Ecolibrium Shared Learning Towards an Economically and Ecologically Viable Future

Higher Education Goes Green with Cisco TelePresence

As often is the case, institutes of higher education are at the forefront of innovative ways to solve problems.  Melding technology and sustainability is a natural area where they’ve taken the lead.

I’m here at the EDUCAUSE 2009 Annual Conference, where some of higher education’s best and brightest information technology thinkers meet and collaborate about ways to enhance and extend learning.

A lot of them have adopted Cisco TelePresence, not only as way to create new educational and business models, but also as a way to be more sustainable. 

The more conventional way to be sustainable with Cisco TelePresence is to reduce travel between various campuses.  Take a look at what conference attendees had to say about that in this video:

But there’s another twist.  

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Posted by Irene Sandler at 10:59AM PST

Everything But the Cocktail Party:  COP15 and Cisco TelePresence

One of the inconvenient ironies of hammering out a global climate change accord is that assembling delegates from 192 countries in close  physical proximity tends to spew thousands of metric  tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

But that face-to-face is so necessary, and not just because of the language and cultural barriers inherent in international discussions.  Negotiations on climate change can be contentious:  agreements have considerable impact on national economies and rates of growth, and they touch emotional hot buttons around the fair distribution of responsibility between industrialized and developing countries.  It’s a bit like a holiday gathering of a large, extended, and occasionally dysfunctional family.

You know what I’m going to write next:  Cisco has a solution, and it has something to do with telepresence technology.

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Posted by Irene Sandler at 06:10AM PST

People Power: Smart Grid is About More Than Just Smart Technology

*Posted by Rob Aldrich for Jenny Carless, contributor to News@Cisco*

The smart grid is not just about smart technology – it’s also about how people use that technology to be smarter about their own behavior.

Business and municipal leaders have figured this out, and they’re addressing a critical piece of the climate change puzzle: empowering consumers to help reduce global warming by being smarter about their own behavior.

Smart Meters

As part of my research for a recent article about Smart Grid Strategies for a Global Marketplace on News@Cisco, I interviewed Kjartan Skaugvoll, vice president and general manager of Sales at Nuon, a Dutch utility company. He feels strongly that consumers can play a big part in addressing climate change, and he’s really enthusiastic about how smart meters in people’s homes, connected to an intelligent electric grid, can help educate people about their energy consumption, so they can make changes in their behavior accordingly.

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Posted by Rob Aldrich at 06:59PM PST

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

In the 1980s, there was an American television show called The A-Team. The lead character in that series, ‘Hannibal’ Smith (played by George Peppard) had a catch-phrase that turned up in most episodes: “I love it when a plan comes together.” That’s what I like about working at Cisco—you get to see the plans coming together. 

Flash to last February, when we launched Cisco EnergyWise. Most analysts and press were very positive. Cisco EnergyWise was seen as innovative because it took advantage of this simple fact: Networking is so ubiquitous that it touches every part of a business. Why not exploit this to give the network more relevance, and solve bigger problems than just passing packets? And this was just the beginning.

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Posted by Marie Hattar at 01:01PM PST

Avoid the Rush. Test Drive Demand Side Management Now

I once heard a sage piece of advice for two-income families who plan to become single-income families: test drive the one-income lifestyle. While you still have both your jobs, stash the income from the job you’re considering dropping and try living on the income you intend to retain. See what changes you’ll need to make while you still have some margin for experimentation and adjustment. This “test drive” lets you find the perfect RoI for your family before the change takes effect. 

Thinking about it, the same piece of advice is good for business and residential customers who plan to use demand side management (DSM) to cut energy costs. A key feature of the smart grid, demand side management lets utility customers cut energy costs by shifting energy consumption to times when power costs less. While off-peak pricing may not be available from your utility now, it will be in the future. And it can make a big difference in your energy costs and your carbon footprint. But taking advantage of DSM requires planning, and that’s something you can start right away. Working with an energy Demand Response (DR) expert such as EnerNOC (www.enernoc.com) to plan your DSM program is immensely helpful, but first do some homework on your own.

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Posted by Tere Bracco at 08:24AM PST

Modeling Your Efficiency

We’ve recently embarked on an logical extension of the Advanced Services we’ve been providing for efficiency assessments for the last 24 months.  Our Facilities Design Specification Service is uncovering some interesting new approaches to energy efficient data center design.  Since you only get a very finite window of opportunity to make changes to an environment like a data center, modeling is key.

