Green IT
Joseph Martinich
Founders Professor
University of Missouri – St. Louis
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Where Are We Going?
• What do we mean by Green IT?
• How Can I/we achieve Green IT?
• Specific simple actions we can take to make IT
green
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What Is Green IT?
• Focus is to reduce harmful environmental
impacts of organizations and people
– Help to create a more sustainable world
• That’s nice, but what’s in it for me?
– My job is to make IT systems work.
– Trying to make them green is just an extra burden.
• True?
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• Green IT provides an opportunity to:
– Reduce costs
– Increase revenues
AND
– reduce environmental impacts
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• Green IT has three components
– Greening OF IT
– Greening BY IT
– USING IT to promote green initiatives and
behavior
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• Greening OF IT
– “… efficient and effective design, manufacture,
operation, use, and disposal of computer and
communication systems (including hardware,
software, storage, and networks) aiming for
minimal or zero impact on the environment.”
(Murugesan, 2013)
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– How?
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Energy efficiency
Using sustainable energy
Using fewer material resources
Using less harmful materials
Promoting and facilitating reuse, repair, and recycling of
IT equipment
– Payoff?
• $$$$$$$$$$
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• Greening BY IT
– “… using IT … to support, assist, and leverage
applications and activities in several other
domains and industry sectors to reduce energy
and resource consumption and carbon footprint.”
(Murugesan, 2013)
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– How?
• Enable dematerialization (replace physical goods with
digital goods, online meetings)
• Re-engineer and optimize business operations within
an entire supply chain (e.g., better reverse logistics)
• Make buildings, operations, vehicles, etc. more efficient
• Provide platforms for environmental management,
emissions and used resource trading
• Energy and waste auditing and reporting
• Help environmental decision making: DSS, KM, etc.
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• Using IT to promote green initiatives/behavior
– How?
• Social media (e.g., promote energy efficiency or
recycling within an organization or community)
• Green electronic games
• Interactive visualization
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Our Focus Today: Greening of IT
• Suppose you were put in charge of IT
operations, and instructed to make IT
operations greener
• What is the first thing you would do?
– Why?
• What are the next two things you would do?
– Why?
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How To Be Green and Green
• Learning to See
– “The biggest opportunity to save money is to look at
where you’re spending money.”
• Quote from consultant in health care/insurance industry!
– So: Audit your operations
• Why? What is the purpose? What do we want to find
out?
– Where and how much money you are spending/wasting
– How and how much you are impacting the environment
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– What type(s) of audit?
• Energy Audit
• Waste/Material Audit
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• Energy Audit
– How much energy (mainly electricity) is being
used for IT purposes?
• Would like metered data, but IT operations often not
separately metered/sub-metered (unless dedicated
facility)
• Electric bill data (and any sub-meter data) still useful
and important to understand energy use and potential
cost savings
• Good to know electricity tariff structure and use
patterns (peak load, time of use, seasonality charges)
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– Where and how is it being used?
• Walk the facility and identify all uses of
energy/electricity related to IT operations
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Servers
Routers
Computers and Monitors
Tele-video and other telecommunications equipment
Printers and other peripheral equipment
HVAC and fans for IT equipment and facilities
Lighting for IT activities
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• Determine floor space used (for efficiency and benchmarking purposes)
• Determine the hours of operation for facility and
equipment
• Determine staffing schedule of operations
• Compute energy efficiency metrics
– Ex: For a data center => Power usage effectiveness (PUE)
PUE = (Total Facility Energy/IT Equipment Energy)
Want value close to 1.0, but many centers > 2 or 3
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• IT Energy
– Why should we go through all this effort?
– Is it really that much of a (controllable) cost?
– IT is a clean business; does it really have that
much of an environmental impact?
– YES and YES
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• Some IT Energy Facts
– For a typical office operation, more than 60% of
the electricity used is for computers and monitors
– “Electricity used to be a small cost of data centers;
now it makes up 40-50% of operating costs, and
over the life of a server the cost of electricity may
be twice the capital cost of the server itself.”
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– “As much as 30% of a typical small office-based
organization’s electricity bill may be due to
powering and cooling servers running around the
clock even when performing little or no work.”
– Only 5-15% of data center electricity is for
productive purposes (actual processing)
• The rest is for cooling the room and servers and to keep
idle machines “on” waiting for work
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– Worldwide, data centers require more than 40
gigawatts of power load
• 2-3% of global electricity
– In 2013 data centers consumed 91 billion kWh in
the U.S. (enough to power every household in
NYC)
• This is just data centers not all IT equipment
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– A single large data center can use as much power
as a mid-size city
• Facebook DC in Altoona, IA uses 140 mW!!!!
