This post on the subject of growing energy usage by data centers examining a recent report on how the rate of increase in the energy usage for data centers has been quite a bit lower than was predicted. It goes on to argue that the report may not be capturing the whole picture and that important areas of energy usage by data centers have not been factored into the report.
Describes the winning entry in the recent Gowanus Lowline Competition. The winning entry, which is described encapsulates the kind of far sighted bio-mimetic and bio-symbiotic urban design our country needs. Reading this post is like reading a how to book on healing the earth; and in particular healing the brownfield urban wastelands, very often built over per-existing wetlands.
The recyclable plastic bags you get at the green grocer are not biodegradable. But product life-cycle assessments, which are about to become more prominent in the marketplace, fail to consider whether those bags will break down in landfills or just end up as litter.
This post explores the concept of an end-to-end ‘green’ power, water, and community eco-system based around mega-watt scale power and cooling requirements in a real world environment of limited financial resources and stringent system availability requirements. It suggests that huge power hungry data centers should consider incorporating on-site biomass electricity generation as an integral part of their operations systems.
Few places in the U.S. are as well suited to developing renewable energy as the contaminated sites known as “brownfields.” But as communities from Philadelphia to California are discovering, government support is critical to enable solar and wind entrepreneurs to make use of these abandoned lands.
The Federal government recently issues a new rule that requires that 95 percent of new contract actions be green.This sounds great. But there are some underlying systemic issues related to the timing of the FARC interim ruling. Industry groups and procurement agencies are scratching their heads. Several industry associations requested that the government stop issuing rules that change federal procurement policy without first considering public comment.
In the race for the title of the world’s greenest data center a lot of perhaps overly optimistic PUE claims have been made. Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a measure of how efficiently a computer data center uses its power. While it is a step in the right direction it still fails to capture the complete picture of the data center’s energy and resource efficiency. It goes on to point out ten areas that are not being captured; some of which have significant implications.
It can be said that lean is green. The obvious benefits of green and lean are energy savings, productivity savings, and savings from improved utilization of materials. They can also lead to innovations that involve creation of new products out of waste materials.
Despite the rhetoric, the numbers show that green stimulus investments are among the most cost-effective ways to spend the Recovery Act dollars and create jobs.