We use 6sigma from Future Facilities for highly detailed thermal modeling and good old Visio for everything else.  However, we are using with great success an intermediary application, Google SketchUp. Hats off and many thanks to the Google crew for giving this incredibly powerful yet simple tool away.  While we do use the pro version, most of our customers can use the free version to simply convey design intent.  Say goodbye to whiteboards.

You may have already used it and most likely have seen the 3D buildings in Google Earth.

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Posted by Rob Aldrich at 08:26PM PST

Energy Management in the Data Center - New Report

A good report was issued last week from The 451 Group, written by Andy Lawerence.  They issued another insightful report last year called Eco-Efficient IT and appear to be an analyst body spending some real cycles on digging past the Green veneer.  While we’ve not purchased this most recent report “Data Center Management and Energy Efficiency Software”, the executive summary is worth the very simple registration process.  Without giving too much away there are a few key points I thought worthy of highlighting:

1)  There are already as many as 9 distinct approaches to energy management in data centers
2)  Traditional organizational structures are being challenged
3)  The business case is already very attractive

On this last point, there is a lot of room for real financial savings with very little capital expenditure.  To simplify for the sake of blog’eese; the way we are assessing it in the team I lead for Energy Management Services is as follows:

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Posted by Rob Aldrich at 02:40PM PST

Green Counts: One Million Acts and Growing

How “green” are you? Chances are you’re already helping the environment with things you do every day. If you recycle at home, use a refillable coffee cup, or even telecommute one day a week, you’re doing your part to help the planet. And Cisco wants to help show you how.

In October 2008, Cisco launched One Million Acts of Green in Canada to show that individual, organizational, and community acts of green add up to something significant. The program asked everyone in Canada for an act of green. It could be small, like recycling. Or something bigger, like installing solar panels. The site’s calculator, designed by GreenNexxus, shows the positive impact in greenhouse gases saved.

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Posted by Cristal Guderjahn at 11:58AM PST

Affecting Change in the Corporate World

A Guppies Perspective

There is an old saying, “you catch more flies with honey.”  This especially applies in the US where we enjoy a representative democracy.  While this political system moves slowly, it does move.  Given the corporate sway on this political system, one could argue that influencing large corporations is as important as governments today.  To that end I’ve prepared some points that might help my fellow environmentalists better influence a company like ours to accommodate a particular agenda:

1. Corporations are publicly traded.  Therefore any corporation you want to influence must show fiscal responsibility (aka profit).  Find a way to make the connection between what a corporation sells or could sell and your particular agenda.  I have developed several examples under the planning tools section of Cisco’s Efficiency Assurance Program that tie economics to CO2.  In the case of global climate change, there are no better business cases out there for environmentalism than energy efficiency and brand recognition.
2. Deliver your message in a professional manner.  Professionals in any field are called that for a reason.  They are either good at what they do or have been around long enough without making any career limiting mistakes.  I hold the environmental community to the same standard.  Spend the time to author a solid plan (mirroring a typical business plan format is a good start) that makes defensible claims on the cost of environmental impacts in current and/or future forms, then link it to the business in a meaningful way.  If you’ve already done this and a Corporation doesn’t bite… guerilla tactics won’t help.  Persistence and adaptation will.  I have a Green collar today by picking small battles that can be won while marching towards a larger plan.

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Posted by Rob Aldrich at 10:07AM PST

Steps towards energy efficient networking

As a follow up to my last blog, I’m happy to say that ATIS has taken the final step in publishing a groundbreaking standard for networking energy efficiency.  For those who like the details: I’m referring to the newly published American National Standard ATIS-0600015.03.2009 – which most people know as Telecommunication Equipment Energy Efficiency Reporting (TEER). In the meantime, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Focus Group on climate completed a successful meeting in Hiroshima and is making excellent progress towards international standards for energy conservation in networks, and there’s movement in EPA to include networking products in their excellent Energy Star program. I’m proud to say that Cisco people are major contributors to these industry wide initiatives and I think these will be important milestones on the road to improved energy efficiency.

