[Image courtesy :http://www.coolgadgets.com/]

Like all devises have their pros and cons this one has it too. Firstly, the projector bulbs has a short life time and dim visibility. Typing onto a desk will not be easy, rather painful. Lastly, the laser light used to mark the keys can be seen only in dim lighting conditions.

[Image courtesy :http://technabob.com/]

It not just saves space but its electronic parts can be recycled too .Hence, this concept if taken care of its weaknesses could be a hit in green technology.

photo courtesy : http://greenermilwaukee.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/greener-jobs-group-on-linkedin/

High-Tech Professionals, Jobs and Networking

It is a networking group created on January 21, 2009 and has 1224 members. This group is only for US based people interested in green computing, cloud computing, clean technology etc.

Green Computing & Data Center

This is a professional group created on June 30, 2008 and has 772 members. Members of this group discuss all areas pertaining to Green IT.

China High-Tech Professionals, Jobs and Networking

This networking group was created on March 21, 2009 and has 678 members currently. People in this group discuss about job opportunities, green technology, etc. This is a China based group and deals with high-tech industries present there.

Green IT CXO Forum

This networking group is particularly for sustainability professionals makes use of technology like cloud computing, data center power management etc.

Computing Now

It is a professional group, open to all which was created on February 27, 2009 and has 485 members. It collects all the green computing and other recent topics information from the IEEE Computer Society’s 13 peer-reviewed magazines.

WHU Web Hosting Experts Group

This was created on July 22, 2008 and has 459 members currently. This group is for IT professionals to discuss on topics like cloud and green computing, data centers, etc.

Make IT Green

It was created on August 17, 2008 and has 235 members now. As it name suggests this group is dedicated to green computing and green chemistry.

Energy Saving Computing

It was created on July 29, 2008 and has 147 members. The members share their knowledge and ideas related to green computing here.

VirtG

The Virtualization Group-Boston was created on August 5, 2009 and has 44 members currently. The group discusses about green technology and its other aspects.

Green Computing Forum

This group was created on December 2, 2008 and has 21 members.

[Image source: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Government Buildings]

While going through this article in Times of India ,”TIME TO ACT, NATURALLY”, I realized that some parts of India have already come into action and started turning Green. Lavasa near Pune is one such city. These cities emit minimum harmful gases, sewage is recycled for irrigation purposes, energy is generated through renewable sources, etc. However, the most important thing that should be worked upon is awareness and promotion of benefits of turning Green.

Green Buildings are on a rise these days, they are designed specifically for helping the environment. LEED Ratings are certified to the buildings who abide by all the norms such as natural ventilation etc.

There are many benefits associated with making a city Green :

* 30% of total energy consumption of a city is consumed by residential sectors according to Bureau of Energy Efficiency. Green buildings reduce this consumption by a large amount by using zero discharge systems, natural lighting and environment friendly building materials.
* Solid waste management leads to water purity and reduces soil pollution.

To preserve the greenery around and save our cities, we really need to accelerate the Greenery process.

Association To Save Energy has good set of policies and recommendations for migrating to energy efficient data centers -

Data centers and their energy usage are expected to grow:

• The number of installed servers in the U.S. is expected to increase by 40 to 50 percent nationally in the next four years, with sales of new servers numbering about 7 million per year.
• Data centers in the United States now consume an estimated 20 to 30 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, roughly equal to the electricity consumption of Utah, or about 30 power plants.

Technical energy-efficiency opportunities that already exist:

• Use of the most current energy-efficient server processors
  • Most processors are 35 to 150 percent more efficient than previous generations.
• Management of applications to reduce computational power.
  • Software engineered to maximize energy efficiency would decrease unnecessary data center energy use.
• Improved efficiency of power supply and power distribution
  • Uninterrupted power supply systems are currently available with efficiencies as high as 95 percent – some current power supplies can have efficiencies as low as 60 percent.
• Right-sizing of cooling requirements
  • There is a tendency to overcool data centers.
  • Data center operators should be educated about proper air-cooling techniques.
  • Chilled water systems require only about 70 percent of the system wattage used by traditional air-cooled systems.
  • Cost may be a challenge for small- and mid-sized data centers.

