But alas not all that is green is gold. The company stopped accepting new customers a little over a month ago, and today the letter came with the sad news that in September all lights will turn off.

I have chosen to move to AISO.net. They also now offset all of their power demand with their own solar installation. They have provided a nice analysis of their estimated reduction of carbon output based on the solar installation which was certified by the USEPA.

This was interesting to me because not only would we like to provide some analysis of what we’ll offset with our solar installation at NCTD, we would also like to investigate some consistent methology for comparing an individual ride with a public transit ride between destinations.

With the incentives still offered at the federal and state level, and working with our local utility company SDG&E, the business case for solar is a viable one.  In a time when my agency – like so many across the State of California – is facing dramatic pressures on our operating budget, any capital investment that potentially decreases monthly operating expenses deserves a serious look. 

We have two phases of this plan – we’ll install solar panels on the roof of the building, which turns out to be an ideal location.  Not every building meets our criteria – we have significant open space, our roof was repaired recently with a material that is reflective, and our utility sheds are relatively short.  These design elements make our roof highly suitable for a solar installation.

The second phase of our project will install carport solar panels in our public parking lot.  Our existing lot was designed at a time when there were fewer requirements for heat dissipation.  Our black asphalt parking lot gets quite hot during most months, and installation of solar panels will mitigate some of this problem.  We are also making good use of otherwise non-revenue generating space.

This project is a stimulus project through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  There is significant pressure on governmental entities to use this money responsibly, transparently, and according to the terms of the intent of the act.  I believe this project meets all of the objectives of the program:  it is a shovel-ready construction project, a long-term capital improvement, beneficially changes the operations of public transit in the community, installs technology that decreases operating costs, provides jobs during the project, invests in green technology, and completes in a timely fashion to stimulate the local economy.

While the solar projects added cost to our data center redesign project, the investment had a solid business case, with a six-year payback period.  An additional consideration was the increasing carbon footprint of the technology resources at the District.  This investment not only pays off from a fiscal perspective, but also an environmental one.

My message to IT people is to think bigger than our data centers.  We have the opportunity to improve our company’s bottom line not only through our core IT investments, but also in how we choose to construct and improve the buildings that house that technology.  Work with your facility managers to become more creative in solving data center problems.

We have a series of ‘nodes’ that we’re installing at about 1 mile intervals that provide a wireless infrastructure along the rail.  With that network, we can then install other wireless devices – for example cameras, or VOIP devices.  But what would this have to do with being green?

Our approach to these nodes has been to install solar panels at each node.  On the one hand this is simple practicality because some sites are very remote and far from existing power sources.  But, for more than half of the nodes we could have chosen to plug into wired power sources.  So as a CIO, I had to make a choice- use solar or use grid power?

The business case is not so straight forward.  While we will save power using the solar, we incur higher installation and maintenance costs to ensure the solar systems provide consistent, reliable power to each node.  We cannot claim that we chose to use solar simply because it was the greener choice – that would be a deceptive message.  However, I can say that as the CIO I had the architectural design choice to go with either solution and chose solar – it seemed to be the more stable choice, and the choice that would still operate if we had a power outage, and yes when all solutions were compared it was the more sustainable, environmentally-friendly approach. 

So I leave it in the reader’s mind – perhaps security at NCTD is green, and perhaps not.  You be the judge.

by Angela Miller
This week the ecology.IT blog officially moved to a web hosting service that is 100% solar-powered. GreenestHost.com was featured in Ted Samson’s blog 2 weeks ago and officially came online on August 6, 2007.

A couple of things impressed me about this company:

• They worked closely with vendors including AMD, VMWare, and Freus, to ensure they both chose the right technology and configured it appropriately for optimal energy efficiency and cooling.
• They worked with a mature company (AISO) to develop a web-hosting service built on a solid foundation.
• They deployed a solar environment that is self-sufficient and integrated with a battery system for use at night.

While this is not an endorsement or recommendation that everyone should switch to Greenesthost.com as a service provider, it does highlight that there is business sense in establishing and offering green computing technologies.

Carbon trading became extremely active over the last two years and carbon offsets are easily available through a variety of reputable sources. An article on AdvancedTrading.com focused on the increased and robust trading in ‘carbon futures’ and how the trend is dramatically increasing.

It is important for companies to realize that purchasing carbon offsets does not provide a tangible and sustainable benefit to their company beyond the ability to market to their employees and customers that they are now ‘carbon neutral.’ But in a climate where customers are growing more concerned about how green their service providers and suppliers are, being carbon neutral could be a differentiator.

I am assuming that simply posting that companies should consider carbon offsets as a valuable tool in their green computing strategy will engender comments both from people who feel that they are nothing more than ‘buying your conscience so you can pollute more instead of addressing the problem’ and those who believe they are a smokescreen and a waste of money that could be invested in other IT improvements instead. I disagree with both of these stances and instead believe that any steps toward investing in new, cleaner technologies will have tangible long-term benefit for all. It is important that companies purchase carbon offsets from entities that are both reputable and that commit to real investment instead of simple futures trading. A few examples include (not a personal endorsement, but a list of entities I’ve researched):

TerraPass
The Gold Standard
ClimateTrust

For a report about the efficacy of carbon offset entities, check out the report information at Clean Air-Cool Planet.

Dig deeper on the issues:

I relied on the following sites for analysis in support of this post:
www.tekrati.com
Advanced Trading
Clean Air-Cool Planet
United States Environmental Protection Agency