Forum for the Future: An Energy and Environmental Discussion
On October 24, 2007 I attended "Forum for the Future: An Energy and Environmental Discussion."
The keynote was delivered by Dr. Richard Alley. I had somehow managed to miss numerous other opportunities to hear him speak about climate change and was thankful to hear him at this forum. If his passion and knowledge don't grab you, the topic will. I highly recommend seeing Dr. Alley if you get a chance.
I learned lots during the forum. The big takeaway for me was the commitment I made to see what I can do personally, as a family, and as an organization to reduce our contributions to global warming. I know this is sometimes a touchy political topic but I am scientifically convinced - we've got a problem. We've put sustainability in our strategic planning conversations now as something to take into consideration in all we consider.
There's a lot going on in sustainability at Penn State and a new web site was developed to act as a landing place for the many web sites that portray the working going on regarding various aspects of the energy and climate discussion.
More recently, I've been spending some time thinking about the "other side" of thinking green. More often than not, when I'm pulled into this conversation people want to talk about duplex printing, using recycled paper in printers, deploying new techniques in remote system management to allow for desktop computers to be shut off at night, buying more efficient power supplies in servers, embracing virtualization, etc. These are all important aspects of thinking green in IT, but I think there is lots of impact to be had by applying IT solutions to make more green academic and business processes. If you create 10 pounds of IT CO2 by running a service that keeps people out of cars and airplanes, the net improvement could be multiple orders of magnitude improvement.
I asked for a back of the envelope calculation with whatever assumptions someone wanted to make about how it is the Adobe Connect might have positively impacted our CO2 production. Here's an excerpt from the exchange:
"I'm thinking that if we assume 1/4 of the meeting sessions save just one person traveling 300 miles (that would be 150 miles both ways), then in October, which shows over 4,000 meeting sessions, Connect would have helped save:
1000 meetings * 300 miles = 300,000 miles
and if you expect 30 miles to the gallon, that would save:
300,000 miles / 30 miles/gal = 10,000 gallons.
A gallon of gasoline is assumed to produce 8.8 kilograms (or 19.4 pounds) of CO2 (I found this at http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420f05004.htm).
If we save 10,000 gallons of gasoline in October alone, we save:
10,000 gallons * 19.4 pounds/gallon of CO2 = 194,000 pounds or 97 tons of CO2"
I know more people are doing similar analyses of how these kinds of tools can help out.
On another front, I know The Computer Store has been aggressively pursuing incentive based recycling programs. What other activities are going on to help us better manage scarce energy resources that are getting more expensive? What are we doing to reduce our creation of harmful emissions? Recycling? We're doing a lot, we could do more. Some people like to cloud the conversation with trying to establish priorities. In my opinion, our number one priority is shifting to a culture of thinking about energy consumption and emission production in all that we do - that's #1. A pretty good way to get going on that is to start doing something.
Technorati Tags: climatechange, energy, sustainability
You mention the laptop program through the Computer Store. They have an entire "green" recycling campaign in place that you can find at http://computerstore.psu.edu/cares/index.
The VMWare license and VMWare hosting service that is coming are working towards less machines across the University. VMWare is not a silver bullet, but it is a step towards server consolidation.
The spring Bulk Purchase, the largest computer buy of the year wrote Energy Star compliance directly into the RFP.
We are also talking with one of our computer vendors to see if Penn State can partner on a plant a tree campaign to raise green awareness.
Last spring a handful of ITS employees volunteered their time to test and price hundreds of electronics items that were donated to the PSU/United Way's Trash to Treasure process. This allowed the rows of electronics, along with the other 70+ tons of donated goods to be distributed throughout the community rather than deposited into our land fills.
I'd say that your use of your blog — and my use of mine :-) — has saved some CO2, as well. Each one represents a meeting that does not need to happen. A memo that does not need to be sent.
