Tag: google

Featured Posts, Technology / Software

Equinix rolls out 1MW fuel cell for Silicon Valley data center

Equinix Silicon Valley Data Center

Equinix is powering one of its Silicon Valley data centers with a 1MW Bloom Energy fuel cell

As we have pointed out here many times, the main cloud providers (particularly Amazon and IBM) are doing a very poor job either powering their data centers with renewable energy, or reporting on the emissions associated with their cloud computing infrastructure.

Given the significantly increasing use of cloud computing by larger organisations, and the growing economic costs of climate change, the sources of the electricity used by these power-hungry data centers is now more relevant than ever.

Against this background, it is impressive to see to see Equinix, a global provider of carrier-neutral data centers (with a fleet of over 100 data centers) and internet exchanges, announce a 1MW Bloom Energy biogas fuel cell project at its SV5 data center, in Silicon Valley. Biogas is methane gas captured from decomposing organic matter such as that from landfills or animal waste.

Why would Equinix do this?

Well, the first phase of California’s cap and trade program for CO2 emissions commenced in January 2013, and this could, in time lead to increased costs for electricity. Indeed in their 2014 SEC filing [PDF], Equinix note that:

The effect on the price we pay for electricity cannot yet be determined, but the increase could exceed 5% of our costs of electricity at our California locations. In 2015, a second phase of the program will begin, imposing allowance obligations upon suppliers of most forms of fossil fuels, which will increase the costs of our petroleum fuels used for transportation and emergency generators.

We do not anticipate that the climate change-related laws and regulations will force us to modify our operations to limit the emissions of GHG. We could, however, be directly subject to taxes, fees or costs, or could indirectly be required to reimburse electricity providers for such costs representing the GHG attributable to our electricity or fossil fuel consumption. These cost increases could materially increase our costs of operation or limit the availability of electricity or emergency generator fuels.

In light of this, self-generation using fuel cells looks very attractive, both from the point of view of energy cost stability, and reduced exposure to increasing carbon related costs.

On the other hand, according to today’s announcement, Equinix already gets approximately 30% of its electricity from renewable sources, and it plans to increase this to 100% “over time”.

Even better than that, Equinix is 100% renewably powered in Europe despite its growth. So Equinix is walking the walk in Europe, at least, and has a stated aim to go all the way to 100% renewable power.

What more could Equinix do?

Well, two things come to mind immediately:

  1. Set an actual hard target date for the 100% from renewables and
  2. Start reporting all emissions to the CDP (and the SEC)

Given how important a player Equinix in the global internet infrastructure, the sooner we see them hit their 100% target, the better for all.

Featured Posts, Technology / Software

Apple launches ResearchKit – secure, private, open source medical research

ResearchKit

Apple announced a new initiative at its Spring Forward event yesterday – ResearchKit.

What is ResearchKit? Apple’s SVP of Operations, Jeff Williams, described it as a framework for medical researchers to create and deploy mobile apps which collect and share medical data from phone users (with their permission), and share it with the researchers.

Why is this important? Previously it has proven difficult for research organisations to secure volunteers for research studies, and the data collected from such studies is often collected, at best, quarterly.

With this program, Apple hopes to help researchers more easily attract volunteers, and collect their information far more frequently (up to once a second), yielding far richer data.

The platform itself launches next month, but already there are 5 apps available, targeting Parkinson’s, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, and breast cancer. These apps have been developed by medical research organisations, in conjunction with Apple.

The success of this approach can be seen already in this tweet:

After six hours we have 7406 people enrolled in our Parkinson’s study. Largest one ever before was 1700 people. #ResearchKit

— John Wilbanks (@wilbanks) March 10, 2015

I downloaded mPower, the app for Parkinson’s to try it out, but for now, they are only signing up people who are based in the US.

As well as capturing data for the researchers, mPower also presents valuable information to the user, tracking gait and tremor, and seeing if they improve over time, when combined with increased exercise. So the app is a win both for the research organisations, and for the users too.

Apple Does Not See Your Data

Apple went to great pains to stress that the user is in complete control over who gets to see the data. And Apple themselves doesn’t ever get to see your data.

This is obviously a direct shot at Google, and its advertising platform’s need to see your data. Expect to hear this mantra repeated more and more by Apple in future launches.

This focus on privacy, along with Apple’s aggressive stance on fixing security holes, and defaulting to encryption on its devices, is becoming a clear differentiator between Apple and Android (and let’s face it, in mobile, this is a two horse race, for now).

