[governance] Toward Reducing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Internet and Telecommunications

Sun Jan 6 22:53:02 EST 2013

Hi,

I'd go back and ask Michael Gurstein if 2% (or 0.2% or 20%) of global damage by IT or the Internet is good or bad, or is there a set level that would be satisfactory, a goal that can be proposed, discussed, and agreed upon.

What level of global CO2 emissions would have been deemed acceptable when the automobile industry started? It multiplied infinitely (from zero) the first time an internal-combusion engine was fired (or a steam one, a century earlier.)

Metrics are the first thing to think of... IT and the Internet contribute to, what, 13% of the US's economy? with only 2% of the emissions, and a social revolution on their back? Peter Hellmonds makes a large part of the point: we have zillions times more interactions than we would have without computers and the Internet. It is not even fair to compare videoconferencing with travel to meetings, or email/chat/IM/social media to the cost of face-to-face conversations, for one simple reason: those meetings and conversations would just not take place, or would not involve the same many people, if they had to be face-to-face.

So changing the face of society forever, increasing an economy's value by more than 10%, all for a meager 2% of emissions?

Pretty effective...

Lee: not to detract nor distract from your work. Excellent.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

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________________________________
Desde: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] en nombre de Lee W McKnight [lmcknigh at syr.edu]
Enviado el: domingo, 06 de enero de 2013 21:39
Hasta: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; John Curran; michael gurstein
Asunto: RE: [governance] Toward Reducing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Internet and Telecommunications

Not to toot my own horn...Ok I will.

First I should note in reply to John's query re who is doing things in this space, that SU WiGiT Lab is a member of the 'Enterprise Cloud Leadership Council' of the TM Forum, whose Frameworx industry standards are used by ~1000 of the top IT/telecom players globally. We were just presenting last month with other ECLC members on 'Workplace as a Service' on cloud ie data center to mobile applications at an industry conference. There are a few other universities in ECLC but mainly it is big banks like Commonwealth Bank of Australia, UBS, Bank of America, and usual suspect IT/telecoms players like China Mobile, Cisco, Microsoft, EMC/VMware.  (Syracuse University's Green Data Center claimed to be cleanest/greenest when built a few years back, but by now maybe others hold that title.)

Reason I mention all this is the ECLC's 'Workplace as a Service' will be designed to stretch to edge devices and resources, utilizing edgeware, a new class of software which among other things can be optimized for minimal energy use by the user - whether by her device, the network, the application, the data center/cloud, or any combination thereof.  The reason my students and I are engaged is because of our ten years of research on wireless grids, and my invention of edgeware.

I'm presenting a tutorial tomorrow at HICSS on wireless grid ad hoc network applications, which will include discussion of a few environmental and energy applications. I argued some time back as a professor/researcher theoretically  wireless grids are the cleanest/greenest/most energy efficient form of networking possible. I haven't been proven wrong yet ; )  Core argument being....if you can avoid spinning up and down servers, and can avoid uploading and downloading, then you use less energy. Right? It's kind of a -Zen- serverless and centerless network.

I also note that in the WiGiT v0.2 open specs we are just wrapping up, the 10 IRPs are already embedded. Meaning we are already syncing across 80+ campuses, companies, and communities, with IGC and global CS values, to the extent an underfunded NSF Partnership for Innovation project can.

v0.3 will be optimized for energy/environment/smart grid/smart building applications. In 2013.

Of course there are 1000 other ways for IGC to dive in to this space. But as I'll be doing what I'm doing anyway...it is easy for IGC consensus output, if any is created in this space, to get folded into new open specifications. Which can all come with Internet governance principles and processes embedded that even Parminder might approve. Since he has co-authored some, and can co-write more if he wishes ; )

For right now, if this strikes any IGCers interest, just go to http://wigit.ischool.syr.edu<http://wigit.syr.edu> and check out the WiGiT v0.1 open specs and use cases there. V0.2 should be up by end of month, which syncs with enterprise cloud and mobile apps. Under research, go to publications, and there are some papers related to this too.

IF IGC wants to co-lead v0.3, or 0.4, the virtual door is open.

Lee
PS: FYI, we are having serious discussion on not just 'reducing' emissions but in time capturing lots of bad things before they ever get in the air and converting to energy thereby - reversing - some processes which create greenhouse gases. Meaning we want not to just reduce but begin to heal the planet; aided in part by those WiGiT open specs. By then though we might be all the way to v1.0 : )

________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of John Curran [jcurran at istaff.org]
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2013 4:03 PM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Toward Reducing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Internet and Telecommunications

On Jan 6, 2013, at 3:18 PM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> According to recent calculations the Internet is the source of some 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions (and increasing quickly). Much of this comes from the vast server farms that major Internet corporations (eg. Google, Amazon etc.) have been establishing around the world. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130102140452.htm
>
> Perhaps a topic for discussion at the next IGF?

I would recommend reading Greenpeace's study in this area for an understanding of the
efforts currently being made by some of the leading industry players in this space:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/Campaign-reports/Climate-Reports/How-Clean-is-Your-Cloud/

There is significant attention to this problem in the Internet data center industry,
even to the point of sharing of best practices and increasing level of visibility
into the power utilization, sourcing, and efficiency of these facilities.  It would
be interesting to hear from those involved in this space regarding what, if anything,
could be done to allow further improvements in efficiency and emissions.

FYI,
/John

Disclaimers: My views alone.  100% post-consumer electrons used in this email.

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