E-ENVIRONMENT

IT and Green Revolution

-- Shweta Puneet, Arpita Basu and Shashwatendra Singh

Green computing can reduce the carbon footprints. It increases efficiency as well as gives opportunity to enhance the company's image coupled with rising profits. From IT giants to automobiles, the corporate world is moving ahead with green initiatives. Several companies, such as IBM, HP have introduced green solutions. This article discusses various key technologies such as cloud computing, virtualization, blade servers and green laptops.

The current alarming situation of global warming, increased consumption of energy combined with mounting problem of e-waste make the situation look grim for one and all. The aim of every company should be to reduce carbon footprints and make sure to produce sufficient ROI.

Many governmental agencies have continued to implement standards and regulations that encourage green computing, to name a few: The Energy Star (to include strict energy efficiency requirement for computer equipment), Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment Directive (WEE) in the field of reducing e-waste. But still there is a long way to go. GE's Jeff Immelt said that the environment and business are "no longer a zero sum game". The green initiatives have already started paying. For instance, GE made billions of dollars in revenues from his Ecomagination initiative. The corporate world now is moving ahead with green initiatives. Green computing is one of the several measures that is being considered. Several companies like IBM, HP have come up with green solutions to reduce the carbon footprints and increase the profits by reducing the cost and increasing efficiency at the same time.

Be it the improvement of datacenters or servers or even the recyclability of electric products, we need to look into this issue more seriously than ever. In the coming days, efficiency, manufacturing and recyclable material would be the key aspects of green computers.

Energy saved on computer hardware and computing will equate tonnes of carbon emission saved per year, which can make us earn whooping amount of carbon credits as an incentive to serve the nature.

The color `green' has always been associated with envy. But it has now come to occupy a much broader and wider meaning—it is the color of nature. Unlike the traditional way, the business corporations are now coupling their business strategies with the environmental factors. In fact, what is good for nature is proving to the best for the company. Major companies like IBM, are coming up with green solutions and technologies to increase the profitability with an aim to reduce carbon footprints. However, the point that needs to be understood is how a zero-sum game for the companies became a money-spinner. Let's understand this with the help of an example. An office in Delhi has around 400 computers and a small data center with around 30 servers which require approximately 150 to 200 KW of power a day, including consumption of cooling and lighting equipments running in the data centre as well as in the building. In Delhi, power is a major problem and to meet the requirements, the company goes for a 320 KV diesel generator which guzzles Rs. 1,000 worth of diesel every hour and also throws out a lot of pollutants.

According to a study, approximately $250 bn spent on to power computers per year. But only a small amount of the power, i.e., around 15% is spent on computing; 85% of the power goes wasted idling. With the power shortage, the price of energy is bound to go up with an increase in the oil prices. Though it is hard to believe, the fact is it would cost more to power a computer for four years than it does to buy a new one. Rajesh Saha, Country Manager, Enterprise Systems, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/South Asia, said, "with global temperatures on the rise, many environmentalists are calling for significant reduction in the generation of carbondioxide (CO₂) from fossil fuels. Commercial electricity consumption is a major factor in rising atmospheric CO₂ levels, and data centers are a significant, and growing, part of the problem. Worldwide, data centers are reported to consume 40tW/hrs of electricity each year, producing an estimated 17.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions. This is a concern for all and needs to be addresses by all parties involved."

Besides the energy factor and CO₂ emissions, the other issue that is surfacing is e-waste. When a computer ceases to work, it either rots in a landfill, or children in the developing countries can be seen taking its components out by hand and getting exposed to the toxic metals. A study conducted by Toxic Links revealed that nearly 30 million computers are thrown out every year in the US alone, and a substantial amount of that is dumped in India and China. Around 70% of the heavy metals in landfills come from e-waste. Manufacturing computer means the use of lead, cadmium, mercury and other toxics in general and laptops in particular. In general, computers contain four to eight pounds of lead alone, according to green experts. Green computing not only save costs but also helps us become part of the environment. The highlighting features of green computing are recyclability and self-powering.

How is it Going to Work?

According to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, the term `green computing' refers to environmentally sustainable computing or IT. It is the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently. The goal of green computing is to reduce the use of hazardous materials, maximize energy efficiency and promote recyclability or biodegradability of defunct product and factory waste. Today, the prime task for any data center is to go green. And this is not because we have suddenly become nature friendly. Because when we save on power, cooling, space, heat emissions, etc., we are directly or indirectly saving our expenses. Let's look at some of the key technologies that can change the picture of a data center:

Virtualization: Virtualization allows abstracting the hardware from the software. So the server, which was traditionally run on a single OS and application in the datacenter, can now be run on multiple operating systems and applications simultaneously resulting in increased utilization. This reduces the number of servers in the data center which, in turn, reduces the consumption of energy. For instance, Intel has released its 7,400 series Xeon processor which has six core processors. Such innovations are helping the company to go greener with the application of virtualization.