– A typical 500 square meter data center (small to
medium size) consumes 27,000 kWh/day (the use
of about 1000 houses)
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• Many/most IT operations are very energy
inefficient.
• Why?
• Misaligned incentives:
– Lease structure: Utilities are “free”
– IT doesn’t pay for its electricity use (or waste disposal,
or many other resources)
• Lack of knowledge
– Green IT is usually not part of IT training/education
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• Potential cost savings
– “U.S. organizations squander $2.8 billion/yr to
power unused machines (PCs).”
– Many organizations report millions of dollars of
savings per year (individually) from simple
changes, such as virtualization, low power mode
usage, turning off machines, more efficient
programs, and opening the doors and windows!
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How To Be Green and Green
• Start with the simple and cheap stuff
– Use power management software/controls (sleep
mode)
– Turn off computers/equipment when not in use
– Turn off the lights
– Use computer virtualization
– Buy/use energy-efficient equipment
– Don’t over-cool server rooms
– Use ventilation and natural cooling of server rooms
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• Use power management software/controls
– Powers down equipment to low-energy state
when not in use
– Individual devices
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Desktop PC: 40-60 watts (much better than “old days”)
LCD monitors: 15-30 watts
In sleep mode computers and monitors use 1-5 watts
Note: When a screen saver is running the monitor and
computer are NOT in sleep mode! They are using
normal power.
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– Example:
• PC and LCD monitor “on” 8000 hr/yr =>
8000 hr/yr x 75 watts = 600 kWh/yr
At $0.10/kWh => $60/yr; at $0.15/kWh => $90/yr
• If PC and monitor go to sleep mode 5000 hr/yr =>
5000 hr/yr x 70 watts (reduction) = 350 kWh/yr saved
At $0.10/kWh => $35/yr saved; at $0.15 kWh/yr => $52/yr saved
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– Examples
• Iowa State U.
– Installed energy-saving software on 500 computers at a cost
of $3000/yr, but projected to save $50,000 a year in energy
costs
• Partners HealthCare in Boston
– Idle computers go to standby mode: saved 5.5 million kWh/yr
in direct energy and $1.4 million/yr (saves on cooling also) –
with minimal initial cost
• UW – OshKosh
– 2900 PCs; power mgt. controls turned on (zero cost except
labor). Annual savings of $76,500.
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– But computers cannot receive software updates
or be accessed remotely (VPN) if they are in sleep
mode
• No longer true
• Cheap/free software exists to wake computers from
sleep mode remotely
• At a minimum, monitors don’t need to be on
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• Better Yet: Turn off equipment when not
needed
– Reduces energy use of PC/monitor. Use power
strips: turns off peripheries (modems, printers,
speakers, etc.) at the same time
– Does NOT harm equipment
– Microsoft now considers leaving computers on
when not in use to NOT be best practices simply
for security reasons
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• Turn off the lights! Everywhere … when not
needed
– Example 1: Dual level lighting, office
• Three three-light fixtures in my office
• Two switches control 4/5 28-watt fluorescent tubes
• If 5-tube switch turned off just 4 hours/day, 5 days/wk
=> 1040 hr/yr x 140 watts = 145.6 kWh/yr saved
=> That’s $14.56/yr PER OFFICE per year
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• Savings are even larger because savings likely to occur during
peak load hours (reduces peak demand and peak usage
charges), and it extends the life of the lights, reducing
maintenance costs
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– Example 2: Dual level lighting, restroom
• Three four-tube fluorescent fixtures (28 watts per tube)
and one LED “safety light” (can’t be turned off by
public)
• If fluorescent lights turned off just 8 hr/day (e.g., over
night) and off 16 hr/day on weekends
=> 3744 hr/yr x 336 watts = 1258 kWh/yr saved or
$125.80 /yr per restroom
FREE MONEY!
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– Servers don’t need lights
• 1000 sf server room typically has 30+ fluorescent lights
(28-32 watts each)
• To light the room 24/7 => 840 watts x 8760 hr/yr =
7358.4 kWh/y = $735.84/yr in electricity
• Potential savings is 50-99% of this
• This also reduces cooling load
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• Use computer virtualization
– Uses one computer/server to do the work of
several
– Eliminates the costs of buying and operating extra
computers and reduces energy costs dramatically
– Microsoft used virtualization to reduce server cost
at one facility by over $1.5 million annually
– BMC Software eliminated 2000 servers using
virtualization – saved $10 million over 2 years,
including $500,000/yr in electricity
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• Buy/use energy-efficient equipment
– Use laptops and tablets when convenient
• Laptop: 15-45 watts
• Tablet: 10-40 watts
– Large variation in energy-efficiency of “similar”
equipment
• Include electricity use/cost in your purchase decision
– Newer equipment may be much more energyefficient; energy savings could pay for upgrade
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• Don’t overcool server rooms
– Not like the old days
– Newer servers can operate fine at higher
temperatures
• Every one degree increase in thermostat setting saves
2-3% on electricity use
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• Use outside air/ventilation for cooling when
possible
– Yahoo! did this and reduced energy use by 60%
– Can be very cost effective (even in Arizona), but
requires study and planning
– Issues
• Timing (e.g., super cooling at night when air is cold)
• Humidity
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• Facility Design Actions
– Bury data centers in the ground
• Easier to cool; uses natural cooling of ground
– Design HVAC to maximize use of ventilation
• An Intel study estimated that air cooling can cut the
cost of a 10 mW data center by $3 million
• Locate in cold climates or by cold water
– Iceland, Scandinavian countries, UP, Maine, Washington
• But can work in hot, dry climates as well
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– Normal building design features (shading,
windows, insulation, white roof, etc.)
