1. Can we hack open
source #cloud platforms
to help reduce
emissions?
Tom Raftery
cloudstack collaboration conference 2012,
Las Vegas
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Saturday 1 December 12

2. Tom Raftery
• Lead analyst, energy and
sustainability practice,
RedMonk
• CIX, Chip & Zenith
• GreenMonk.net
• twitter.com/tomraftery
• tom@redmonk.com
• +34 677 695 468
• SlideShare.net/TomRaftery
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Saturday 1 December 12
CIX, Chip & Zenith - involvement with Cloud, going back to mid 90’s

3. Data?
http://www.wspenvironmental.com/media/docs/ourlocations/usa/NRDC-WSP_Cloud_Computing.pdf
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WSP Environmental & NRDC report on cloud says cloud can reduce emissions - good
However:
Lots of assumptions
No real data

4. Garret FitzGerald 1926-2011
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Unlikely politician - highly intelligent academic, unimpeachable integrity, head in the clouds(!)

5. Garret FitzGerald
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/caribb/5391899550/
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Before he became a politician -
In 1949 analyzed the earliest published Aeroflot timetables, and produced one of the first accurate
estimations of the size of Russia's airliner fleet - previously a closely guarded secret

6. Garret FitzGerald
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/steve_brace/2568478072/
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KGB thought he was a spy!
And look an image with KGB logo - and a sleeping cat!
Proving there’s no such thing as security by obscurity & the internet rocks!

7. Cloud problem
No transparency
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Saturday 1 December 12

8. Problem
http://greenmonk.net/2011/07/21/carbon-disclosure-projects-emissions-reduction-claims-for-cloud-computing-are-flawed/
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Something I have been blogging about for quite a while

9. Problem
http://greenmonk.net/2012/01/09/is-cloud-computing-green/
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And giving conference talks about it as well

10. Problem
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html
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Data centers use vast amounts of electricity
Typically only 6-12% of the electricity powering their servers goes to perform computations - McKinsey &
Co.
Rest used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity - dynamic provisioning - i.e. the
elastic in ec2!

11. Energy ≠ Emissions
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NYT article was good but concentrated on energy
Bear in mind that energy use and emissions are not necessarily related
Energy is not a proxy for emissions

12. Facebook
Photo http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=193287527693&aid=183026
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A practical example of this is...
Prineville site
Open Compute - open sourced the design of DC & hardware!

13. Energy
“As of the end of Q3 2011, the Prineville data center
had a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.08...
much lower than the industry standard of 1.5.
Facebook’s energy consumption per unit of computing
power has declined by 38%”
http://opencompute.org/about/energy-efficiency/
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14. Emissions
http://www.pacificorp.com/es/mining.html
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58% of its energy from coal
12% from gas
=> over 70% from fossil fuel directly.
22.5% is purchased from other suppliers so could also be fossil fuel.

15. Dublin
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/07/lightning-in-dublin-knocks-amazon-microsoft-data-centers-offline/
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Microsoft
Amazon
Google
IBM
SunGard
Digital Realty Trust
All have significant DC’s in Dublin

16. Emissions
Ireland sources 84% of electricity from fossil fuels
http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/electricitystatistics/
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Saturday 1 December 12

17. Emissions
UK sources >90% of its electricity from fossil fuels
https://restats.decc.gov.uk/cms/national-renewables-statistics/
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“Renewables contribution to UK electricity generation was 9.4% in 2011”

18. Emissions
http://www.pacificorp.com/es/mining.html
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The carbon intensity of a data center’s electricity is more important than it’s efficiency!

19. Cloud providers
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Partial list of cloud companies

20. Clean cloud providers
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Rackspace’s UK data center runs on 100% renewable power
Google have large renewable investments and their operations are carbon neutral

21. Clean cloud providers
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Greenqloud are based in Iceland where elec is 100% renewable

22. Clean cloud providers
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/
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Amazon claim 0 carbon for two of their regions

23. Clean cloud providers
https://twitter.com/jeffbarr/status/251306461836222464
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but demur when asked to back up the claim
How can we verify it is true?
*Sound of crickets chirping*

24. Problem
Data?
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25. Cloud emissions data
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Partial list of cloud companies

26. Cloud emissions data
providers
http://www.sapsustainabilityreport.com/greenhouse-gas-footprint
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This is as granular as the data gets!

27. Cloud emissions data
providers
http://www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability/savings.jsp
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Completely inaccurate depending on where in EU on premise is being hosted
If hosted in France or Spain with low carbon intensity - move to Salesforce could increase emissions
Wothout Salesforce emissions data, how do we know?

