By Guy Hervier
The 90s saw incredible growth in Information Technologies. Few people paused to consider implications of parallel growth in electrical consumption.
The US Energy Star specification in 1992 was one of a few initiatives which regulated the efficiency of all this equipment.
In 2007, the American Congress published a report considered a milestone of the Green IT paradigm. It showed that the electrical consumption of all data centers in the US had doubled between 2000 and 2006, totaling 2% of the entire US electrical consumption and equalling the energy consumed by the world’s airline jets. And if nothing is done, it will double again by 2011 representing 100 billion of KWh or 7.4 billion dollars a year. In the prestigious Los Alamos labs, RoadRunner, the world’s fastest supercomputer eats 2.5 MWh a year, or as much as 500 US households. While computer performance efficiency has multiplied by a factor of 25 between 2000 and 2006, energy efficiency has progressed only by a factor of 8.
There are compelling reasons to think over the electrical consumption: 55 % is consumed by the data center infrastructure and 45 % by the computers;Â at the server level, 70 % of the energy is used by the power supply, memory, fans and storage leaving 30 % to the processors;Â within the processor, 80 % is consumed by processors in an idle state.
Welcome to wasteland: combining all these factors leads to a mere 3 % efficiency. Information Communication Technologies, which include all of our digital equipment ubiquitous in our daily lives, consumes 14% of the electrical production in a country like France. Even where they are in sleep mode, our systems are consuming energy.
However, even if data centers are consuming 2% of the electricity, they can help us optimize the other 98%. Information Communication Technology plays a major role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To name a few: innovative workplace organization such as telecommuting, videoconferencing and workgroup software, e-commerce, dematerialization of administration forms, smart grid, home automation, electric cars…
Some IT applications can have a spectacular effect on reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. IBM, for example, developed and deployed a toll system for cars in Stockholm that had cut emissions by 40% only 15 days after the system was implemented. Intelligent meters could lower power consumption by 10%, by sending information that electrical companies can use to better manage the grid, reducing useless production and losses.
While there is plenty of room for growth in the efficiency of technology, there are many opportunities for technology to increase our energy efficiency on a broader scale.
Guy Hervier, is Editor in Chief, ITRmanager, a leading publication for IT managers.
