But Apple has embarked on an ambitious, and far from easy, task of building a new data centre in Maiden, North Carolina, that will be powered by 100% green energy, and not by any of the aforementioned methods. Instead, Apple has laid out a blueprint that combines a number of initiatives, including on-site generation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy sourcing, to achieve its 100% green goal.

The plans are significant, because it effectively represents the first 100% green data centre in more or less real world, albeit perhaps financially distorted, conditions – since Apple has the money to build a facility from scratch and to acquire enough land to build its own solar farm.

In terms of onsite generation, Apple says it will be able to generate about 60% of the projected 20MW needed to power the data centre from its own solar farm.

“We’re currently building two solar array installations in and around Maiden. These sites use high-efficiency solar cells and an advanced solar tracking system,” the company said on a dedicated page on the project. “A 100-acre, 20-megawatt installation on the same site as our data center will produce 42 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy annually. A 100-acre site located a few miles away will produce another 42 million kWh. Together that’s 84 million kWh of clean, renewable energy supplied annually. When our bio-gas-powered 5-megawatt fuel cell installation comes online later this year, it will provide more than 40 million kWh of renewable energy annually. This means Apple will be producing enough onsite renewable energy — 124 million kWh — to power the equivalent of 10,874 homes.”

Obviously, not many companies out there can easily justify the purchase of 200 acres of land and the solar panels to fit them out, but what Apple’s project represents is a proof of concept that such an endeavour is possible.

Direct access green power

But Apple doesn’t stop there. To power the remaining 40% of the Maiden facility, Apple will seek renewable energy from third party supplier. But instead of simply going out and buying RECs, which does not necessarily mean the power it is buying is from green sources, simply that an equivalent amount of green power is being generated somewhere, Apple is very specific about how it is going about buying green power.

According to Apple, it will be “directly purchasing clean, renewable energy generated by local and regional sources.” This is a paramount phase because it means that Apple will be buying energy that is in fact generated by renewable sources such as wind, solar, and bio-gas. Also, the fact it specifies ‘local and regional sources,’ means that it is supporting local green power initiatives, and consuming what is generated. This also minimises any losses to the power during long distance transmission.

“Directly purchasing clean local energy gives us the flexibility to meet our needs over time, helps us to ensure that our sources are reputable and responsible, and encourages local investment in renewable projects such as wind, solar, and bio-gas power in locations best suited for these resources,” the company said. “Adding renewable energy sources like these displaces dirtier energy sources from the grid. We’re also partnering with NC GreenPower — an independent, nonprofit organization created by the North Carolina Utilities Commission — to increase local renewable energy production throughout North Carolina. Today Apple’s largest project with NC GreenPower is helping the local landfill in Catawba County (located just three miles from the Maiden data center) to generate electricity using their waste methane gas.”

Energy efficiency

In addition to relying entirely on renewable energy, Apple will also minimise the energy requirements of the Maiden facility through a number of energy efficient measures. These include the use of a chilled water storage system to improve chiller efficiency by transferring 10,400 kWh of electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours each day, the use of ‘free’ outside air cooling through a waterside economiser, a precision cool air distribution system, and cold air containment pods, a higher voltage power distribution to lessen losses, efficient LED lighting with motion sensors, and real time power monitoring for maximum efficiency. Apple has even gone as far as to put in a white roof to maximum solar reflectivity.

What’s important to remember is that each of these things are necessary parts to achieving Apple’s goal and each will take a lot of work, in terms of man hours, investment, logistics, operational complexity, and no doubt many other elements. Those are the challenges. That’s what it will take to get to zero carbon emissions for the data centre industry.

For Apple’s part, the Maiden site is not its first 100% green site. According to the company, its operations centres in Austin, Texas, Sacramento, California, and Cork, Ireland, as well as its Munich, Germany facility are also zero emission sites.

Apple is also planning to green two more data centres, a new one in Prineville, Oregon, and an existing site in Newark, California. For these sites, Apple will rely primarily on local direct access renewable energy.

Francis Maude, UK Cabinet Office Minister, was quoted as saying on the BusinessGreen news site that G-Cloud will allow the public sector to reduce its procurement costs.

