Headline, May02, 2014

''' YO OH HO O : GREEN IT : 

^ MERITS- COSTS :: CAP & TRADE '''

IT accounts for only about 3-4  percent of US energy consumption. However, this percentage is projected to double over the next few years.

This means reducing IT energy use could could significantly impact a country's carbon footprint.

However, these numbers do not capture the energy savings achievable by a single IT practitioner in an organization.

If say,  ''Telenor Pakistan''  were to reduce energy waste for all the servers and PCs, just how much will that contribute to the green IT cause?

Research has found that PCs operate on as little as 110 W for thin clients to as much as 450 W for heavy duty machines. Typical 1-U or 2-U servers with two or four CPUs will operate  at between 250 and 450 W depending on configuration and load.

To assess the potential savings from implementing green  IT techniques such as more power-efficient hardware and server consolidation, one experiment calculated potential energy savings of:

10 percent, 25 percent, and 50 percent for projections. All results are expressed in metric tons of CO2, which is equivalent to one carbon credit in   a cap-and-trade system. Assume a coal-generated kWh produces about 2 pounds of CO2.

It's no surprise that for geographic regions that obtain most of their power from means other than coal, emissions reduction would be minimal.

For example, reducing the energy consumption of  10,000-machine deployment of 150-W systems in California would save a lot of money due to high energy costs, but the carbon emission impact would be equivalent to removing only  10 automobiles from the road annually.

For more common cases   -say 250-W machines operating in regions with more than 30 percent coal-generated power   -the results are striking when we consider that the current market price for carbon credit is about $20 per metric ton-

And the carbon produced by one of the biggest culprits,  the automobile, is about 5 metric tons of  CO2  per year. Besides the savings from reduced energy use, moderate deployments  of  1,000 machines or more:

Would reduce carbon emissions by hundreds of tons.

Reducing the energy use, say of a system of  325-node SystemG  cluster by 25 percent would result in  200 fewer metric tons of  CO2, the equivalent of taking 40 cars off the road.

Just   1,000 computers operating in, say,  Pakistan, using green IT techniques to save 25 percent  of their energy use  would avoid producing  more than 350 metric tons of CO2.

For higher-end computer deployments, such as those in mega data  centers or companies with thousands of servers like  Facebook, Google and Microsoft, the energy reduction would be dramatic.

Thousands of metric tons of  CO2  could be eliminated with only moderate  -greater than 10 percent  energy savings.

To put this in some perspective,  the UN bought  461 tons carbon offsets to ensure that the September 2009 Summit on Climate Change in New York was carbon neutral.

If green IT techniques were implemented that reduced the energy use of 10,000 computers in West Virginia by 50 percent, the deployment would produce 33 times less carbon in one year  -that produced by the summit.

As long as the US and many developing nations heavily rely on coal generation using green IT techniques can significantly reduce an organization's  -and ultimately a     ^country's   -carbon footprint.

With a cap-and-trade system in place, businesses that reduce IT power usage could reap secondary benefits from trading credits.

With proper monitoring and tracking technology, businesses could generate thousands to hundreds of thousands dollars from the sales of carbon credits on the open market. 

BUT,.......     The world is years away from both implementing a cap-and-trade trade system and generating revenue from green-IT-based emission reductions. However, the technology is rapidly maturing as debate continues over the merits and costs of cap and trade.

This makes one believe in the potential of such a system while being realistic about whether we'll see a practical solution in the near future. 

With respectful dedication to ^Mother Earth^!    And all the Environmental Protection Agencies of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Reach Higher '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless