Xergy Consulting surveys the programs, standards, and metrics used to evaluate the environmental performance of data centers. What are we missing? What information do we lack to fully evaluate the greenness of clouds?

1. Emerging Green Conference
Portland, OR
September 23, 2015
Peter May-Ostendorp, PhD, LEED AP O+M
Principal, Xergy Consulting
Can the Cloud Be Green?
Emerging Standards, Programs
and Metrics for Decision-Makers
Research funded by:

2. The Growing Environmental Footprint
of the Internet
• Data centers: the
world’s 13th largest
country
• Mobile broadband
and video streaming
driving growth in
traffic
2
Adapted from: Jonathan Koomey. 2011. Growth in data center
electricity use 2005 to 2010. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press. July.
<http://www.analyticspress.com/datacenters.html>
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
2000 2005 2010
Data Center Electricity Use (TWh/yr)

3. Outsourcing from devices to clouds
ICT environmental impacts increasingly occur at the cloud
and not the device level
3
Devices
Networks
Data Centers
Manufacturing
20%
47%15%
18%
29%
34%
21%
16%
Devices
Networks
Data Centers
Manufacturing
Devices
Networks
Data Centers
Manufacturing
20%
47%15%
Main components of electricity consumption for the IT sector,
2012. From “Emerging Trends in Electricity Consumption for
Consumer ICT”
Main components of electricity consumption for the IT
sector, 2017 estimate. From “Emerging Trends in Electricity
Consumption for Consumer ICT”
Percentage of global electricity consumption due to CE-ICT for
best/expected/worst case scenarios. From “Emerging Trends in
Electricity Consumption for Consumer ICT”
Global electricity consumption in TWh/yr for best/expected/
worse case scenarios. From “Emerging Trends in Electricity
Consumption for Consumer ICT”
Main components of electricity consumption for the ICT sector
2012 2017
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Source: Emerging Trends in Electricity Consumption for Consumer ICT

4. Can today’s electronics be green
without a green cloud to support them?
4

5. Is the cloud clean or dirty?
Yes.
The cloud can be dirty. The cloud can be clean.
• NRDC, LBNL,
Accenture and
hyper-scale cloud
providers emphasize
potential benefits
• 2x to 48x reduction
in emissions moving
from on-site to cloud
infrastructure
5

6. Greatest opportunities exist in smaller
market segments
6
Source: Scaling Up Energy Efficiency Across the Data Center Industry: Evaluating Key Drivers
and Barriers. NRDC, 2014.

7. Considerations for Green Data Centers
1) IT equipment + facility = data center
2) Cradle to grave
3) All impact areas: raw materials depletion,
hazardous materials, energy, atmosphere, water,
recyclability, corporate responsibility
7

8. A Decade of Progress
• 80 PLUS
– Power supply efficiency guidelines
• ENERGY STAR
– Servers, storage, large network equipment (soon)
– Portfolio Manager for data centers
• Green Grid
– Key operational metrics for greening facilities (PUE,
WUE, CUE)
8

9. Beginning to Think Holistically:
NSF 426 and IEEE 1680.4
• First comprehensive environmental performance
standards for servers
• Covered:
• Moving toward a merged standard that is eligible
for implementation on the EPEAT Registry
9
Energy efficiency Design for repair, reuse, recycling
Management of substances Product longevity
Preferable materials use Responsible EoU/EoL management
Product packaging Corporate responsibility

10. Holistic sustainability goals mostly
possible today through existing tools
Some illustrative examples:
10
Design and Equipment
Procurement
Operations and
Maintenance
Facility
LEED New Construction
ASHRAE 90.1 (90.4 soon)
LEED Operations and
Maintenance
ENERGY STAR
Portfolio Manager
IT Equipment
ENERGY STAR
80 PLUS
NSF 426/IEEE 1680.4 (soon)
???

11. The Missing Link: IT Operations
• Today’s programs and
performance metrics (PUE,
CUE) address the facility, not
the IT in it
• 20-30% of servers are idle,
obsolete or otherwise
unused
• For remaining servers,
utilization between 12–18%
• Focus areas
– IT utilization
– Performance-energy
benchmarks
11
Source: Cisco.
Energy Use in Typical Data Centers

12. Benchmarking:
Data Transparency Drives Change
• Consistent measurement of environmental performance metrics
• Anonymous comparisons within a peer group
• Driving consistent energy improvement in other building types
12

13. What if I don’t run a data center?
Big opportunities for data
closets and server
rooms:
• Green equipment
procurement
• Improve equipment
utilization
• Consider move to
cloud at equipment
retirement
13

14. The cloud is (usually) greener
14
On the other hand, figure 1 also shows that an on-premise
server room that implements energy efficiency best-practices
can be far “greener” than a “brown” cloud that does not
optimize server utilization and PUE, and is powered by high-
carbon electricity.
the servers. Two identically sized and designed data
centers using power from high-carbon sources such as
coal, or from lower-carbon sources such as renewable
energy, will have a very different carbon footprint (varying
by a factor of nearly four depending on the region in the
United States where they are located).
Figure 1: Comparison of Deployment Scenarios (Office Productivity Applications)
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
On-Premise
w/ No Virtualization
Colocation
w/ No Virtualization
On-Premise
w/ Virtualization
Private Cloud Public Cloud
WORST
CASE
AVERAGE
BEST
PRACTICE
WORST
CASE
AVERAGE
BEST
PRACTICE
WORST
CASE
AVERAGE
BEST
PRACTICE
WORST
CASE
AVERAGE
BEST
PRACTICE
WORST
CASE
AVERAGE
BEST
PRACTICE
CarbonEmissionsperUser(kgCO2
e/year)
Source: Scaling Up Energy Efficiency Across the Data Center Industry: Evaluating Key Drivers and Barriers. NRDC, 2014.

15. Greening the whole cloud
• Greening a cloud requires managing a global portfolio of
facilities to performance goals
• Likely to involve a diverse mix of facility types
15
Cloud
• Stand-alone
• Co-location
• Other clouds
Facilities
• Building shell
• HVAC
• Lighting
• Power delivery
Systems
• Servers
• Power supplies
• Storage
• Network equipment
Devices

16. Peter May-Ostendorp, PhD, LEED AP
Principal, Xergy Consulting
peter@xergyconsulting.com
Thank you!

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