Category Archives: Clean Energy

What does driving an Electric Car have in common with PC power management?

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Two electric realities collide
 
I've just taken delivery of a new car, and it got me thinking that there are a many similarities between my choices in deciding to buy this car and the choices around picking a PC power management solution.

The car I've bought is the brand new Vauxhall Ampera – a re-bodied variant of the Chevrolet Volt. My new car has a unique selling point as it's the first 'extended range electric vehicle'. It always runs on electricity, and you plug it in to the mains to charge up, but unlike all other electric vehicles it also has an on-board petrol driven generator.

The battery has a 40-50 mile range, and if you only travel that far before getting back home to recharge then it uses no petrol at all, however if you need to go further, the generator kicks in and provides electricity to keep you going for another 300 miles (or as far as you need to since you can fill up at any gas station to go further).

Since my daily commute is approximately a 50-mile round trip, I will be able to drive the majority of that on battery and only need to fill up very infrequently. Couple that with the fact that I'll be paying no road tax or congestion charges as well as much lower insurance premiums, my running costs for owning a vehicle have dropped dramatically. Also, my need to travel any distance at any time is not limited in any way. The best upshot of all is that now I'll only be paying about 10% of the cost of my previous monthly petrol bill in electricity costs.
 
That’s where the similarity to PC power management comes in. Availability management is a key efficiency measure within PC power management. With a comprehensive PC power management tool like NightWatchman Enterprise from 1E, less downtime is caused by reboots patching and ensuring the health of PCs out of hours, which means productivity remains unaffected. You can benefit from a more efficient use of resources (electricity) without having to compromise on user experience.

The main reason I chose an electric car was to reduce running costs and to insure against the continued rising cost of petrol. As a nice side effect, I'm also helping to reduce my own personal carbon footprint. Since centrally-produced electricity produces far less carbon than the amount I would have emitted from a normal internal combustion engine, and having switched to a 'green' electricity tariff, my footprint is further offset.
 
It's similar with PC power management. Although many organizations invest in PC power management to lower IT costs, there are very real carbon emissions savings to be made. Typically, an organization can achieve a 40% reduction in PC power costs, around 380 kWh per PC per year preventing 586 pounds of CO2 per user per year from being emitted into the atmosphere.[i].

There were cheaper all-electric cars on the market (such as the Nissan Leaf), but since the Ampera completely removes any range anxiety, it  is worth the extra money, plus it's a higher spec, more luxurious car.
 
When selecting a PC power management product, there are many options to choose from, including premium, cheap, or even free. While the free options are still preferable to nothing at all, they are missing a number of key capabilities. Sometimes free is too cheap, as we like to say. If you’re interested in reading more about this, please take a look at the article on page 6 of latest issue of V1EWPOINT.

Another reason it makes sense to buy an electric vehicle now is the fact that the UK government is paying £5000 towards it – an incentive to get people into electric vehicles. Many utility companies like Pacific Gas and Electric and Manitoba Hydro, two 1E customers, also offer rebates or incentives for using PC power management, sometimes covering the entire cost of the software investment.
 
I love being able to see the savings I have made on the in-car dashboard. Accurate reporting is a fundamental part of power management. Getting the energy consumption levels right is the principal underlying factor to prove my savings, and the same is true of NightWatchman, with the most accurate energy consumption reporting providing the best results, since CO2 emissions and monetary savings are a function of kWh consumed.

Buying the Ampera has proved the financial savings and efficiencies that I can make as well as how I am reducing my carbon footprint. I could have chosen any number of electric cars but its extended range which gives ability to let me drive wherever, whenever gives me freedom and options. Good PC power management will do much the same – on a larger scale. Anyone can switch off a computer, but automated PC power management tools make sure that the user can use it whenever they need to, that IT can patch it as needed, it remains healthy and energy savings are reported accurately.

[i] Ovum, Selecting a PC Power Management Solution Vendor, December 2011, Rhonda Ascierto.

How can Australian organizations prepare for carbon tax..?

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Thanks in part to its small population, Australia is the developed world’s worst polluter per capita, accounting for 1.5% of the world’s emissions. Its controversial new Clean Energy Act will force the country’s 500 worst-polluting companies to pay a tax on their carbon emissions from 1 July 2012. The Australian government has set the initial price per tonne of carbon at A$23 ($23.80; £14.80), much higher than other similar schemes such as in the EU where the price is between $8.70 and $12.60 a tonne.