Maude told the report that later this month, the Cabinet Office will report on the progress of its Green ICT strategy, originally launched last year. As part of the report, the UK government is expected to reveal its progress consolidating its data centres, and auditing the ICT requirements and efficient of various departments.

According to the report, the government has already started to compile the energy and cost data from each department and is in the process of consolidate its facilities and rationalise its applications and services.

“These will be reported in the Green ICT strategy first annual report and assessment due to be published shortly,” Maude said. “The Cabinet Office has collected the baseline information from Departments around the cost and energy consumed by Government data centres and their servers and is actively working to consolidate and rationalise Government data centres which will save energy and costs.”

You can read up on the UK government’s Green ICT Strategy, first published March 2011, here.

Singapore Serangoon Data Center is located in northeastern Singapore. The tier III+ data center offers co-location, cloud services, NTT Com’s global network services and other related services. Key features are specifically designed to cater to companies in the financial, information technology and manufacturing sectors. The data center is connected directly to the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), NTT Com’s new undersea cable offering high-speed, high-reliability network environment between Singapore and other Asian locations including Japan. The facility hosts 2,500 racks in a total server room area measuring 5,000 square meters. Investment in the facility is about 12.4 billion JPY (approximately SGD 190 million).

In that way, energy efficiency is probably not on the top of the list of deciding factors when the Singapore site was selected, but it doesn’t mean NTT Com shelved any concept of being environmentally responsible altogether.

In fact, the Singapore site is a stunning example how high performance doesn’t necessarily have to mean compromises in sustainability. True, that the site in the middle of a busy city isn’t ideal for many standard green practices, like customised free air cooling, or accessing renewable energy resources, or even custom construction that improve energy efficiency. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean you can’t still do all you can to ensure a high level of sustainability performance.

For the Serangoon Data Centre, NTT has obviously put in a lot of thought into the design. Green features include closing off a side of the building and painting it gray, as well as deploying so-called horizontal louvers on other facades, just to minimise solar (heat) gain. NTT has also put in a green roof for the main facility and over the parking lot with foliage, a rainwater tank to collect water for irrigating those plants, and a solar panel on the roof for supplemental power.

According to the EPA figures, Intel now buys 88% of its electricity from green sources, consisting of a mix of purchased power from Sterling Planet and PNM, as well as some on-site generation. Sources of power include geothermal, biomass, small hydro, solar, and wind.

Also high on the rankings was Microsoft, who came in third with 1.12 billion kWh of green power purchased per year. 46% of Microsoft’s power was green, supplied also by Sterling Planet, the EPA noted.

ICT firms that also made the list include Cisco Systems (269 million kWh, 10th place), Sprint (176 mllion kWh, 14th place), Dell (119 million kWh, 19th place), and Google (103.4 million kWh, 22th place). Another Google firm, Motorola Mobility also made the list at 25th place, while Intel’s chip rival, AMD (27th), Xerox (34th), Applied Materials (37th), made up all the IT & Telecoms firms in the top 40.

Apple Computers, who has had to endured a sustained marketing blitz from Greenpeace over allegations of relying too much on coal for its data centres, was also listed on the list. It’s Austin, Texas facility was placed in 45th place with an annual purchased of some 12.8 million kWh, which was enough to meet 100% of its electricity requirements.

What should be noted is that the above rankings is based on the absolute amount of green power purchased, and not on the percentage of green power that actually runs a company’s operations.

Out of the companies that reported 100% green power usage, Datapipe scored the highest ranking for IT & Telecoms firms with an annual green power consumption of 55.9 million kWh, followed by Nokia USA with 40 million kWh.

Ricoh Production Print Solutions, Codero, EasyStreet Online Services, Workday, XMission Internet, Green House Data, Aviat Networks, Dotster, Other World Computing, VerticalResponse, ReCellular, Avectra, DECISIVE ANALYTICS, Canvas Dreams, iCIMS, Green Geeks, GrayHair Software, Votenet Solutions, 3 TIER, Altova, Community IT Innovators, Madison Computer Works, REAL-COMP, Varsity Technologies, PC Guru, Soho Network Services, Affordable Internet Services Online, Studio eBusiness, Network Cybernetics, Supplylogix, Bates Investigations, Sandwich.Net, Invisible Gold, Island Joe Group, Vertex Technology Management, Maine.Info, and Alchemy Host, also made the 100% renewable powered list with usage figures ranging from more than 12.3 million kWh, to as little as 1000 kWh.