Metrics are an important part of our drive towards energy savings, but we also need to look at where they fit into the bigger picture.

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Posted by Hugh Barrass at 04:58PM PST

Too Little Too Late: Airline Chases after TelePresence

In a further sign of trouble for the airline industry, British Airways recently announced the “Face of Opportunity” contest to rescue the high-margin business trip.  Entrants can win a free trip to London (presumably in business class, though this is not stated)  and attend a “networking event” with captains of the industry if they can persuade the judges that what they could accomplish given the chance to have face-to-face meetings abroad is sufficiently compelling.

Supporting their hypothesis is a soon-to-be-published report by the Harvard Business Review that notes that 95% of respondents in their survey agree that face-to-face meetings are key to success in building long-term building relationships, while 87% agree that face-to-face meetings are essential for “sealing the deal.”  The report further notes that face-to-face meetings “were seen as the most effective method for conducting business with key stakeholders, compared with videoconferences, teleconferences, and webinars.”

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Posted by Irene Sandler at 11:28AM PST

Dissolving Distance; or, How to Go on an Energy Diet

You think swapping your SUV for a Prius will save the world?  Think again, says Peter Tertzakian, the guy who coined “energy break point” in his first best-seller.  Last month, he launched his latest book, The End of Energy Obesity, and argued, among other things, that energy efficiency (Prius vs. SUV) and energy consumption (total number of cars) are two very different things.

Since humans associate comfort with more energy consumption, we tend toward supply-side answers:  finding renewable resources,  creating more efficient forms of oil extraction, etc.  Demand emerges, and supply materializes through some combination of human ingenuity and luck. 

But we have more power (as it were), Tertzakian argues, by curbing demand—instead of simply replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, why not use fewer lights instead?  At some point, we won’t be able to find new sources of energy fast enough, we’ll max out on efficiency improvements, and we’ll be forced to conclude, along with all reluctant dieters:  consume less.

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Posted by Irene Sandler at 10:41AM PST

The Event “Triple Crown”:  You Can Be Greener, More Effective and Happier

Cisco recently hosted its annual Strategic Leadership Offsite where about 3,000 members of Cisco’s leadership team gather to prepare for our upcoming fiscal year. Typically we get together in a place like Monterey, Calif., or San Francisco. It’s always a good time and an important milestone in aligning Cisco’s leaders around our key priorities for the next year. This year, owing to the challenging economic times, we at Cisco decided to host this strategic gathering virtually and eliminate all travel. We were nervous that a virtual event would be less compelling and motivational, especially during these uncertain times. As it turns out, these concerns were unfounded. In fact, we learned that you achieve equal or better results virtually. And of course, going virtual had a dramatic impact on how green this event would be.

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Posted by Ron Ricci at 03:58PM PST

Smart Loads lead to Smart Grids

Why do we have a power ‘Grid’ at all?

Simple…to be more productive.  Energy fuels our industry, our industries fuel our economies.  After we saw the first massive spikes in industrial productivity from this new thing called electricity, we were hooked and the ‘Grid’ began.  Our post-wattage days have been blissful until now.  Now we are seeing limits where none were before.  So, what to do.

We apply the same ingenuity and management to Watts as we do to Packets.  That is Cisco’s technical approach to what is otherwise a social construct; Green.  Reduce Watts, and in turn reduce carbon through Smart Loads.  With that, the utilities that provide us with our Watts will be able to use the same technologies used to control the “business” side of energy.  There will be a lag but when people talk Smart Grid today it can mean many things.  Basic Ethernet connectivity may be one.

If you want to geek out on how things are coming along here at Cisco on energy tech, have a listen to a recent interview I was privileged to provide.  Its a discussion with John Gilroy of Federal News Radio 1500AM in Washington, DC.
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John runs a great show and we really engaged on some meaty bits, you can play as a URL or download as a podcast…

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Posted by Rob Aldrich at 08:46PM PST

Rethinking Energy from Multiple Perspectives

In my blog last week, I mentioned Smart Grid, a complete reworking of the electrical grid, which is being undertaken by utilities, government entities, and concerned businesses alike.  Here, in the United States, Cisco is partnering with key organizations to pilot Smart Grid projects. Just this week, we announced one such effort with Duke University.

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Posted by Marie Hattar at 01:32PM PST