How will businesses prepare for this law?

In the UK, we learned a lot from the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. The UK government didn’t endorse or impose a preferred method of carbon reporting (a factor that saw many organisations stall with their reporting, unsure which route to take) and it doesn’t look like the Australian government will either. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, when you have the likes of us around. 1E has helped its 1,400 customers, including Dell, CSC, the City of Melbourne and Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority save more than $550 million in energy costs alone, cutting CO2 emissions by 4.5 million tons.

Effectively, our customers all did the same thing. They started by looking at their office environment. PCs account for a large percentage of total organizational IT power consumption, and yet at least in 50% are not shut down at the end of the day or over the weekend. Yet there are clear savings to be made – a one night shut down of the world’s 1 billion PCs would save enough energy to power the Empire State Building for 30 years. NightWatchman® Enterprise has been licensed across 5.1 million PCs around the world, saving on average £25 per PC per year.

Simply put, our flagship PC power management solution NightWatchman Enterprise works. The built-in Enterprise View dashboard captures and highlights real energy and efficiency data across all locations, departments, hardware and operating systems.

As a result of deploying NightWatchman Enterprise™ from 1E on just 1,000 desktop PCs, City of Melbourne:

  • Saw cumulative savings of $175,000 AUD since deployment
  • Reduced energy consumption by 1,459,000 kWh
  • Prevented 1,648,670.00 kg of CO2 from entering the atmosphere

Again using NightWatchman Enterprise, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority was able to reduce power costs and associated CO2 emissions from computers by 51% since implementation. The project also made staff more energy conscious and encouraged them to ‘think green’. Read the full case study here.

For more information on NightWatchman Enterprise, please visit: http://www.1e.com/it-efficiency/software/nightwatchman-enterprise-pc-power-management/ or contact sustainableIT, our preferred supplier in Australia: http://www.sustainableit.com.au/

“With high technology, business is often going to be ahead of government” says 1E CEO in TIME interview

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TIME blogger, Bryan Walsh, has an excellent piece and commentary on “Why Fighting Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs Is So Stupid”.   The way Bryan puts it makes completely sense.  This shouldn’t be about light bulbs at all, it should be about creating efficiency and building examples of efficiency, that ultimately resolves our hunger and madness for energy.

But, should government be the standards body in this situation? 1E’s CEO, Sumir Karayi, puts it into perspective.  From the article:

Obviously government standards that would require more energy-efficient IT would be a boon for 1E, but Karayi would prefer to let industry make its own standards. “With high technology, business is often going to be ahead of government,” says Karayi. “You risk having inferior technologies frozen in place.”

Read the full article:

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/07/15/why-fighting-energy-efficient-light-bulbs-is-so-stupid/

Nein to Nuclear – Germany’s volte-face could come with hefty cost and energy penalties if energy efficiencies are not made now

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After the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the German chancellor Angela Merkel suspended the country’s nuclear energy policy and unplugged seven of Germany’s 17 reactors off the electricity grid. She also confirmed a decision to shut down all 17 nuclear reactors by 2022.

Let’s look a little deeper at this. 26% of Germany’s energy source comes from nuclear power. In other words, once all of the reactors are retired from the grid, the country faces looking elsewhere for one quarter of its energy source.

In a bid to ‘reassure’ the German population, the government has said that it would make sure that there will be no power shortages and ‘any shortfall in electricity supply will be covered by coal-fired power stations’– on the surface, this is comforting, but what does this really mean? What impact will it have on Germany’s aggressive CO2 emissions reductions target?

Alarmingly, according to Reuters Germany’s plan to shut all its nuclear power plants by 2022 will add up to 40 million tones of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Deutsche Bank analysts estimate an extra 370 million tones of carbon dioxide emissions through 2020, compared with Societe Generale’s extra 406 million tones in the next eleven years. Surely, this would make the 40% emissions reduction by 2020 target more than just ambitious?

According to the the first independent, cross-industry network of leading companies in the energy industry in Germany, the Deutsche Unternehmensinitiative Energieeffizienz (DENEFF), there are €165 million and 1.1 terawatt hours (TWh) of potential savings per year to be realized through energy efficient or green technologies.

German businesses must act now to implement energy efficiency technologies and strategies to reduce their emissions contributions. The impetus is clear and there are simple steps that can be taken today. Why wait?