Interestingly, Apple’s Austin facility, which was listed as part of the Fortune 5000 list, was not included in the 100% green powered list although it is listed as getting 100% of its energy from renewable sources.

Lastly, it is worth noting that a lot of the companies in the program might not be using actual electricity generated by renewable energy, since they are not buying directly from solar or wind farms, but from resellers of renewable energy certificates.

The award, in recognition of NTT Com’s green data centre initiaitves, is shared with Vigilent, who provided the intelligent energy management systems to reduce electricity consumption and carbon emissions, as well as to significantly cut energy costs, at NTT Com’s two largest North American data centres. The companies will be recognized in a joint award for Facility Product Deployment, which highlights facility infrastructure products that significantly improve data center energy and resource efficiency.

“Projects like this prove that the right technology can deliver both corporate sustainability and reduced energy costs,” said Andy Lawrence, program director of the Uptime Institute Symposium and research director of Eco-Efficient IT at the 451 Group.

Previously, NTT America/NTT Communications announced it is helping enterprises achieve their energy efficiency goals through the telecom industry’s first data center deployment of Bloom Energy Servers, which run on renewable biogas.

Using the Vigilent system to address its energy management, NTT Com expects to reduce its electricity consumption in North America by over 7.6 million kWh and carbon emissions by 8.8 million lbs. a year, saving the company a projected $630,000 annually in energy costs.

The four consortiums are led by: Equinix Singapore Pte Ltd (partnering with Synapsense LLC, and Custom Mechanical Systems LLC); Toshiba Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (partnering with Nanyang Technological University); ClearManage Pte Ltd (partnering with AsiaSoft Pte Ltd, NEC Singapore and Nanyang Polytechnic); and 1-Net Singapore Pte Ltd (partnering with Envrocon Pte Ltd).

The consortiums are expected demonstrate technologies and innovations that improve energy efficiency in the data centre sector for a year, then share their findings with the rest of the industry.

Equinix’s “SG1 Cooling Energy Efficiency Project” will implement a real-time monitoring and control system to monitor the temperature and air pressure of the data centre wirelessly and optimise cooling at the different areas in the data centre. The existing computer room air-con (CRAC) units of the data centre will also be retrofitted with high efficiency variable-frequency drive fans to enable holistic control.

Toshiba’s “Outside Air Cooling in Modular Data Centre” project will make use of outside air to cool the servers if it detects that the ambient air is cool enough to do so. The project will make use of high temperature servers housed in a modular data centre that is designed to isolate the hot and cold areas, thus enabling it to be more energy efficient.

ClearManage’s “Data-Centre-in-the-Cloud” project will redesign the servers (including server board, power supply and UPS) to be more energy efficient. The project will also make use of server room containment technologies coupled with energy monitoring tools to ensure efficient use of energy.

1-Net’s “Entomiz Ambient Cooling System” project is easily deployable and it is non-intrusive to the server hosting area of the data centre. The solution retrofits the existing air-cooled air-con and mechanical ventilation (ACVM) system with a fine misting spray to cool the ambient temperature. This will reduce the load of the ACVM system, and thus increase cooling efficiency.

At an industry sharing session, the four consortiums demonstrated the cost and energy savings that can be attained through innovative and pioneering Green ICT solutions, the IDA said. “These solutions are projected to save up to 35% of the existing energy usage in data centres.”

Read the original IDA presentation on the Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge CFC initiative.

The study, commissioned by Alcatel-Lucent, revealed that most Chinese companies are aware of green ICT initiatives and 59% had a plan to go green themselves. Awareness of green ICT for Chinese ICT professionals were even higher, with over 90% believing that technology can help develop a low-carbon economy through the reduction of energy consumption and stimulating society to reduce greenhouse gas emissions further.

Researchers at Tsinghua University also found that most ICT professionals in China believed green technology to be an important part of an enterprise’s social responsibility. The study found that 39% of businesses in China planned to reduce carbon emissions by 1%-20% within the next three to five years with the national target of 17% in China’s 12th five-year plan.