Barriers to improved efficiency and change:

• Lack of real-world efficiency reporting from manufacturers on server components.
• Lack of energy-efficiency enabling requirements in software.
• The high energy costs associated with data center operation often are not addressed, because they represent a relatively small portion of overall data center operating costs.
• Incentives are needed for data center managers to make energy efficiency a priority.

Policy and design recommendations:

• Government should support efforts to develop metrics for servers and work toward establishing more reliable procurement standards.
• Governments should ensure that data center best practices are included in commercial building codes.
• Rebates should be offered to manufacturers of server components that meet efficiency standards such as 80plus®.
• Governments should encourage sub-metering of data center electricity use.

Check this pdf file for full report.

As a fact more than 68,200 jobs across 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for about 770,000 jobs relating to clean energy. California led the U.S. with about 124,000 green-collar jobs in 2007, followed by Texas with 56,000 and policymakers are coming up with fresh legislation which includes the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, along with upcoming renewable electricity standards and possible measures to limit carbon-dioxide emissions. There is more hope for job creation in the near future even as the economy struggles.

Besides government stimulus, venture capitalists have invested about $12.6 billion into this category during the last three years.
An excerpt from the Carbon Salary Survey

* The average salary in the booming climate sector was $76,000.
* The big green guns, upper-level managers, etc., earn six figures easily.
* Half of the survey respondents reported scoring a yearly bonus to the tune of $11,000.
* Monster.com is out .Greenjobsearch.org is in.

President Barack Obama said that he wants to create millions of “green collar” jobs. His stimulus bill includes more than $60 billion for clean energy including $11 billion to modernize the power grid to move energy from renewable energy projects to the cities and $2 billion in grants to develop better batteries for cars. He also supports a comprehensive federal energy plan that would launch a “cap and trade” market on greenhouse gases and national mandates forcing power companies to generate a part of their electricity from renewable sources.

So, we can conclude that Green-collar jobs are far more pink-slip proof than the other jobs.

Since datacenters are the integral part of any organisation so it needs the most attention. Viridity maintains an equilibrium  between power, utilization and cooling to increase the life of datacenter and hence it works more , is more reliable , more responsive and all of it comes with a reduced cost.

Few of the benefits of the Company are:

• It is completely transparent towards the stepwise action plans.
• Datacenter life cycle is increased by 2-3 years.
• Improved services such as reliability, responsiveness and efficiency.
• Reduction in the cost of power and cooling.
• Staff productivity is enhanced by letting the less skilled employees do the  everyday(less important) job.

Viridity is a software start-up which is growing very fast and will soon be a leading company in managing datacenters in a greener way.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. owns, acquires and manages technology related real estate. The company focuses on providing Powered Base Buildings. Over 50 Fortune 500 companies rely on it to provide solutions for their data center requirements. Due to many benefits of turning a building green, Digital Realty Trust on March, 31, 2009 adopted the newly announced BREEAM(Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) standards.

Jim Smith, Chief Technology Officer for Digital Realty Trust, said, “Adopting the BREEAM standards right at the beginning of the initial design stages will not only build in reduced running costs because the building’s insulation and cooling will be optimised, but in the longer term the value of the building can be expected to be higher than a comparable building which is not BREEAM accredited”.

BREEAM provides to its clients, developers, designers and others with market recognition, assurance of best environmental practice incorporated into a building, a benchmark that is higher than regulation, a tool to help reduce running costs, improve working and living environments and a standard that demonstrates progress towards corporate and organisational environmental objectives.It addresses wide-ranging environmental and sustainability issues and uses a scoring system which is transparent, easy to understand. It also maintains a robust technical standard with rigorous quality assurance and certification.