1E customers have had significant success with reducing their own emissions targets. CSC has reduced its PC energy consumption by 40% just by implementing advanced power management technology on its estate of computers. Leading structural engineering firm Arup saved 442 metric tonnes of CO2, again by taking the simple step of power managing its PCs. What’s more, as well as seeing impressive energy efficiencies, our customers see significant cost reductions. Watch this video to hear how Dell is saving $2.4m year on year. Beyond the PC, organisations can make significant savings in the data center too. CSC went on to engage with 1E and found that of 68 servers, 22% were wasting over 80% energy – and remember, for every watt of power saved in the data center, you save another in cooling, so there is potential to make double the savings. You can read the full CSC case study here.

To find out how your organization can make a valuable contribution to reducing CO2 emissions, give us a call!

Come see 1E next week at EE Global and get 10% off registration

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Next week is the annual EE Global event. This year the event will be in Brussels  right in the middle of the pan European EU Sustainable Energy Week.

EE Global 2011 is an official EU Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW) side-event. EUSEW draws over 30,000 attendees and expands the pool of energy leaders who will be in Brussels during EE Global. In addition to attracting energy efficiency’s best-in-class, the week will shine a spotlight on the important topic of energy efficiency and the need to take action NOW!

EE Global’s unique symposium features a variety of engaging forums in which you will hear from corporate executives, senior government officials and industry experts — all chosen by an international committee comprised of the best minds in energy efficiency. Visit 1E booth 131 on Tuesday and Wednesday, (first booth on right – see graphic below), and while you’re there hear 1E CEO & Founding Member of the European Alliance to Save Energy (EU-ASE), Sumir Karayi, give his presentation on Thursday at 10:45am.  Sumir will be presenting session 5B, Innovations & Practices – Making the World’s Industrial Economies More Efficient.

Special ‘1E Friends’ Event Discount!

1E has a special friends registration discount of 10%, please quote “ASEFRIEND” at registration - http://eeglobalforum.org

 

1E Stand #131

1E Stand #131

I think I’ll Build Wind Farm..

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Sometimes, the saying goes, you have to put your money where your mouth is.

I’ve been talking about clean energy, energy conservation, Green IT and IT efficiency for some years now, so when the opportunity came along to do something a bit more practical about climate change I didn’t have to think for too long.

Hillside Farm is a windy old spot. It sits on the North-West coast of the UK, and is only a mile or so from the Irish Sea so I’d been thinking about installing a wind turbine on the farm to cover our power usage and maybe generate a little extra. Things have moved on a little in the last couple of years however, and my initial idea has now turned into something bigger altogether..

With initial wind speed surveys looking really promising (about 7m/s at 25m altitude), it occurred to me that it would be better to put up the biggest turbine possible, or maybe more than one. So by combining the land from our farm with that of our neighbor we are now looking at a proper three turbine wind farm.

Wind energy comes in for a lot of criticism here in the UK, and in general worldwide. Seen as huge eyesores, inefficient tax-break machines or worse, so I felt obliged to find out as much as possible about wind energy before I took the plunge. I visited existing installations, researched the technical ins and outs, looked at recent advances in the technology and listened hard to both pro and anti wind groups at many presentations and meetings.

The conclusion was that there is a lot of myth making around what is a long established and productive way of generating renewable energy. Sure the old two blade turbines from 20 to 30 years ago are not the most efficient energy generators, but things have moved on a whole lot since then. Modern turbines can generate significant amounts of energy, with the larger models producing enough for around 1,000 homes. I also feel that most people tend to overlook the fact that wind energy is a relatively short term solution. There are some amazing technologies coming down the line which will be hopefully generating clean energy for us in the future, but until they are ready we need to both reduce our current energy consumption and generate as much electricity as we can from the technologies that we have available right now. In 50 years time we may look back and laugh at our efforts to generate power with these spindly looking giants, but if they allow us the breathing space to transition away from fossil fuel generation methods then who cares!

Eye of the Beholder

Personally I find wind turbines quite beautiful. Having stood right under the rotating blades of a 300ft turbine recently, I can tell you that it’s an amazing sight, and not at all noisy! All you can hear is the swoosh of the blade as it passes overhead at 300mph and you can quite easily hold a normal conversation there.