ResearchKit Open Source

Finally, Williams concluded the launch by saying Apple wants ResearchKit on as many devices as possible. Consequently, Apple are going to make ResearchKit open source. It remains to see which open source license they will opt for.

But, open sourcing ResearckKit is a very important step, as it lends transparency to the privacy and security which Apple say is built-in, as well as validating Apple’s claim that they don’t see your data.

And it also opens ResearchKit up to other mobile platforms to use (Android, Windows, Blackberry), vastly increasing the potential pool of participants for medical research.

We have documented on GreenMonk numerous times how Big Data, and analysis tools are revolutionising health care.

Now we are seeing mobile getting in on the action too. And how.

Trends & Concepts

Technology for Good – episode thirty two with SAP’s Sameer Patel

Welcome to episode thirty two of the Technology for Good hangout. In this week’s episode we had SAP‘s Sameer Patel as the guest on our show. Sameer and I are members of the Enterprise Irregulars group – a loose group of analysts and vendors with an interest in enterprise software. Previous Enterprise Irregulars who have guested on the show include David Terrar, Craig Cmehil, and Jon Reed.

There was a problem which wasn’t apparent to us during the show and that was that the video from my side never showed up in the recording. I suspect that’s because I was using a beta version of Chrome, but anyway, the audio, and Sameer’s video feed was recorded, so all’s well.

This week we didn’t get through all the stories we had lined up, ‘cos we had such a good discussion around the ones we did manage to fit in!

Some of the more fascinating stories we looked at on the show, included the growing number of technology companies who are abandoning ALEC, IBM’s new concentrating solar array which can create clean water, as well as solar power, and a new smartphone app which will help visually challenged users to read.

Here is the full list of stories that we covered in this week’s show:

 

Climate

Renewables

Lighting

Transportation

Data Centres

Connectivity

Drones

Hardware

Apps

Education

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

Featured Posts, Technology / Software

Cloud computing companies ranked by their use of renewable energy


Cloud provider Renewables percentage

Cloud computing is booming. Cloud providers are investing billions in infrastructure to build out their data centers, but just how clean is cloud?

Given that this is the week that the IPCC’s 5th assessment report was released, I decided to do some research of my own into cloud providers. The table above is a list of the cloud computing providers I looked into, and what I found.

It is a real mixed bag but from the table you can see that Icelandic cloud provider Greenqloud comes out on top because they are using the electricity from the 100% renewable Icelandic electricity grid to power their infrastructure.

On the Windows Azure front, Microsoft announced in May of 2012 that it was going to go carbon neutral for its facilities and travel. Microsoft are now, according to the EPA, the second largest purchaser of renewable energy in the US. In 2013 they purchased 2,300m kWh which accounted for 80% of their electricity consumption. They made up the other 20% with Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). And according to Microsoft’s TJ DiCaprio, they plan to increase their renewable energy purchases from 80% to 100% in the financial year 2014.

Google claim to have been carbon neutral since 2007. Of Google’s electricity, 32% came from renewables, while the other 68% came from the purchase of RECs.

SAP purchased 391m kWh of renewable energy in 2013. This made up 43% of its total electricity consumption. SAP have since announced that they will go to powering 100% of its facilities from renewable energy in 2014.

The most recent data from IBM dates from 2012 when they purchased 764m kWh of renewable energy. This accounted for just 15% of their total consumption. In the meantime IBM have purchased cloud company Softlayer for whom no data is available, so it is unclear in what way this will have affected IBM’s position in these rankings.

The most up-to-date data on Oracle’s website is from 2011, but more recent data about their renewable energy is to be found in their 2012 disclosure to the Carbon Disclosure Project (registration required). This shows that Oracle purchased 5.4m kWh of renewable energy making up a mere 0.7% of their total consumption of 746.9m kWh in 2012.

Rackspace have no data available on their site, but in email communications with me yesterday they claim that 35% of their electricity globally is from renewable sources. They declined to say exactly how much that was (in kWh).

Amazon discloses no information whatsoever about its infrastructure apart from a claim that its Oregon and GovCloud regions are using 100% carbon free power. However, they don’t back up this claim with any evidence, they don’t disclose to the Carbon Disclosure Project, nor do they produce an annual Corporate Responsibility report.

The other three cloud providers in the list, Softlayer, GoGrid, and Bluelock have no information on their websites (that I could find), and they didn’t respond to written inquiries.