According to Paul Gibbon, Director of Sustainability, BRE Global “The advantage of scheme development using the framework of BREEAM Bespoke is that it reduces the cost of assessments and provides a ready made set of criteria against which developers, designers and clients can assess their buildings”.

Early BREEAM assessment standards for datacentres were carried out as part of Digital Realty Trust developing a facility for a major financial institute which was completed late in 2008 which achieved an Excellent rating. The datacentre uses a unique heat recovery system which results in energy savings of up to 83 percent compared to conventional gas fired boilers. It also uses a building automation system which responds to changing atmospheric conditions making the most of when the ambient temperature is low.

• Use an LCD instead of a CRT;
• Consider a laptop;
• Kill the screen saver;
• Use your computer’s sleep function;
• Buy Energy Star compliant machines;
• Recycle your old system.

Note: Windows Vista use can be detrimental to your productivity. Stick to Windows XP

- Recently concluded DataWorld conference effectively replaced Green IT with Energy Efficiency. All about cost savings!

- Green Grid – companies are working to develop metric to measure datacenter efficiency. Green Grid developed two metrics – One for facilities (the PuE – Power usage effectiveness – and DCiE -datacentr infrastructure efficiency) and the other for the IT. This is DCP – data center productivity. (The Green Grid is a global consortium of companies dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and computing ecosystems)

- Forrestor online tool for energy efficiency modeling. Also new tool for calculating online energy savings – NightWatchman

- IDC Directions Conference relegates Green IT to the corner and favors new favorites – Cloud Computing and Virtualization.

While we are talking about numbers. Here is a random sprinkling of numbers I collected from different surveys.

The Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), a nonprofit professional society of over 9,500 members, issued a survey to its members to determine the need for Green Jobs.

Survey Results:

* 41% of the energy professionals who were surveyed plan to retire in the next ten years.

* 72% of energy professionals indicate a heightened shortage of qualified professionals in the energy   efficiency and renewable energy fields in the next five years.

* 70% of energy professionals indicate a need for national and state training for “Green Jobs” to address job shortages that are impairing growth in green industries, such as energy efficient buildings and construction, renewables, electric power, smart grid, energy efficient vehicles and biofuels development.

A different survey, conducted recently by Prasanto Kumar Roy, President, ICT Group, CyberMedia India Ltd. to see how green is corporate sector of the nation today and these are the results

* 43.5% of MNCs ,39.6% of Indian private limited companies and 52% of the PSUs feel Green IT is a reality.

On the definition of Green IT

* 33.2% :Configure desktops to enter the sleep mode when not in use.
* 30.2% :E-waste/computer waste recycling.
* 29.2% :Server consolidation.

On Green standards awareness –

* 51.5% of the respondents knew about the Energy Star.
* 39.9% knew about the ISO14000/ISO14001.
* 32.8% knew about the Climate Saver Computing Initiative.

On rationale for Green IT –

* 78% feel it was to reduce costs.
* 54% felt that it is related to environmental issues.
* 29% said it was for compliance and corporate image building.

* 26.3% had already implemented upgrading or reconfiguring the data center cooling infrastructure for improved efficiency.
* 31.4% had already implemented reduction of server power consumption using thin client architecture.
* 35% said that less than 5 percent of the IT budgets had been provisioned for green.

According to a yet another Green consumer survey by Yahoo-

* 77% of consumers believed themselves to be “green” and
* 57% stated they made a green purchase decision in the past six months.

* Around 23% of consumers were tagged as “deeply committed” greenies by Yahoo and
* Nearly 24% found green to be “trendy”.

Analyzing the above survey results it can be said that “Green IT” is no more just a hype but it sure is happening.

Christopher Mines, senior vice president, Forrester, said that “The early read indicates that a slow macro economy will not slow Green IT efforts and there is a significant opportunity for IT organizations to implement Green IT, which can increase from a worldwide size of half billion dollars to about 5 billion dollars in 2013″.