The Plan

I’m pleased to say that we are now well under way with preparations and planning for our own wind farm. If built, it should generate enough power for 3-4,000 homes using turbines like these from REPower . We have undertaken 12 months of environmental impact surveys on the farm too, in order to ascertain the species present, and to make sure that there is minimal environmental impact by monitoring things like bird flight paths and feeding grounds. Construction will be a big undertaking, with roads to be built, and grid connections required, but I’m hoping that within a couple of years we will be up and generating. Watch this space for updates and photos!

UK Business Is Wasting £6Bn Through Energy Inefficiencies

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We’ve been sharing our vision of efficiency and elimination of waste for businesses for over 10 years now, but it seems that one or two businesses weren’t listening!

From Carbon Connect:

UK MP Chris Huhne welcomed a report explaining how energy efficiency in the private sector can save business £6 billion a year, cut carbon and safeguard UK fuel-security. The result of an inquiry by Carbon Connect, the report “Energy Efficiency: The Untapped Business Opportunity” has cross-parliamentary party approval and backing from across the private sector.

The report describes how business can reduce their energy use and makes 15 recommendations for how central government and the private sector can work together to implement an “Energy Management Hierarch” and focus on greenhouse gas reporting, project financing, skills and support to SMEs, alongside the role of the commercial property sector.

Only last week, the United Nation’s called for 2% of worldwide income to be invested in an energy-efficient “green economy”. The UK already has a framework of incentives to encourage the generation of renewable energy. If government and the private sector follow the recommendations of this report, the UK can develop a thriving market for investment in energy efficiency too. Through this, business can help the drive towards a low-carbon United Kingdom.

Carbon Connect is an independent not-for-profit coalition, which seeks to examine the key challenges and opportunities resulting from the transition to a low carbon economy. For more information, see http://www.policyconnect.org.uk/cc

Obviously energy saving is an enormous subject to tackle head on for any business. At 1E we pride ourselves in being the market leader in Energy Efficient IT solutions such as our PC Power Management software which has to date reduced worldwide carbon emissions by over 4,500 million tons.

PC Power Management is just the “First Step” to Realizing the Big Picture of Overall IT Efficiency and Savings–Part 1

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As time has progressed, PC Power Management has become a common thread for companies who are realizing significant savings in cost and improved environmental value.  PC Power Management is an easy concept to understand because it’s so simple: when you shutoff PCs when they are not in-use, cost savings are immediately realized in electricity consumption and CO2 emissions, in addition to extending the life of PC hardware.  Notably, 1E is the market leader in this area with NightWatchman, and we’ve worked hard to make the ability easy for everyone.

But, PC Power Management is only a first-step to achieving an overall savings within the company.  Putting investments and effort behind PC Power Management is extremely valuable in itself, but only scratches the surface of the big picture.  There are other areas of the IT organization where improvements can be easily identified.  If you stopped at PC Power Management, your investment in saving the company money would not be complete and you would miss out on thousands, even millions, of dollars of additional savings.

Achieving full IT Efficiency within an organization is 1E’s mantra. 

That’s why we don’t stop at PC Power Management, either.  As announced recently, we know how to save customers money, reaching $1 billion in customer savings.  1E strives to provide for the big picture through a suite of technologies. While 1E is the acknowledged leader in PC Power Management, our goal is to save our customers money wherever improvements can be made.

This is just the first post of many that will help outline areas within the IT organization where excess exists – areas that 1E is actively striving to provide technology and leadership to make these other areas just as easy to understand and implement as PC Power Management.  As we continue this blogging series, we’ll talk about different areas of excess, how to identify them, and ultimately how to continue saving money, time, and the environment through eliminating the excess.

See you here next time.

IT Efficiency

Peak Oil: Has it arrived Early?

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With Egypt firmly at the top of the World News agenda last week (and rightly so), another story which could in fact have huge consequences for the Middle East and indeed the whole global economy, was somewhat overshadowed.

The story originated from Wikileaks, and whatever your thoughts  and opinions on such releases, the facts laid bare in this one are cause for concern.

Here in the UK The Guardian’s John Vidal wrote a piece entitled Peak oil: We are asleep at the Wheel which was one of many that appeared last week. Here’s the synopsis..