• Shading is very effective
• White roofs usually good for data centers because they
are single floor
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– Design/layout of data centers and server racks
• Basic design principles can save a lot of energy
– Facebook now designs its on DC’s and has cut
energy use down to 1/3 of “normal” DCs
• Simplify the servers
– Strip out unnecessary components and housings
– Expose mother boards for better cooling
– Arrange racks to isolate hot and cool air to make it
easier to cool and recover heat
– Etc.
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– Recover heat for reuse
• Pella Windows vents hot air to the ceiling and then uses
it elsewhere in the building or vents it outside (in
summer) – also reduces AC load
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• Another suggestion – Get rid of equipment
that is not being used
– “Comatose” servers, printers, etc.: plugged in and
using energy, but doing little or no work
– Study of LexisNexis Atlanta DC
• More than half of servers were comatose
• Nearly ¾ of servers were using less than 10% of their
computational ability
– Sun Microsystems instituted a “bring out your
dead” program and got rid of 4000 servers
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• Software
– More efficient software design
– How software is programmed affects energy
efficiency
• Fewer operational steps
• More efficient steps
• Less memory allocated for steps
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– eBay:
• “… by using the DSE dashboard, some of our software
engineers saw that by slightly decreasing the memory
allocated for an application in a pool of servers, they
could remove 400 servers from the pool … This insight
helped us eliminate nearly a megawatt of power
consumption and avoid spending more than $2 million
to refresh the servers. This simple software tweak
helped us lower power consumption, decrease costs
and increase system performance, ultimately increasing
our revenue per transaction.”
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• Waste/Resource Reduction
• Waste Audit
– How much waste is being generated?
– What is in the waste stream?
– What happens to the materials in the waste
stream?
– How much is the waste stream costing us?
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– Few people know how much they are spending on
waste disposal or how their costs are determined
– Potential to save thousands of dollars a year
simply by better matching waste collection and
recycling services (number and size of dumpsters
and frequency of collection) to match the waste
stream
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• Waste Audit => waste stream analysis
– How do we reduce, reuse, recycle our wastes?
– Simple actions with little cost
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• Paper
– Default double-sided printing
– Users “pay” for printing (internalize costs)
– Publicize/report paper use of department/unit
– Recycle used paper
• Recycled office paper is valuable
– Recent research
• Pair up large recycling container with small trash
container
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• Printer cartridges
– Recycle (worth a few dollars)
– Buy re-manufactured/re-filled cartridges
– Remind/train users to minimize white on dark or
shaded printing
– When font style not important, use toner-efficient
fonts
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• Hardware/equipment
– Try to buy energy-efficient equipment
– Encourage and support manufacturers that design
their products to be truly green
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Long life
Easy to repair
Easy to recycle
Minimize use of haz/toxic materials
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– Work with suppliers
• Minimize packaging
– HP/Compaq saved $6/computer by changing packaging that
“could survive a fall down Mount Everest” to something more
reasonable
• Minimize inserts/manuals
– Make them electronic wherever possible
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– Recycle used equipment
• Quite valuable and can be a serious environmental
hazard if not disposed of correctly
• Most electronics can be refurbished and re-used
• Parts can be salvaged
• Remaining parts and plastic can be recycled.
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– Buy used equipment and furniture
• Can be very cost-effective for many uses
• Excellent for sustainability
• Excellent for job creation and supporting sustainable
supply chains
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• Monitor, monitor, monitor
– Watch energy use, paper use, waste and recycling,
etc. to prevent back-sliding (Snackwell effect)
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• Free resources available
– Energystar.gov/lowcarbonit
– Energystar.gov also offers free 1-hr webinar
– Can arrange a free conference call with IT energy
efficiency expert for free, who will answer your
questions and walk you through software or
system issues
– Google for Green IT webinar(s)
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