With the growing concerns worldwide over climate change and global warming; many organizations have been able to take up a positive step in this direction. Energy usage generates a large amount of greenhouse gases throughout the world. IBM has decided to focus on this aspect and endeavours to make IT infrastructure energy efficient and environment friendly. It has a global team of more than 850 energy efficient architects working on this initiative across IBM. This is a part of a broader environmental initiative called Big Green Innovations. IBM is offering consulting for water and energy management alongwith coming up with better and green technology for environment protection.

With $1 billion investment a year, IBM launched Project Big Green on 10th May, 2007 to increase the efficiency of IBM products. As a part of the same project the first corporate led Energy- Efficiency Certificate program was launched on 10th November, 2007. New products and services launched under this project contain a five-step approach i.e.
- diagnose,
- build,
- virtualize,
- manage, and
- cool to create energy efficiency in data centers.

Diagnose- This step assesses the current energy usage of the company, to see what kind of tool is available with IBM, set metrics to measure the power consumption. This also includes assessing energy efficiency for determining important first steps to be taken.

Build- IBM created MMT- Mobile Measurement Technology to indicate the key areas that require attention in terms of temperature rises, it visualizes hot spots, air leakages and other inefficiencies accurately and in lesser time than if done manually.

Virtualize- Another IBM tool can give virtual representation of energy needs in data centers. This helps in assessing what time the data center has the highest energy demand and how the need can be increased or decreased on the basis of small changes thus, helping in accurate forecast of power requirements. This can help in cutting down both hardware and energy needs of the IT infrastructure.

Manage- IBM’s power management software is an easy way to reduce electricity usage. If US data centers would set their servers to sleep when not in use, it can save 5.4 billion kilowatt per year equivalent to electricity for 370,000 homes for winters.

Cool- IBM Data Center Stored Cooling Solution is a new service of the company. It was used in Quebec and was able to reduce 45% of the cooling cost of a data center.

This program aims at reducing the energy consumption of the data-centers by approximately 42%, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and making them ‘green’ data centers. The company has come up with a Rear Door Heat Exchanger product that uses chilled water to dissipate heat of the system by about 60%. By using IBM’s mainframe or new BladeCenter Server, companies can utilize 100% of server capacity and cut their energy usage by about 50%.

Mike Daniels, IBM’s senior vice president of Global Technology Services, said “There are times when we need to mobilize the entire company, as we did with the internet, with e-commerce, and others. We think this is one of those times, and we have reallocated $1b around these initiatives.” To address the global energy issue, IBM shall be channelizing its efforts through 4 initiatives under the Intelligent Energy Campaign i.e.
- Client Innovations in Energy
- Application of Technology & Services for Energy Efficiency
- Activities with Energy Influencers
- Environmental Efforts at Big Blue

“Across the world there’s been frenzy in moving forward in information technology,” Rahmani said. “It’s estimated that the cost of energy (it takes) to power these data centers will increase by 50 percent every two to three years. It’s huge: a huge cost to us, a huge cost to our clients, and also a huge cost to the environment.” While announcing Project Big Green in India, Steven Sams, vice president , Site & Facilities Services, IBM said, “Businesses around the world are consuming extreme amounts of energy through their use of IT -over 100 billion kilowatts per year globally furthering today’s energy crisis.”

Jyoti Satyanathan, country manager, eServer pSeries, IBM India said, “In India, the need for intelligent energy solutions is more acute than many other nations. As per IDC, IT spending in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow by 52 % to reach US$162.5 billion by 2010 and this growth is driven by India in addition to China. However, our country is already facing an energy crisis.” “According to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), at the current annual generation capacity of 1,30,000 MW, we face a shortage of nearly 9% with peak load deficits being higher at 10-11% and it will only get worse. It is important that Indian organizations start taking this problem seriously, and make the appropriate investments so that their energy spends can keep pace with their growth,” he added.

Sources:
www.ibm.com
www.greenbiz.com
Economic Times

With signs of global warming being witnessed across the planet, energy efficiency and carbon emissions have emerged as the two most important areas that need to be addressed for slowing down the environmental apocalypse in the making.

If there is one product that has come to symbolize the ease with which an individual consumer can make a contribution in this direction, it is the Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL).

But a growing section of experts and activists has dared to question the wisdom of a mass shift to CFLs without taking into account its dependence on mercury and are saying that there is more to it than a mere change of bulbs.

