Utilities have created innovative programs to help their customers – from heavy industrial plants to homeowners – reduce energy usage. Incentive programs that pay energy customers up front to install more efficient appliances, lighting and HVAC equipment have helped cut energy costs by billions of dollars and saved millions of kWh.

While utilities have been at the forefront of providing energy efficiency programs for their customers, they have largely overlooked their own energy usage. In particular, the technology infrastructure at utilities that includes data centers, computers, printers, phones and Computer Room Air Conditioning (CRAC) systems is ripe for energy improvements. With technology now central to the operations of utilities, the greening of IT can result in dramatic carbon reductions.

As more companies expand their data flow to support front and back office IT functions, data centers are becoming especially critical. This is true for utilities as customer management and billing services migrate to the web. The advent of smart metering and demand response will also exponentially drive the need for and reliance on data centers for utilities.

Recent statistics confirm the increased reliance on data centers. Data center energy consumption doubled between 2000 and 2005. According to the Department of Energy, data centers account for 61 billion kWh and cost roughly $4.5 billion a year. Bruce Taylor from the Uptime Institute estimates that data centers will comprise three percent of power consumed in the U.S. by 2010, up from 1.5 percent today.

In addition to taking up a larger share of a company’s operating budget, IT also impacts a company’s carbon footprint. Because 70% of electricity in the US is derived from fossil fuels, IT contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, IT accounts for the same amount of global CO₂ emissions as aviation.

There are many ways to measure and realize IT energy savings. Assessments can include the installation of monitoring sensors and software that generate a thermal map of a data center to determine CRAC effectiveness. There are also simple devices that a PC or printer can be plugged into that measure real-time energy usage. An energy audit and focused installation can form the foundation of a comprehensive plan to deliver energy efficiency results. Changes and upgrades in controllers, backup power, CRAC systems, data servers and storage devices, and the business software systems themselves can all result in carbon and energy reductions.

Despite clear cost, energy and emissions savings benefits, there has not been a rush to implement green IT solutions among utilities. Yet there are powerful incentives to ensure this will be changing. As energy prices have risen, consumers have been encouraged to reduce their energy use – and these consumers are coming to expect the same energy conservation vigilance and action from their utility. Green IT sets an example to rate payers that utilities “walk the talk” on energy conservation. A utility’s green IT effort can serve as the foundation for a data center and office IT market transformation program offered to their customers.

Energy efficiency efforts also align well with utilities’ corporate social responsibility programs. One mark of a good corporate citizen today is a company’s willingness to reduce their carbon footprint. Lastly, utilities will likely be required to respond to regulator energy efficiency requirements.

It’s worth taking stock of your company’s appetite for implementing energy efficiency measures and see where there is room for improvement. Gartner, Inc., characterizes environmental profiles of organizations as follows:

• Passive: Not yet evaluating environmental impacts
• Measured: Addressing carbon-related components on a case by case basis
• Aggressive: Looking into all aspects of the operation; the culture always including efficiency-focused actions

Most utilities, and most companies for that matter, fall within the first two categories. This landscape is poised to change. While utilities have created robust efficiency programs for their customers, they will increasingly be turning their efficiency attention inward, and IT infrastructure is an area where significant improvements can be realized. It’s not a matter of when but how the greening of IT at utilities will occur – and who will take the lead.

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Comments

September, 18 2008

Jude Clemente says

Energy efficiency is a tricky thing. Alone, it will not solve our problems. As our economy has grown more energy efficient, energy consumption has risen - contrary to what the New York Times continuously advocates. Look at this chart from the EIA:

www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1g.xls

Our btu's per dollar gdp has dropped significantly, yet energy consumption is rising - the EIA expects these trends to continue. As for automobile use, we will continue using more and more fuel. As the Hirsh Report noted, it takes 17 years to remove just half the cars off the road. With SUV sales growing, it remains obvious Americans remain more concerned with comfort than efficiency. Expect things to continue. Additionally, more machines are coming on board that burn fuel. The car revolution folks need to realistically keep in mind that it often does not make economic sense for families to simply buy a new more efficient car. Much more to this story, but good article.

