ICT and Climate ChangeA Foundation for Innovation in Canada

Bill St. Arnaud

CANARIE Inc – www.canarie.ca

Bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca

Unless otherwise noted all material in this slide deck may be reproduced, modified or distributed without prior permission of the author

Climate Forecasts

MIT

> MIT report predicts median temperature forecast of 5.2C– 11C increase in Northern

Canada– http://globalchange.mit.edu/pub

s/abstract.php?publication_id=990

> Last Ice age average global temperature was 5-6C cooler than today– Most of Canada was under 2-3

km ice– With BAU we are talking about

5-6C change in temperature in the opposite direction in less than 80 Years

2008 second warmest year

Climate Change is not reversible

• Climate Change is not like acid rain or ozone destruction where environment will quickly return to normal once source of pollution is removed

• GHG emissions will stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years and continue to accumulate

• Planet will continue to warm up even if we drastically reduce emissions

All we hope to achieve is to slow down the rapid rate of climate change

Weaver et al., GRL (2007)

j

15 - 20 tons/person

1 ton/person

2008 2050? 2100

2 tons/person

Source: Stern 2008

Our Challenge

80/50 rule – 80% reduction in CO2 by 2050(Commitment made by G8 countries)

CO2 emissions from Information, Computer, Telecommunications (ICT)

• It is estimated that the ICT industry alone produces CO2 emissions that is equivalent to the carbon output of the entire aviation industry 2-3%

• ICT emissions growth fastest of any sector in society, doubling about every 4 – 6 years

• ICT represent 8-9.4% of total US electricity consumption, and 8% of global electricity consumption

• Projected to grow to as much as 20% of all electrical consumption in the US– http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724

• Future Broadband- Internet alone is expected to consume 5% of all electricity– http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/people/rst/talks/files/Tucker_Green_Plenary.pdf

*An Inefficient Tuth: http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/event_detail.aspx?eid=2696e0e0-28fe-4121-bd36-3670c02eda49

IT biggest power draw

Heating,CoolingandVentilation40-50%

Heating,CoolingandVentilation40-50%

Lighting11%Lighting11%

IT Equipment 30-40%

IT Equipment 30-40%

Other6%Other6%

Sources: BOMA 2006, EIA 2006, AIA 2006

Energy Consumption World Wide

Transportation25%

Transportation25%

Manufacturing25%

Manufacturing25%

Buildings50%Buildings50%

Energy Consumption Typical Building

Growth ProjectionsData Centers

• Half of ICT consumption is data centers

• 50% of today’s Data Centers and major science facilities in the US will have insufficient power and cooling;*

• By 2010, half of all Data Centers will have to relocate or outsource applications to another facility.*

• During the next 5 years, 90% of all companies will experience some kind of power disruption. In that same period one in four companies will experience a significant business disruption*

• Data centers will consume 12% of electricity in the US by 2020 (TV Telecom)

Source: Gartner; Meeting the DC power and cooling challenge

Impact of Cap and Trade on Business and Telecom

> Company Servers Electricity Cost> http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p123.pdf

– Microsoft >200K >6×105 MWh >$36M– Google >500K >6.3×105 MWh >$38M– MIT campus 2.7×105MWh $62M

• “Average” increase in electricity costs for businesses and institutions will be 60% with cap and trade

– Organizations that use electricity from coal fired power plants will see significantly higher costs (by as much as 3 times current prices)

• 30% of electricity will come from renewable sources– Greater degree of unreliability and uncertainty in power

Carbon Footprint by state

GHG Regulation in British Columbia

• Bill 44-2007 was introduced in 2007 and enacted into law in 2008. The law is known as the Greenhouse Gas Reductions Target Act.

• The Act establishes greenhouse gas emission target levels for the Province.

– 2020 BC GHG will be 33% less than 2007.– 2050 BC GHG will be 80% less than 2007.

• Bill mandates that by 2010 each public sector organization must be carbon neutral.