However there was resistance to adopting more sustainable policies due to what they see as high capital, time and human resource investment requirements, the report said.

The report suggests that a coordinated approach between the technology industry, Chinese government, enterprises and education authorities will be key to ensuring that companies understand the best way to use ICT to reduce carbon emissions on a national scale.

Over the next five years, China’s government will increase its efforts to boost adoption of sustainable information technology. Respondents expressed their confidence that scientific research institutions will place greater importance on green ICT in that timeframe.

The study is the first nationwide research in China on the perception of Green ICT within the ICT industry to reveal the connection between the country’s economic strength and its technological strength in sustainability. In total 1072 respondents were surveyed, including professionals from approximately 500 enterprises, 100 government departments, industry associations and institutes of higher education in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Hangzhou.

Commenting on the study Zhao Shuguang, Tsinghua University Media Survey Lab director, said: “The advancements in the green ICT industry will be significant in propelling the development of a low-carbon economy, improving energy conservation and reducing emissions in China. China’s green ICT industry research was initiated to get an in-depth understanding of the level of awareness and any misconceptions about green technology, low-carbon economy and energy conservation among industry professionals. We also wanted further insight into the goals of enterprises and their plans relating to the development of green ICT. The report will provide support for the future development of green ICT in China.”

Rajeev Singh-Molares, President of the Asia-Pacific Region for Alcatel-Lucent, said: “The relationship between ICT and the environment is complex and multi-faceted. Enterprises, government bodies and academic institutions need to work in tandem to spur the development and innovation of green ICT through environmentally sustainable models”.

Mr. Singh-Molares added: “With the information industry becoming one of China’s fastest growing economic sectors, green ICT provides a leapfrogging opportunity to mitigate some of the challenges in our environment, including climate change, energy efficiency and biodiversity among others. Alcatel-Lucent has long placed great importance on green ICT development, which is the reason we have lent our support to this project. Environmental sustainability is one of the cornerstones of Alcatel-Lucent’s corporate strategy and we will continue to lead the industry in developing and deploying innovative technologies that are environmentally responsible.”

The message goes like this:

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development issued a ‘call to action’ to include information and communication technologies (ICT) as catalysts for sustainable development when delegates gather in New York today to continue negotiations ahead of the Rio+20 conference.

The call to include ICT networks, services and applications as enablers of sustainable development was issued at the start of the all-important second round of negotiations on the proposed outcomes for the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). In a world where more people now have access to a mobile phone than to clean drinking water or a bank account, information and communication technologies, in particular broadband connectivity, offer an unparalleled platform to host an array of development services, such as mobile payment systems, e-Health applications, earth observation services and, increasingly, e-Government. Inclusion of a strong reference to the catalytic role of ICTs and broadband in the Rio+20 roadmap will help ensure solutions are found to meet the challenges of sustainable development in a rapidly evolving world where technology is increasingly central to all aspects of society.

The ‘Call to Action’ from the Broadband Commission for Digital Development comes just a few weeks after the launch of its report, ‘The Broadband Bridge, linking ICTs with climate action for a low carbon economy’ in Ohrid, Macedonia. The report presents ten recommendations for policy-makers and global leaders to utilize ICTs to accelerate global progress towards a sustainable, low-carbon future. It also urges leaders to: ‘bring convergence to ICT policy formulation so that it aligns with other policy areas such as energy, health, education and climate in order to maximize impact’. Rio+20 provides a vital opportunity to mainstream ICTs and broadband in achieving sustainable development.

“It is vital that information and communication technologies are given due recognition in the outcome of Rio+20 as ICTs provide the critical technological solutions needed to attain sustainable development for all humankind and the planet we live on,” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré said. “ ICTs promote the integration of ‘smarter’ and more energy-efficient economic growth, social development and environmental protection; failure to recognize the power of ICTs for development could very well lead to a ‘Future we don’t want’.”

All the political and socio-economical arguments aside, how can anyone not include ICT in any kind of discussion on the future of the world is beyond me. It touches all aspect of modern society, all facets of global business, and is at the core of how we interact with each other as a global community. Whether that impact is good – or bad – needs to be explored if we are going to really understand what the future is going to bring.