28. Cloud emissions data
providers
http://www.salesforce.com/company/sustainability/impact.jsp
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Reports 2 weeks late
Gives data for carbon saved, not carbon emitted

29. Cloud emissions data
providers
http://my.greenqloud.com
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Also publishing CO2 savings, as opposed to emissions

30. Why don’t they?
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/pahudson/7742561802/
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Competitive intelligence

31. Why don’t they?
Photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathanmarciniak/2207977707/
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Hide their emissions

32. Why don’t they?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwgreen/340528570/
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Lack of reporting standards

33. Outcome
“If you can’t measure it, you
can’t manage it”
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Lack of focus on emissions => increased emissions

34. Reminder
A quick recap of 2012 so far...
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Saturday 1 December 12

35. Recap
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Saturday 1 December 12
In
the
third
quarter
alone,
crop
produc2on
dropped
$12
billion
“due
to
this
summer’s
severe
heat
and
drought.”
Drop
in
US
farm
inventories
was
so
sharp
in
the
last
quarter
that
it
wiped
0.2%
off
of
U.S.
GDP
in
the
latest
revision.
In
Texas,
the
drought
has
killed
more
than
300
million
trees.
Nearly
98%
of
Nebraska
is
in
extreme
to
excep2onal
drought
—
3
months
ago,
none
of
it
was!
hSp://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/30/929381/epic-­‐dust-­‐bowl-­‐of-­‐2012-­‐con2nues/

36. Recap
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/us-usa-wildfires-idUSBRE85L1DD20120627 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19433715
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One of the worst wildfire seasons on record
Wildfires in US and EU

37. Recap
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/29/world/asia/pakistan-floods/index.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19767627
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Serious floods

38. Recap
http://phys.org/news/2012-11-sea-levels-faster-ipcc.html
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Sea-levels rising 60% faster than IPCC projections
28 November in journal Environmental Research Letters
rate of 3.2mm/year compared to 2mm/year in IPCC report

39. Recap
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/02/us-usa-weather-records-idUSBRE8611EL20120702
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Saturday 1 December 12
From June 25th - July 1st 2012 in US 2,171 US records broken or matched
In June 2012 that number is 3,215

40. Recap
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/
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Huge issues of ice loss in the arctic

41. Recap
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/
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Saturday 1 December 12
Lack of focus on emissions => increased emissions

42. Recap
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/
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Saturday 1 December 12
Minimum was 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) below previous record minimum extent
in the satellite record, which occurred on September 18, 2007. This is an area about the size of the state
of Texas.
3.29 million square kilometers (1.27 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum,
representing an area nearly twice the size of the state of Alaska
18% below 2007 and 49% below the 1979 to 2000 average

43. Recap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQotE
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Saturday 1 December 12
That’s not to mention the issue of arctic methane - what its effects will be are, as yet, unknown (but they
won’t be good!)

44. Recap
http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2698&ArticleID=9338&l=en
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Saturday 1 December 12
Not factored into emissions accounting or climate models before now
Can lead to infrastructure failure
climate projections indicate substantial loss of permafrost by 2100
Positive feedback

45. Cloud?
Cloud computing’s emissions don’t directly cause all these
issues.
But they do play a significant part.
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46. Solution?
Open Source
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Here’s where we can help

47. Solution?
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48. Solution?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabricio/3549693646/
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Why write patches foropen source cloud platforms?

49. Solution?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dixieroadrash/3769522479/
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Get the update accepted back into the core

50. Solution?
http://www.amee.com/products/
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Companies like AMEE already provide API’s for this kind of info

51. Solution?
http://www.eucalyptus.com/about/customers
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And thus distributed with next update

52. Solution?
http://www.cloudstack.org/users.html
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And thus distributed with next update

53. Solution?
http://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/
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And thus distributed with next update

54. btw
https://www.mastodonc.com/dashboard
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The Mastodon C dashboard gives stats on emissions from various cloud providers - in case you’re
interested in keeping your cloud emissions down.
Lot of it is guestimated data - need real data.

55. Carbon
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/sustainability/publications/low-carbon-economy-index/index.jhtml
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Saturday 1 December 12
PwC - largest of the "Big Four" accountancy firms
2012 carbon report found CO2 emissions reductions of 0.8% from 2000-2011
To stop Global Warming exceeding 2C
Need to reduce CO2 emissions by 5.1% every year until 2050

56. Good News
http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/7202866726/
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Saturday 1 December 12
Jim Hagemann Snabe - co-CEO of SAP
Wants SAP to be “a leader in this space”

57. Good News
http://solidfire.com/fueled-by-solidfire/cloudsigma/
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Robert Jenkins, CEO of CloudSigma (Swiss based Carbon Neutral cloud co.)
Getting ready to implement this

58. Good News
http://my.greenqloud.com
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GreenQloud are going to contribute their code to CloudStack in Q2 next year

59. Conclusion
Adding emissions metrics & reporting to
cloud computing will help reduce emissions.
Question is - is anyone up for it?
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60. Thanks!
Contact information:
Tom Raftery
Principal Analyst, Energy & Sustainability, RedMonk
Tom@redmonk.com,
GreenMonk.net,
Twitter.com/tomraftery
+34 677 695 468
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Saturday 1 December 12