Cloud Computing: It is the extension of the concept of virtualization from a single server to a complete grid, and makes its access via the Internet (Refer Figure 1). Grid is a cluster of computers that are coupled with one another and deployments of any virtualization architecture on top of the grid gets you a cloud. The next question is what's the benefit. Considering if virtualization of a single server can save 50% to 70% of resources then how much can be saved in case the entire datacenter act as a single grid. As a result we would save more space, power and money. If we use cloud computing as a client and don't want to deploy our own cloud for consolidation, then we are saving nature as we are reutilizing preexisting resources on some huge centers instead of deploying our own datacenter for the same task. Cloud computing has emerged as big enabler for green computing. However, it's still in its nascent stage and adaptation is yet to become widespread.

Blade Servers: Blades are a great way of saving energy and e-waste. They help in increasing the density of the datacenter to multiple levels. The use of a single 7U blade chassis can save the space and, in turn, reduce the ambient cooling requirements. Because of its design, it takes up to 14 blades. Blade servers are generally equipped with specialized processors which consume less amount of electricity. With vendors providing chassis with backward and forward compatibility, it makes more sense to use the blades. Consequently, the new one can easily replace the existing servers and do more virtualization to consolidate instead of buying new servers. Buy-back option from vendors solves the problem of e-waste up to a large extent. Not only servers and blades but also many other components have to go green in order to save energy consumption.

Green Laptops: Play a major role in green IT movement. A notebook, occupying less space, consuming less power and containing fewer components as compared to desktop, makes it greener. This would on the whole reduce the overall impact on the environment. For instance, Atom processor of Intel, which is already used in variety of notebooks manufactured by HCL, Acer, Fujitsu and Lenovo, consumes less power. It is designed to meet the requirements of the new generation mobile internet devices. It is small and extremely efficient. It has enough power to handle day-to-day computing activities and is available at low cost. Desktops can also be made greener if manufactured with easily recyclable material. ASUS Bamboo Series, showcased at CEDIA 2008, is the best example. HCL Infosystems introduced a complete lineup of eco-friendly notebooks, compliant with Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive last year.

Recycling, like any quality measure, ensures to manufacture product with minimum e-waste generated in the entire process. Several large organizations have already realized the importance of e-waste management and started taking steps in this direction. Wipro Green Computing, an e-waste management program of Wipro covers the entire product life cycle from designing and manufacturing to final clearance. For Apple, going green has come up as another source for generating revenue. Apple recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, equivalent to 9.55% of all apple products sold seven years earlier.

HP has come up with a recycling program - The Planet Partners Hardware Recycling Program (PPP)—which highlights its global commitment towards greener world and reflects importance of reducing e-waste. The company offers product trade-in and leasing services. It also collects hardware products which are later refurbished, resold, or donated. After recycling the products, plastics and metals are recovered for using them in new products.

Big Bucks!!

As the companies are going green, they are realizing that being environmentally conscious and fiscally smart are not odds with each other. Environmental concern, meeting regulation standards or the energy efficiency reflect one aspect the other being ROI.

IBM, with its `Project Big Green', is selling green solutions to those corporate data centers whose energy constraints and costs are major hindrances in the path of their growth. These solutions are expected to help datacenters to cut their cost by half (a typical 25,000 square foot data center spends $2.6 mn in power annually). Looking at the performance of the Green Datacenter, approximately $2,000 mn new businesses have been signed in the 2<sup>nd</sup> quarter of 2008. Another way of making `green' bucks is through trading carbon credits. Torrent Power switched over from a coal-fired power plant to natural gas and earned 3.2 million carbon credits (this translates to €54.14 mn). In 2007, JW Steel was awarded 5.4 million carbon credits for its two projects. In the year of 2007, Indian companies earned nearly $300 mn by selling Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) (equivalent to one tonne of CO₂) and are preparing to earn $3.6 bn by 2012. India Inc. can utilize several business opportunities in developing low carbon technologies, a sector which is anticipated to grow to $3 tn per year by 2050.

It's Time to Go Green

Green computing can save tonnes of carbon emission every year which not only helps the companies to generate more revenue but also portray them as responsible corporates. Many green technology investments positively impact the bottomline of companies. After all, the reason for existence of such projects is to reduce energy consumption and costly wastage, ultimately signifying higher returns. Considering the involvement of IT in our daily lives, it has to bring about a revolution that will lead us towards a greener tomorrow. As Sir Richard Branson said, "Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment."

About the Authors

Shweta Puneet is a Faculty Member at IBS, Pune. The author can be reached at shweta@ibsindia.org. Arpita Basu is a Student at IBS, Pune. Shashwatendra Singh is a Student at IBS, Pune.