Greenpeace however has highlighted another key aspect of the insatiable appetite for power from data centre – the fact that most of them are powered by coal rather than green and renewable energy.

In a report titled “How Green is Your Cloud?”, Greenpeace evaluated big cloud operators, including Akamai, Dell, Oracle, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, HP, Facebook, Google, Rackspace, saleforce.com, Twitter, Yahoo, and Apple, on their energy policies, concluding that Apple has the ‘dirtiest’ practices for its data centres, which Greenpeace claims relied heavily on coal fire plants.

Apple, the Greenpeace report found, had 55.1% of its data centre power come from coal, making it the only company with over half of its power from coal. HP, IBM, and Oracle, were the next on the list of coal users, with Greenpeace pegging them at 49.7%, 49.5%, and 48.7% respectively. The company that used the least amount of coal for its data centres was Dell, which came in at 20.1%, followed closely by Yahoo at 20.3%.

In addition to the use of coal, Greenpeace also gave each company a “Clean Energy Index” score. In this, Yahoo had the highest ranking at 56.4%, reportedly because of its use of hydro power and free-air cooling at large scale facilities in Washington and New York. Dell also scored highly (56.3%) in this category, presumably because of its high ranking in the EPA’s renewable energy usage index. Google and Facebook both score respectively at 39.4% and 36.4%, but six of the firms examined scored less than 20%, with salesforce.com coming in last with a score of only 4%.

In addition to coal and clean energy scores – there is also a reference to nuclear if you refer to the chart – the Greenpeace report also graded the firms’ data centre infrastructures in four categories – energy transparency, infrastructure siting, energy efficiency & GHG mitigation, and renewables & advocacy. The firms were given grades ranging from A through F in each of the categories.

In this part of the report, Amazon had the worst performance, getting 3 ‘F’ and a ‘D’ score, followed by Twitter with 2 ‘F’ and 2 ‘D’ scores. Google arguably had the best average, taking home 1 ‘A’, 2 ‘B’, and a ‘C’.

For individual categories, Akamai was given an ‘A’ for energy transparency, a category that yielded two ‘F’ scores from Amazon and Twitter. No one got an ‘A’ for infrastructure siting – referring to how a company selects their sites in relation to access to clean energy – although Yahoo and Facebook both managed ‘B’ scores. Amazon again scored a ‘F’, along with Apple for their site selection. Likewise, no company got an ‘A’ for energy efficiency & GHG mitigation, although the majority got ‘B’ or ‘C’, with Twitter the only one assigned a ‘F’. In terms of renewable energy usage and advocacy, Google’s ‘A’ was only accompanied by Yahoo’s ‘B’, with the rest coming in either ‘C’ or ‘D’ and Amazon getting a ‘F’.

Greenpeace’s approach comes at a tangent to what most industry commentators define as ‘green’ data centres. As anyone familiar with data centre power consumption can attest to, no source of renewable energy – with the exception of perhaps geothermal in places like Iceland, or New Zealand, or some well placed hydro electric plants – can provide the kind of power required to run a massive cloud. Yes, solar panels on roof tops can probably power the lights, and emerging full-cells might even be able to power some IT load, but localised renewable systems are simply not at the scale and efficiency where they can support the power load of data centres.

So unless the site location has access to enough renewable energy supply, it leaves only one option for data centres to use renewable energy, and that is through renewable energy certificates. While these do represent renewable energy generated somewhere, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s greener in the grander scheme of things. Renewables generated in remote locations are sometimes not used up, or there is huge wastage during transport to where they are needed.

In other words, while RECs mean clean energy generated somewhere, the power load from data centre users still need to be filled locally, and more often than not, it is through more coal-powered plants. So buying RECs doesn’t replace coal demand locally. And because of the inefficiencies of renewables sometimes, more coal might actually be used to make up the difference.

That said, Greenpeace’s highlight of site selection does make sense, and certainly, energy transparency and disclosure should be paramount for all data centre operators – without which the IT industry still have no idea how much CO2 it is using. The oft-quoted figure of ICT’s 2% share of global CO2 emissions is, as far as I know, from an obscure Gartner report dating back many years. And as far as I know, that was only an guesstimate.