jisc's greening ict programme

JISC’s Greening ICT Programme

Rob BristowProgramme Manager – Green ICT

Sustainability at your institution – EAUC Conference April 2011


Drivers for Green ICT

ICT Energy and carbon emissions

Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC)

Funding council drivers

Reduce costs

Improve efficiency

Enhance reputation

New ways of working and new paradigms for teaching, learning, research and administration


The Problem

760,000 PCs

215,000 servers

147,000 networked printers

512,000 Mwh of electricity

275,000 tonnes of CO2

High costs - £116 million + in 2009 (Electricity HE & FE in UK)

Picture: Josie FraserSome rights reserved


Production Burdens

A typical semiconductor facility:- 591 million gallons DI water- 5.2 million pounds of chemicals- 8.8 million kwh of electricity

PC/LCD production- 1,000+ hazardous substances

High energy materials- 2.5 tonnes of rock- for 1 gram of gold


The Opportunity

Smarter systems, buildings and processes

Re-think the campus and the curriculum

De-materialisation, dis-aggregation and dis-intermediation

HE as exemplar for low-carbon IT

Green as driver for other efficiency gains

ICT as cost versus ICT as opportunity


Data Centres and Server Rooms

“the physical reality of modern campus CyberInfrastructure (CI) is a complex network of ad hoc and sub-optimal energy environments in departmental facilities”

– Green Light project - UC - San Diego http://greenlight.calit2.net/

But demand is growing

– Processing

– Storage – Exabytes of data

– E-Science

EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres

Picture: Josie FraserSome rights reserved


The Desktop

Still over 50% of ICT energy use in most institutions

Thin client may not be best way to go

– Balance back-end energy use with support costs, etc

Powerdown solutions available

– Commercial

– Open source (late 2011 – JISC funded project

User-owned devices and the infrastructure to support them


Printing and Print Substitution

“(Staff) printing is out of control1”

– Often only measure is how much paper gets bought

Tacking printing can raise difficult issues in some places

Form a cross-functional team and team and get the users on board

Roll out Multi-functional devices and cull desktop printers

Enable power-saving modes and duplex printing by default

95% of energy associated with printing is the paper

Look at print substitution and handheld devices


Procurement

How to buy the best kit?

50% of energy use is in the manufacture and distribution – 50% in lifetime use

Energy Star and EPEAT are useful yardsticks

Need for proper overview of total (environmental) cost of ownership

TCO Certified for Monitors

Disposal

– Where is your kit ending up?

More difficult making valid comparisons when it comes to servers and the like


The Programme

Key objectives for the programme

Greening the sector - attitudinal and behaviour change embedded across the sector

New sustainable procurement paradigms

Sustainability seen as key driver and yardstick for sector activities

Harnessing of sector research activities

Intended outputs from this programme

Substantive body of knowledge illuminating areas of uncertainty in respect to Green ICT

Exemplar projects providing leadership and best practice example

Outcomes

Reduction of sector carbon footprint and associated energy costs

Increased capacity and expertise across the sector in sustainable ICT

Improved reputation of sector and UK as leaders in this area

Reduction in waste generated by ICT use


The story so far

Suste-IT Project

– Year long look at Green ICT in HE and FE

– Report, briefing papers, case studies

• Carbon, Energy and Environmental Issues in Higher Education - Current Regulations and Schemes

• Virtual Servers for Efficient and Flexible IT Infrastructure

• Responsible Energy Costs in Higher and Further Education

– Carbon Footprinting Tool

– Thin/Thick Client tool

– http://www.goodcampus.org/files/index.php?siteID=


Innovation Work

Research & Exploration

– Growing the knowledge base

Technical Innovation

– Joining things up, getting developers engaged in Green ICT

Estates led strand

– Building capacity

– Projects led by Estates Directors

Institutional Transformation

– Re-thinking the campus and the curriculum

Community engagement

– Working with EAUC & London Higher


Research & Exploration

Cloud computing

– Work with colleges through 157 Group

Video-conferencing and events (The Welsh Video Network, HEEPI and Bristol)

Scientific computing and energy usage in labs (HEEPI)

How to engage users in owning the problem (De Montfort and Oxford)

Pledging systems (Pembrokeshire College)

How sustainable is thin-client (really)? (Leeds Met)

Exploring where the energy goes in the server room (Leeds Met)


Technical Innovation

Powering down super-computers (Oxford)

Rationalising file storage (Cardiff)

System to share high-end kit both with and across institutions (Loughborough)

Print substitution via e-Readers (Edgehill)

Widgets to display energy usage (De Montfort)

Open-source PC Powerdown solution (Aberystwyth)

Photo-voltaic-cells to power evaporative coolers in a data-centre (Worcester College)


Estates Engagement

Aim is to build capacity in Estates for working with innovation and to foster links with IT

Tackling laboratory energy use (Bradford)

Heat and light by timetable (Leeds Met)

Tackling heating and cooling overshoots

Further work to improve the legacy data-centre (Imperial College)

Photo-voltaic-cells to power evaporative coolers in a data-centre (Worcester College)


Institutional Transformation

Procurement and Scope 3 Emissions (De Montfort)

– Getting a handle on the rest of the carbon

– Good links with procurement, estates, and IT

Understanding the environmental implications of different modes of curriculum delivery (Open University)

– Does it matter? What might be the best way forward?

Energy use and students (Coventry)

– How to engage with this rapidly changing constituency

Academic events and travel (Bristol)

– Understanding the place that travel has in academic life


Community Engagement

Embedding and uptake

Work with the EAUC to help institutions benchmark their ICT carbon footprint and develop action plans

Outreach beyond the innovation projects

Similar work with London HEIs run by London Higher

Support and Synthesis work by JISC Netskills

Links to other parts of JISC’s Organisational Support agenda

– Strategic Management of ICT

– Flexible Service Delivery and Enterprise Architectures

– Cloud computing

Efficient, Effective and Environmentally Sustainable


London Higher Study - Results


Results to date

Phase I projects starting to report – headlines:

– Planet Filestore Project (Cardiff) – shows relevance of moving infrequently accessed files to lower tiers of storage. Being funded to develop online decision application to allow others to see if this makes sense for them

Pembrokeshire College – Will be making their pledging system open source and releasing code and how-to guides

Thin client investigation at Leeds Met shows a well specified low power conventional PC is more efficient than thin-client in real world situations

Open source code from Oxford that helps people running high-performance computer clusters power down idle nodes

Review of e-Reader devices and their usefulness in paper substitution (Edgehill University)


Looking ahead – 2020 Agendas

Technology/material transitions

– New storage technologies

Energy aware software

Net zero carbon- data centres – Paper Mills in Finland next to Hydro Dam- networks- supply chains

Local integration

Greening the cloud


http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/greeningict.aspx - JISC’s Greening ICT Programme

http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/html/standby_initiative_data_centers.htm - EU C of C

http://greenict.jiscinvolve.org/ - JISC’s Green ICT Blog

Good Campus Site

– Home of Suste-IT outputs and much more

#greeningict - Tag in use on Twitter et al


Rob Bristow

– Programme Manager (Green ICT)

– [email protected]

– +44 (0) 7825 823 282

– Twitter: robbristow

– Blog: http://greenict.jiscinvolve.org/

– Mailing list: [email protected]

– Sign up at:

• http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/SUSTAINABLE-ICT