Also, I noticed you started using Technorati Tags. Good move. Would you mind talking about that decision? Also, could you explain why this post gets the “puppy” tag?
I didn't know I was using Technorati tags, but I did know I was using tags. I started using ecto which makes tagging easier (to me) than MT. No more complicated than that.
As for puppy - I'm surprised you didn't already know that young dogs are so prolific in the CO2 creation that the unit of measurement "puppy" is equivalent to the amount of CO2 necessary to increase the heat in a cubic yard of 100% nitrogen, 1 B.T.U. Some day, automobiles will be sold with MPG and puppies/mile ratings.
Actually, ecto has "puppy" as a default tag and I miss-clicked a button or two when posting.
Richard Alley is one of the true the stars of our faculty. He was among those (on the IPCC) who shared the latest Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. When Dr. Alley testified in front of Congress last February, there were several Congress people who wanted to take his class.
I was recently reading an article in Network World about the new 'green' data center under development for the San Diego Supercomputing Center and was struck by the work that was undertaken to make it 'green'. According to the report, the SDDC exceeds the California Title 24 standards by 43%!
Hopefully, as PSU-ITS moves forward with its plans for greater data center space, the 'green' aspects will be at the forefront as well. We, too, can be a leader in this area as well, if we put our collective minds together.
Why don’t we look at our telecommuting policies and see if they could be successfully expanded to include more ITS employees and different types of positions?
The December 3rd issue of Penn State Live ran an article, Telecommuting a win-win for employers and employees ( LINK: http://live.psu.edu/story/27526?nw=1 ) on a Penn State professor and Ph.D. candidate from Smeal College of Business who looked at 20 years of research on flexible work arrangements. In the article, the researchers state that, “Telecommuting has mostly positive consequences for employees and employers, resulting in higher morale and job satisfaction and lower employee stress and turnover.” After reading the article, I immediately thought of some additional environmental and diversity benefits.
I did a little more research and found a lot of information on telecommuting, pros and cons, but much of it positive. In addition to the reduced levels of carbon dioxide released into the environment, other reported advantages for companies/organizations that provide telecommuting options include a decrease in costs due to reduced use of utilities and less need for office space.
The 1999 Telework America National Survey also attributed a reduction in absenteeism, increased morale and employee satisfaction, and reduced staff turnover. According to Teletrips.com, teleworking can improve retention of key employees by as much as 22% due to increased satisfaction levels, another significant way to save money. Employee safety levels can also increase due to less time traveling back and forth to work.
The recent Penn State Study seems to support these claims. The Study found that by giving employees more control over this part of their lives, telecommuters reported “more job satisfaction, less motivation to leave the company, less stress, improved work-family balance, and higher performance ratings by supervisors."
Here’s another excellent reason to think about telecommuting as a win-win, employers have the ability to recruit a stronger and more diverse work force such as handicapped individuals, mothers, and IT specialists who are not located within commuting distance. This particular benefit could strengthen our efforts to increase diversity within ITS while providing a larger pool of qualified job candidates.
I realize the success of telecommuting is dependent on a number of variables and will not work in all situations, for all types of jobs, or for all individuals. Considering the range and value of the benefits, however, I think it makes a great deal of sense to take a more indepth look at telecommuting and its many benefits.
Power and efficiency are two items high on our list of concerns. The problem in doing the right thing comes down to the way power is used and paid for. There is no financial incentive to do the right thing. Two of our major needs at the current time are increased UPS capacity and increased A/C capacity.
On the UPS side we could purchase flywheels which would eliminate all of the batteries and the rather toxic materials in their manufacture as well as reduce power consumption. The problem is that the cost is nearly double up front.
The second need, A/C, also has options such as the use of outside air, etc. Again these options increase the cost to our department.
The payback to the increased up front cost comes back to the University by way of reduces electricity usage. Unfortunately there is no mechanism to recognize and fund these investments. To the departments it just does not make budgetary sense to make the investments on their own.