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It is vital to understand India’s energy requirements. With about 14% growth in 2007 in the manufacturing sector, 14% in 2006 in service sector and a change driven agriculture sector; Indian economy depends immensely on energy to sustain this progressive growth.

Current Energy Usage:

Current Energy Usage of India

This shows India is mainly coal dependent economy. Our heavy reliance on coal is also increasing environmental damage. Our crude oil situation too is not so optimistic as well. The international crude petroleum prices are rising and the current rates are in the range of $50-70. With India importing approximately 70% of its annual crude oil requirement (about 110 million tons), the annual expenditure goes up to a whopping amount of Rs.1600 billion! India’s domestic production is only about 32 million tons. This has huge impact on our foreign exchange reserves. Thus, any alternatives to deal with the current expensive and environmentally damaging energy situation can be an inspiring becoming. Many believe that the recommendations by some ministers of 10% ethanol blend becoming compulsory throughout the country can make a huge difference to India’s economy.

Brazil is already reaching the point where it may become energy independent due to the success of its ethanol program started three decades ago. They already have developed fuel flexible cars and have cars running on E85 and even 100%. It is believed that with India’s fuel bills rising, this step comes forward at a very appropriate time. Considering that India is one of the world’s top 10 oil-consuming countries. This step would actually save 80 million litres of petrol a year! Ethanol has 35% Oxygen which helps in complete fuel combustion, reducing all harmful emissions and is thus, the best tool to fight pollution. Apart from being an additive to petrol, Ethanol finds its use in the industrial sector, pharmaceutical sector as well as liquor sector.

In fact, Indian sugar output has been increasing; this is where India can bank on the opportunity to induce sugar producers towards diverting molasses for production of Ethanol and also generate rural employment. Government can provide tax based incentives to the producers of Ethanol to boost its production. It could also allocate amounts towards production of renewable energy sources from the huge oil budgets. Such incentives could encourage the producers to divert molasses for Ethanol production rather than selling them to breweries and distilleries. Though, sugar industry has its own risks due to its cyclical nature and might go through ups and downs. Hence, it is important that the Government should encourage research in Ethanol production. Ethanol can be made from fermentation of sugar, sugarcane as well as sorghum, corn, potatoes, wheat, beet etc. Mostly in India, sugarcane is used but since it is water intensive, other alternatives for the same should be promoted.

Switching over to renewable resources could definitely reduce are dependence on oil imports.

Concerns

No doubt that Ethanol offers other advantage of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But there are many concerns associated with mass production of crops for extracting biofuels. Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) was first launched in 2001 in India. But, this programme calls for some areas of attention as mentioned in a UN report on Sustainable Bio-Energy. These concerns are pertaining to the impact ethanol production can have on food, water and land security in our country. Considering the fact that sugarcane is what is mainly being used for ethanol production in India and that its water intensive, it might not be possible to divert water resources to be diverted from food to cash crops. India’s agriculture is dependent on the monsoon and failure of monsoons between 2003-2005 affected sugarcane crop and as a result the EBP programme. It is important to keep all these aspects in mind in our policy making. India’s liquor industry has majority control over molasses based ethanol production which would be inadequate to cover our energy needs. Also, since 2002 we have been importing ethanol, mainly from Brazil (2005). This raises questions about how we plan to meet the requisite levels without taking this into account and what are the alternatives that we would take up in case of shortage in supply. Because as per the UN report on Sustainability of Bio- Energy as well as National Sugar Institute & USAID there are definite possibilities of such a situation to arise.

It is being advised that these questions be taken into account by policy makers in order to prepare for shortfalls through perhaps diversifying the sources of ethanol production. Any drastic move can affect prices of land, sugar etc. too apart from the before mentioned concerns.

India is only at the nascent stage of its bio-fuels industry and can benefit through the experience of countries like Brazil and United States in formulating its policies. India needs a well structure policy that can take into account all climatic, demographic, agricultural and local factors in order to take care of the energy dependence of our country as well as generate rural employment without comprising on our water, food and land security.

Sources:

Times of India

Ethanol India

Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis

Yale Global Online

Sirsa district of Haryana has become the first district in India to be running 100% on CFLs (Compact Fluroscent Lamps). It came as an outcome of a campaign to replace incandescent bulbs with energy efficient CFLs and was initiated by the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) in May last year.

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