• If a public sector organization can not achieve carbon neutrality then they are required to purchase offsets at $24/ton

SOURCE: “Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report 2007”, Ministry of Environment, Victoria, British Columbia, July 2009

Source: Jerry Sheehan UCSD

UBC Greenhouse Gas Liability 2010-2012

2010 2011 2012

Carbon Offset $1,602,750 $1,602,750 $1,602,750

Carbon Tax $1,179,940 $1,474,925 $1,769,910

Total $2,782,690 $3,077,675 $3,372,660

SOURCE: UBC Sustainability Office, August 2009

SOURCE: http://climateaction.ubc.ca/category/emission-sources

SOURCE: UBC Climate Action Plan, GHG 2006 Inventory

The Cost of Regulation: The University of British Columbia

Source: Jerry Sheehan UCSD

• Purchasing green power locally is expensive with significant transmission line losses–Demand for green power within cities expected to grow dramatically

• ICT facilities DON’T NEED TO BE LOCATED IN CITIES–-Cooling also a major problem in cities

• But most renewable energy sites are very remote and impractical to connect to electrical grid.– Can be easily reached by an optical network– Provide independence from electrical utility and high costs in wheeling power– Savings in transmission line losses (up to 15%) alone, plus carbon offsets can pay for moving ICT facilities to renewable energy site

• ICT is only industry ideally suited to relocate to renewable energy sites– Also ideal for business continuity in event of climate catastrophe

Innovation Opportunity – Building a zero carbon ICT infrastructure

Many examples already

Hydro-electric powered data centers

Data IslandiaDigital Data Archive

ASIO solar powered data centers

Wind powered data centersEcotricity in UK builds windmills at data center locations with no capital cost to user

Research Challenge – Building robust ICT services using renewable energy only

• 30% of electrical power will come from renewable sources

• How do you provide mission critical ICT services when energy source is unreliable?

– Ebbing wind or setting sun

• Back up diesel and batteries are not an option because they are not zero carbon and power outages can last for days or weeks

• Need new network architectures and business models to ensure reliable service delivery by quickly moving compute jobs and data sets around the world to sites that have available power

– Will require high bandwidth networks and routing architectures to quickly move jobs and data sets from site to site

Economic benefits of follow the wind/sun architectures• Cost- and Energy-Aware Load Distribution Across Data Centers

– http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~ricardob/papers/hotpower09.pdf

– Green data centers can decrease brown energy consumption by 35% by leveraging the green data centers at only a 3% cost increase

• Cutting the Electric Bill for Internet-Scale Systems– Companies can shift computing power to a data center in a location where it’s an off-peak

time of the day and energy prices are low

– Cassatt a product that dynamically shifts loads to find the cheapest energy prices

– 45% maximum savings in energy costs

– http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p123.pdf

– http://earth2tech.com/2009/08/19/how-data-centers-can-follow-energy-prices-to-save-millions/

• Computing for the future of the planet– http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/dtg/~ah12/

– http://earth2tech.com/2008/07/25/data-centers-will-follow-the-sun-and-chase-the-wind

CANARIE Green-IT Pilot

• $3m allocation for Green cyber-infrastructure-IT pilot testbed

• Two objectives:– Technical viability and usability for relocating computers to zero carbon

data centers and follow the sun/follow the wind network

– Business case viability of offering carbon offsets (and or equivalent in services) to IT departments and university researchers who reduce their carbon footprint by relocating computers and instrumentation to zero carbon data centers

• International partnership with possible zero carbon nodes using virtual router/computers in Spain, Ireland, California, Australia, British Columbia, Ottawa, Quebec and Nova Scotia

Final remarks

• The problem we face is NOT energy consumption, but carbon emissions

• Think carbon, not energy

• We must start addressing climate change now – not in 2050 or 2020

• 80% reduction in CO2 emissions will fundamentally change everything we do including ICT and networks

• Huge potential for innovation for ICT sector because 30% of energy must come from renewable sources

Thank you

• More information• List server on Green IT

– Send e-mail to bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca

• http://green-broadband.blogspot.com• http://free-fiber-to-the-home.blogspot.com/