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September, 23 2008

Shamik Mitra says

Where I believe there will be an impact of Green IT in Utilities, as Lynn rightly put it, is for them to set an example to rate payers that they “walk the talk” on energy conservation. Yes, people do prefer comfort over efficiency, but the way to change it would be to make people "uncomfortable about inefficiency". With the right campaigns, people should start to think it is "uncool to not think about energy efficiency". Green IT is a very good way of Utilities (and other industries as well) to set the right example.

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September, 24 2008

Len Gould says

"Our btu's per dollar gdp" is a questionably useful measuring unit, subject to political manipulation eg. by inflation etc.

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September, 25 2008

Jude Clemente says

Well understood in modern economics, the Jevons Paradox is a very important concept when it comes to energy efficiency. William Jevons first described the phenomena in his 1865 book, The Coal Question. Increasing the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (not decrease) the rate of consumption of that particular resource.

Jevons first discovered the idea after observing England's consumption of coal soon soared after James Watt introduced his coal-fired steam engine, which greatly improved the efficiency of the previous design by Thomas Newcomen.

Indeed, A recent study by the National Commission on Energy Policy examined the federal mandate for automakers to meet certain efficiency targets, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standard. The Commission found that even if Congress forced the U.S. auto fleet to raise its average fuel economy from 27.5 to 44 miles per gallon (a massive increase of 60%), fuel consumption would still jump by nearly 4 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. The Jevons Paradox at work.

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September, 26 2008

Bob Amorosi says

Jude et al,

There are other recent research studies that say the same thing - fostering greater energy efficiencies tends to enable even greater demand for the energy resource.

Here in Ontario our provincial government is pouring millions into a public campaign to promote a culture change for greater consumer conservation and efficiency measures in their uses of electricity. It takes the form of widespread rebates and sales tax exemptions offered on energy efficient lighting and appliance purchases, and considerable public advertising. We are even being offered free disposal of old refrigerators if a consumer wishes to dispose of one in favor of purchasing a newer EnergStar one, or even if they simply don't need the old one anymore.

It's a given that the more affluent segments of the general population with lots of disposable income don't give a hoot about conservation, and view more efficiency opportunities as a means to buy more appliances, and in the end continue to use the same or even more energy in total. It's no different with other sources of energy like gasoline - consumers who drive SUVs and trucks are already guzzling relatively large amounts of gasoline, and if manufacturers of these large vehicles were to commercialize breakthroughs in technology to make them much more fuel efficient, you can bet many of these consumers will simply continue to use them, and buy them in increasingly larger numbers.... BUT not necessariliy if the price of gasoline keeps going up faster than inflation on average.

The whole point about promoting more efficiencies and conservation is helping consumers cope with skyrocketing energy costs that we are seeing in fossil fuels and sooner or later in electricity rates. If all energy prices continue to rise over time, the majority of consumers will WANT to use more ways to REDUCE their total energy consumption and energy bills, even if they prefer not to do so now.

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September, 13 2009

Jeannette Douglas says

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July, 17 2010

sherry spensor says

productivity can be seen in the facts that basic PMI-001 types were probably used for multiple purposes, that tool industries tend to expand with time, and that a slight variation on a basic pattern may be made to met some new functional requisite. Elements of a basic "vocabulary" of motor operations—flakes, SY0-201 detachment, rotation, preparation of striking platform, etc.—are used in different combinations to produce dissimilar tools, with different forms, and supposedly, different uses. . . . Taking each motor event alone, no one action is complete; each action depends VCP-410 on the prior one and requires a further one, and each is dependent on another ax on the original plan. In other words, at each point of the action except the 70-680 last, the piece is not "satisfactory" in structure. Each unit action is meaningless 642-373 by itself in the sense of the use of the tool; it is meaningful only in the context of the whole completed set of actions culminating in the final product. This exactly parallels language.

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