The latest batch of leaked cables report the views of Sadad al-Husseini, a former board member of the national oil company Saudi Aramco and a geologist who headed exploration and production for the company from 1986 to 2004.  In a nutshell, Al-Husseini told some US officials that Saudi Arabia was not able to keep up with global demand. That demand is expected to reach 12 million barrels per day. He said that the kingdom might get to 12m barrels a day given 10 years, but before then – perhaps as early as 2012 – global production would have hit the highest level it ever will, and given that demand won’t be abating by then given levels of economic growth in China and India, the oil price will soar.

Oops! Now this basic story is nothing new. Peak Oil as it is known has been hotly debated for some years now, with wildly fluctuating estimates as to when the fateful day will be (or has already been) reached when global oil production starts to decline. It’s almost impossible to predict. Early efforts at prediction didn’t take into account new advances in oil recovery techniques, but then to counter that, who could have predicted the rise of China, India and other Asian economies and their new demand for oil? But what does Peak Oil mean for us?

Firstly, peak oil is not a “theory.” Because oil is a finite resource, it is an inevitability, a done deal at some point. The argument is all around the timing. If and when it turns out that it is clear that we have reached peak oil, then oil prices will spiral out of control as the world struggles to secure it’s supplies. The UK for instance is particularly vulnerable because it has gone from being a net exporter of oil, gas and coal to being an importer, and is becoming increasingly exposed to competition for supplies. The problem is that and oil price leap will affect much more that the price at the gas pump. It’s likely that energy prices will rise significantly, along with the price of many things that rely on oil for manufacture such as chemicals and many plastics. Here are just fifty things that are made from oil.

Of course in the IT world we are pretty well exposed to this threat. We rely on plentiful energy at a reasonable price, and many of our basic tools of the trade rely on oil for manufacture (think motherboards and cables for a start!). So what can we do?

Weather you believe that peak oil has arrived or not, it will one day. So we all need to do more with what we have left, use less and start to think about a future without oil in our lives. 1E technologies are all about reducing waste and increasing efficiencies which is an important step down the post-oil road.

Surely it’s best to use what we have left to transition to an oil free future rather than argue until it’s all gone? And it can be done, as I will explain in my next piece later this week. Until then, think about your next car journey – is it really necessary?

New Cloud Data Centers – More Energy Please!

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Couple of examples this week that data center computing is moving ‘closer to the Cloud’ (if that’s the right term) as we saw some very large projects emerging to service the growing demand for Cloud type services.

China is building a city-sized cloud computing and office complex that will include a mega data center, one of the projects fueling that country’s double-digit growth in IT spending.

The entire complex will cover some 6.2 million square feet, with the initial data center space accounting for approximately 646,000 square feet,

In sheer scale, this project, first announced late last month, is nearly the size of the Pentagon, although in China’s case it is spread over multiple buildings similar to an office park and may include some residential areas. See the full story from the Computerworld blog here.

Also announced was a large development in Portugal which will double the country’s data center capacity in one fell swoop! Portugal Telecom said it is building one of Europe’s largest data centers, with more than 45,000 sq m of operational space for 50,000 servers and covering two levels. The data center’s main focus will be on storage but it will also be used to support communications and cloud computing services offered by Portugal Telecom.

As each new datacenter seems to be bigger and better than the last, are we seeing a move towards super-hub type facilities? The world’s insatiable desire for more access to anything from anywhere, more storage and more computing power on every device sometimes seems never ending. But who picks up the power bill? At the moment we are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels, and these huge facilities need a lot of juice..

In the case of the Portugal project, data center will be powered using an adjacent wind farm, according to reports, but this is not the norm. If we reach a point where energy is in short supply (and that scenario is closer than you might think), who takes priority? Do these new giants have an Achilles heel? The term ‘single point of failure’ spring to mind here, and although I’m sure that energy usage has been factored into these designs, it’s a rapidly changing world these days and we can’t just keep adding capacity without thinking about where the power comes from.

Of course we have good examples out there and some far thinking companies are build their centers near to sources of renewable energy such as hydro etc.

Surely it makes sense to make sure that projects like these mega-datacenters have their own power source, like the Cambridge Elean Data Campus which has it’s own renewable Combined Heat and Power (CHP) energy source right next door.

With Facebook coming under renewed attack from Greenpeace over it’s reliance on coal-fired energy, this issue will only become more high profile. Although these new Cloud facilities are impressive, and generally packed with the latest energy efficiency technologies such as server power management and efficient cooling and water usage, they still need huge amounts of power to run. In the future I hope to see more companies taking the bull by the horns and powering their own shops with their own (renewable) juice!