I’ll be writing a follow-up post to this in the next few days where I look into the supply chain risks of utilising cloud platforms where there is no transparency around power sourcing.

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

(Cross-posted @ GreenMonk: the blog)

Technology / Software

Cloud Computing: Google Apps cloud has a relatively high carbon intensity

Cloud
I have been researching and publishing on Cloud Computing for quite some time here. Specifically, I’ve been highlighting how it is not possible to know if Cloud computing is truly sustainable because none of the significant Cloud providers are publishing sufficient data about their energy consumption, carbon emissions and water use. It is not enough to simply state total power consumed, because different power sources can be more, or less sustainable – a data center run primarily on renewables is far less carbon intensive than one that relies on power from an energy supplier relying on coal burning power stations.

At Greenmonk we believe it’s important to get behind the headline numbers to work out what’s really going on. We feel it’s unacceptable to simply state that Cloud is green and leave it at that, which is why we’ve been somewhat disappointed by recent work in the field by the Carbon Disclosure Project. We would like to see more rigour applied by CDP in its carbon analytics.

Carbon intensity should be a key measure, and we need to start buying power from the right source, not just the cheapest source.

I was pleasantly surprised then yesterday when I heard that Google had published a case study ostensibly proving that Cloud had reduced the carbon footprint of at least one major account.

However, it is never that straightforward, is it?

The Google announcement came in the form of a blog post titled Energy Efficiency in the Cloud, written by Google’s SVP for Technical Infrastructure, Urs Hölzle. I know Urs, I’ve met him a couple of times, he’s a good guy.

Unfortunately, in his posting he heavily references the Carbon Disclosure Project’s flawed report on Cloud Computing, somewhat lessening the impact of his argument.

Urs claims that in a rollout of Google Apps for Government for the US General Services Administration,

the GSA was able to reduce server energy consumption by nearly 90% and carbon emissions by 85%.

An 85% reduction in carbon emissions sounds very impressive – but how does Google calculate that figure?

Technology / Software

Facebook hires Google’s former Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl, and increases its commitment to renewables

Christina Page, Yahoo & Bill Weihl, Google - Green:Net 2011
Google has had an impressive record in renewable energy. They invested over $850m dollars in renewable energy projects to do with geothermal, solar and wind energy. They entered into 20 year power purchase agreements with wind farm producers guaranteeing to buy their energy at an agreed price for twenty years giving the wind farms an income stream with which to approach investors about further investment and giving Google certainty about the price of their energy for the next twenty years – a definite win-win.

Google also set up RE < C – an ambitious research project looking at ways to make renewable energy cheaper than coal (unfortunately this project was shelved recently).

And Google set up a company called Google Energy to trade energy on the wholesale market. Google Energy buys renewable energy from renewable producers and when it has an excess over Google’s requirements, it sells this energy and gets Renewable Energy Certificates for it.

All hugely innovative stuff and all instituted under the stewardship of Google’s Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl (on the right in the photo above).

However Bill, who left Google in November, is now set to start working for Facebook this coming January.

Facebook’s commitment to renewable energy has not been particularly inspiring to-date. They drew criticism for the placement of their Prineville data center because, although it is highly energy efficient, it sources its electricity from PacificCorp, a utility which mines 9.6 million tons of coal every year! Greenpeace mounted a highly visible campaign calling on Facebook to unfriend coal using Facebook’s own platform.

Trends & Concepts

Tech company sustainability reports reviewed

Corporate Social Responsibility
Original photo by ATIS547

I was asked on Twitter recently where to find a list of links to tech companies’ CSR reports.

I didn’t know where to find one, so I built one and as well as just the links, I also added in a few extra observations I noted about the reports.

Company Latest Report Format Remarks External Audit GRI Index CEO involved
SAP 2009 Online with downloadable data Highly interactive, includes social media, video & ability to comment inline Independently audited by KPMG Yes – A+ Rated Yes
BT 2009 Online and PDF Granular links and multiple PDF download options Yes Yes – A+ Rated Yes
Intel 2009 PDF custom builder High level of granularity No Yes – A Rated Yes
Dell 2009 PDF Very detailed document – v little detail on website No Yes – B Rated Yes
HP 2009 Online with PDF download Granular links, some videos & interactivity Some, yes Yes Yes
Cisco 2009 Mostly PDF’s with some info available on web Lots of good videos Some Yes Yes
Sony 2009 Online and PDF Comprehensive report No Yes Yes
Microsoft 2009 PDF Lacks necessary detail No No Yes
Nokia 2008 Online No obvious link to a downloadable report Some, yes No No
Logica 2008 Online and PDF Comprehensive report No Yes Yes
IBM 2008 Online with PDF download Granular links & Social Media options No Yes Yes
Adobe 2008 Online and PDF Lots of pretty pictures but light on text No No Yes
CA 2008 PDF CA’s first sustainability report – good 1st effort No Yes – C Rated Yes
SAS 2008 PDF Good PDF report badly left down by poor supporting website No Yes – C Rated Yes
Oracle 2008 PDF Summary of 2009 report available but full report still not out No No President
Apple None
Amazon None
Google None

