Buildings 50%

Growth Projections Data Centers
Half of ICT consumption is data centers
50% of today’s Data Centers and major science facilities in the US will have insufficient power and cooling;*
By 2010, half of all Data Centers will have to relocate or outsource applications to another facility.*
During the next 5 years, 90% of all companies will experience some kind of power disruption. In that same period one in four companies will experience a significant business disruption*
Data centers will consume 12% of electricity in the US by 2020 (TV Telecom)
Source: Gartner; Meeting the DC power and cooling challenge

Impact of Cap and Trade on Business and Telecom
Company Servers Electricity Cost
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p123.pdf
Microsoft >200K >6×105 MWh >$36M
Google >500K >6.3×105 MWh >$38M
MIT campus 2.7×105MWh $62M
“ Average” increase in electricity costs for businesses and institutions will be 60% with cap and trade
Organizations that use electricity from coal fired power plants will see significantly higher costs (by as much as 3 times current prices)
30% of electricity will come from renewable sources
Greater degree of unreliability and uncertainty in power

Carbon Footprint by state

The Falsehood of Energy Efficiency
Most current approaches to reduce carbon footprint are focused on increased energy efficiency of equipment and processes
This is akin to smoking milder cigarettes in order to avoid cancer
Does not address the real problem
But growth in ICT deployment of equipment and services is outstripping any gains made in efficiency
Which is likely to accelerate as ICT is used to support abatement in other fields such as smart homes, smart buildings, smart grids etc
Also greater efficiency can paradoxically increase energy consumption by reducing overall cost service and therefore stimulates demand
Khazzoom-Brookes postulate (aka Jevons paradox aka rebound effect)
In last Energy crisis in 1973 Congress passed first energy efficiency laws (CAFÉ) which mandate minimum mileage for cars, home insulation and appliances
Net effect was to reduce cost of driving car, heating or cooling home, and electricity required for appliances
Consumer response was to drive further, buy bigger homes and appliances

The Carbon Economy
$500 billion - Value of low-carbon energy markets by 2050
$100 billion - Demand for projects generating GHG missions credits by 2030
Global carbon market expected to grow 58% this year to $92 billion
Carbon market could be worth billions for telecoms & IT
US market estimated at $700 billion
http://telephonyonline.com/global/news/carbon-trade-arnaud-0626/
Obama’s cap and trade (Waxman-Markey) bill will force emitters to spend $1.25 on carbon offsets for every $1.00 on emission permits
Source: ClimateCheck

Purchasing green power locally is expensive with significant transmission line losses
Demand for green power within cities expected to grow dramatically
ICT facilities DON’T NEED TO BE LOCATED IN CITIES
- Cooling also a major problem in cities
But most renewable energy sites are very remote and impractical to connect to electrical grid.
Can be easily reached by an optical network
Provide independence from electrical utility and high costs in wheeling power
Savings in transmission line losses (up to 15%) alone, plus carbon offsets can pay for moving ICT facilities to renewable energy site
ICT is only industry ideally suited to relocate to renewable energy sites
Also ideal for business continuity in event of climate catastrophe
Innovation Opportunity – Building a zero carbon ICT infrastructure

Many examples already Hydro-electric powered data centers Data Islandia Digital Data Archive ASIO solar powered data centers Wind powered data centers Ecotricity in UK builds windmills at data center locations with no capital cost to user

Ontario Government announcement on low carbon data centers
McGuinty Government Supports Local Economy And Innovation
New low carbon data centres that provide alternative, less expensive and greener data storage facilities are being studied in Thunder Bay.
Rapidly growing global demands on the data management sector have resulted in increased energy consumption to operate and manage these large amounts of data, as well as to maintain proper climatic conditions at data storage facilities.
This exciting project will not only research the economic development potential of establishing low carbon data centres in Northern Ontario, it will also investigate opportunities for transferring the excess energy to other public facilities. That means everyone involved could experience reduced operating costs.”
-Michael Gravelle, Minister of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry, and Chair of the NOHFC
ontario.ca/north-news

Innovation Opportunity – Building robust ICT services using renewable energy only
30% of electrical power will come from renewable sources
How do you provide mission critical ICT services when energy source is unreliable?
Ebbing wind or setting sun
Back up diesel and batteries are not an option because they are not zero carbon and power outages can last for days or weeks
Need new network architectures and business models to ensure reliable service delivery by quickly moving compute jobs and data sets around the world to sites that have available power
Will require high bandwidth networks and routing architectures to quickly move jobs and data sets from site to site

Economic benefits of follow the wind/sun architectures
Cost- and Energy-Aware Load Distribution Across Data Centers
http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~ricardob/papers/hotpower09.pdf
Green data centers can decrease brown energy consumption by 35% by leveraging the green data centers at only a 3% cost increase
Cutting the Electric Bill for Internet-Scale Systems
Companies can shift computing power to a data center in a location where it’s an off-peak time of the day and energy prices are low
Cassatt a product that dynamically shifts loads to find the cheapest energy prices
45% maximum savings in energy costs
http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p123.pdf
http://earth2tech.com/2009/08/19/how-data-centers-can-follow-energy-prices-to-save-millions/
Computing for the future of the planet
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/~ah12/
http://earth2tech.com/2008/07/25/data-centers-will-follow-the-sun-and-chase-the-wind

CANARIE Green-IT Pilot
$3m allocation for Green cyber-infrastructure-IT pilot testbed
Two objectives:
Technical viability and usability for relocating computers to zero carbon data centers and follow the sun/follow the wind network
Business case viability of offering carbon offsets (and or equivalent in services) to IT departments and university researchers who reduce their carbon footprint by relocating computers and instrumentation to zero carbon data centers
International partnership with possible zero carbon nodes using virtual router/computers in Spain, Ireland, California, Australia, British Columbia, Ottawa, Quebec and Nova Scotia

PROMPT – Next Generation Internet to Reduce Global Warming
Research on router, optical, W/W-less and distributed computing architectures, applications, grids, clouds, Web services, virtualization, dematerialization, remote instrumentation and sensors, etc.
Share infrastructure & maximize lower cost power by “following wind & sun” networks.
Sources: GENI and Inocybe

Innovation Opportunity: Carbon Rewards rather carbon taxes – “gCommerce”
Although carbon taxes are revenue neutral, they payee rarely sees any direct benefit
No incentive other than higher cost to reduce footprint
Rather than penalize consumers and businesses for carbon emissions, can we reward them for reducing their carbon emissions?
Carbon rewards can be “virtual” products delivered over broadband networks such movies, books, education, health services, collarboartive education and research technologies etc
Carbon reward can also be free ICT services (with low carbon footprint) such as Internet, cellphone, fiber to the home, etc

Final remarks
The problem we face is NOT energy consumption, but carbon emissions
Think carbon, not energy
We must start addressing climate change now – not in 2050 or 2020
80% reduction in CO2 emissions will fundamentally change everything we do including ICT and networks
Huge potential for innovation for ICT sector because 30% of energy must come from renewable sources and “gCommerce” applications in helping other sectors of society reduce their carbon footprint

Thank you
More information
List server on Green IT
Send e-mail to bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca
http://green-broadband.blogspot.com
http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/

IBM Science Meeting

by Bill St. Arnaud on Sep 21, 2009

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IBM Science Meeting — Presentation Transcript