What’s your carbon footprint?
by David Merrill on April 30, 2009
Perhaps you have seen these types of carbon footprint calculators. Without travel, I generate 4.1 tons per year of C02. With my travel, my footprint goes up to 31.5. Yikes! It is interesting to note that 1 gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of CO2, while my domestic and international flights generated 0.6 pounds of CO2 per person per mile. I thought my summer cooling bill in Texas would be the culprit, but it must be those AA trips to Omaha that are expanding my footprint.
A few weeks ago a large client was working with us to develop some new econometrics. We had calculated TCO and TCDO — that was a straightforward exercise. Then they asked us to create a storage carbon footprint measurement, TB-per-metric tons of CO2. To them, power, space, labor, A/C, conditioning can all be summed by TB-per metric tons of CO2.
The calculation is straightforward - the CO2 emission factor for electricity is 0.524 lbs CO2 per kWh, but the source of your electricity will have an impact on this ratio as well (nuclear, coal, wind, hydro). Try it out, add up the storage arrays, SAN switches, tape libraries, media servers, backup servers, DWDM, operator consoles power and then divide by the TB (usable) to report on your tonnage per TB (or TB-per-tons) of CO2. Don’t forget to add in the cooling costs to the CO2 calculation (you can convert from BTU to kVA by dividing BTU by 3413).
It should not come as a surprise that some storage architectures, configurations etc. can produce LESS CO2 per TB than others. Over provisioned volumes, virtualized capacity, archive, de-dupe, SSD can all significantly contribute to an improved power consumption bill, and therefore an improved storage/carbon footprint.
Our parent company Hitachi and HDS have numerous programs around the green data center. Check out some of the links.
Comments (2 )
John F on 30 Apr 2009 at 7:47 pm
Down my way, in beautiful sunny Augusta Georgia, a good chunk of the power is produced at plant Vogol, a nuclear powerplant. As you note, wind solar, etc. can also impact the carbon footprint as well. It all depends on locations and energy sources. I wonder, what would be the impact if companies factored carbon footprint into data center siting decisions?
John
David Merrill on 06 May 2009 at 9:25 am
I think IT planners should consider carbon footprint or carbon impact as locations are chosen for large centers, especially in DR locations. Most prime IT sites are close the main corp campus, and that is not negotiable, but the DR site decision can be made on factors of electricity costs, carbon, labor force availability etc.
If the new Obama administration signs the Kyoto accord, or the follow-on greenhouse emission proposals, we will see location being a prime decision point for data center operations.