As previously reported here…

Trends & Concepts

SAP’s latest Sustainability Report is Awesome!

SAP's 2009 Sustainability Report using OAuth!

SAP released its 2009 Sustainability Report during the week and if last years Sustainability Report was good, this one is outta the park!

SAP released their first Sustainability Report in November 08 reporting on the 2007 year. It was a good initial effort (prepared in accordance with the GRI guidelines and achieving a “C” level certification) delivered in your typical PDF format. The main innovation the first year was that there was a separate site for readers to leave feedback.

Then in May 2009 SAP released their 2008 Sustainability Report. This report achieved a B+ GRI rating and was far more interactive than the previous report (or any Sustainability Report I had previously seen). It allowed readers to interact with the data and showcased the interactive Sustainability Map which categorised core business processes related to sustainability and mapped them into distinct categories. Again SAP solicited feedback from users.

Now the 2009 Sustainability Report takes this to the next level. It:

  • achieved an A+ GRI rating by reporting on more sustainability GRI indicators and by adding new metrics, including Renewable Energy, Business Health and Culture Index, and Employee Satisfaction
  • includes the new edition of the Sustainability Map
  • establishes short- and long-term goals for many of SAPs metrics beyond carbon footprint
  • contains more embedded interactive dashboards leveraging data sourced from SAP Carbon Impact and SAP Business Objects Sustainability Performance Management
  • enables readers to comment on SAPs performance and solutions in the context of the report (no longer on a separate site) and
  • SAP will now produce quarterly updates on their carbon performance

There’s also the Materiality Matrix and the Create Your Own sections where you can try out different scenarios to see how they would affect SAP’s goals.

What do I love about this report?

Featured Posts, Trends & Concepts

Just how green is cloud computing?
Clouds
Photo credit tipiro

Cloud computing may not be as Green as you think.

I mentioned previously that I gave a keynote presentation at the Green IT Summit in Dublin last week.

In the question and answers session after the talk, Sean Baker asked about cloud computing and whether I thought companies using cloud computing weren’t simply outsourcing their emissions.

As Gordon Smith picked up in a piece for SiliconRepublic.com, I replied that I

was “quite sceptical” about this issue. “None of the cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft or IBM are publishing metrics at all. Intuitively you have to think that because you’re outsourcing that to someone of that scale that they’re being more efficient but we’ve no way of knowing. Frankly, that’s worrisome. I don’t know why they’re not publishing it and I wish they would,”

This is no sudden realisation on my part. In fact, I have been concerned about Cloud Computing’s Green credentials for some time now as you can see from a series of Tweets (here, here and here, for instance) I posted on this issue in early to mid 2009.

It is vital that cloud providers start publishing their energy metrics for a number of reasons. For one, it is a competitive differentiator. But perhaps more importantly, in the absence of any provider numbers, one has to start wondering if cloud computing is in fact Green at all.

IBM, for example, are not known for being shy when given an opportunity to talk up their Green initiatives. However, on cloud, they are conspicuously silent. The same is true for Amazon, Microsoft, SalesForce and Google.

I’m not sure why cloud providers are not publishing their energy metrics but if I had to guess I would say it is related to concerns around competitive intelligence. However this is not a sustainable position (if you’ll pardon the pun).

As the regulatory landscape around emissions reporting alters and as organisations RFP’s are tending to demand more details on emissions, cloud providers who refuse to provide energy-related numbers will find themselves increasingly marginalised.

So is cloud computing Green?

I put that question toSimon Wardley, cloud strategist for Canonical in this video I recorded with him last year and he said no, cloud computing is very definitely not Green.

To be honest, until cloud providers start becoming more transparent around their utilisation and consumption numbers there is really no way of knowing whether cloud computing is in any way Green at all.

by-sa

Trends & Concepts

Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 04/09/2010
Green numbers
Photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

by-sa