The emerging field of green computing is beginning to take root at Western in an effort to make technology use more efficient and less wasteful.
As with many new fields, progress is more advanced on some fronts than on others. Success is only partly a reflection of willpower – in many areas, green computing is an expensive, time-consuming enterprise, often requiring technological advances not yet readily at hand.
At centres such as Western, green computing is not only an operational issue, it is also a research interest.
When it comes to dealing with the end of life of computing equipment, Western has a clear process in place.
Beginning in April 2009, Western complied with the provincial government’s new electronics waste diversion plan that aims to increase the amount of e-waste recycled or reused from 27 per cent to 61 per cent within five years.
Ontario residents and businesses dispose of 90,000 tonnes of old computers, printers, and televisions every year.
Western now ships used monitors, hard drives, printers, keyboards, and other technological equipment to GreenTec, a Cambridge-based company specializing in reverse logistics and recycling. The equipment is recycled or remanufactured.
Computer equipment is filled with potentially harmful substances such as mercury, lead and arsenic, making it critical this equipment be disposed of properly.
“It’s good,” says Jim Galbraith, Western’s grounds manager. “Western has been collecting e-waste for about five years now. We’re satisfied with (the new waste diversion program).”
Before the diversion plan was implemented, Western’s e-waste disposal was far less efficient and was performed on a company-by-company basis. To finance this initiative, consumers in Ontario must pay an additional $13 fee when purchasing a desktop computer and $10 for a television.
Despite the successful implementation of a green e-waste disposal strategy, energy-efficient computer use at Western remains in the theoretical stages, says Michael Bauer, a professor in the computer science department.
Like waste disposal, energy use is a critical component of a comprehensive green Information and Communication Technology (ICT) program. According to the Faculty of the Environment at the University of Waterloo, 0.3 per cent of the world’s total CO2 emissions are from computer servers, compared to 0.6 per cent for the airline industry.
Although Western is home to hundreds of computer workstations and is a member of the high-performance computing network SHARCNET, a practical method has not been devised for reducing energy consumption or harnessing the wasted energy generated from computer use, says Bauer.
Western isn’t alone – it shares this problem with many institutions requiring huge amounts of computer power. Some have looked at creating special units to recover inefficiencies but these large installations can be enormously expensive.
“The way to approach a green ICT program is to use more sustainable energy sources,” says Bauer.
“I’d love to see Western buy all their power from Bullfrog,” says Mark Daley, an associate professor in the same department. Bullfrog Power is a green energy source that uses wind and hydro facilities.
But purchasing energy from alternative sources is more expensive than conventional sources of power, says Bauer.
“They’re getting cheaper, but they are more money than today’s power,” says Bauer.
Besides the cost of greener energy sources, there’s coping with the infrastructure of a university, large parts of which were built before commuting equipment was so important in day-to-day operations, let alone the recent arrival of green ICT.
“[Western’s campus was built] assuming we had unlimited energy,” says Bauer.
“To do it properly, we’d have to tear everything down,” says Daley, in reference to creating and implementing a comprehensive green ICT strategy. For instance, he says many buildings could not support the weight of solar panels because their roofs and support structures were not designed with these panels in mind.
And just like the buildings, computers on campus were not designed to be “green.”
“Commercial hardware is designed to be cheap, not efficient,” says Daley.
“It’s hard to make existing hardware more efficient,” Bauer concurs.
Daley’s research focuses on creating virtual models of biological systems that can predict certain classes of proto-oncogenes, which are linked to cancer. His computer-intensive work relies upon SHARCNET, which uses supercomputers. Even in the middle of winter, he says, he and other researchers in his field often have to turn on air conditioners to cool their computers, which become overheated while processing data.
Wasted energy in the form of heat is also emitted to a lesser extent from desktop PCs and laptops. One way to reduce this energy waste is to connect a network of computers to a single central processing unit, a practice already in place at campus libraries, but not in computer labs.
Daley explains recycling this type of energy has not been done before and needs to be tested before it can be implemented.
This is one area new research needs to come to the aid of day-to-day operations.
Daley speculates it would be possible to place an instrument with high thermal conductivity, like a fork, into a CPU and channel the energy through pipes for use in a heat exchanger, such as a radiator, or even to heat the pool at the campus’s new recreation centre.
Daley notes a strategy such as this is also somewhat wasteful, since energy is lost at each step of the process. Moreover, the amount of heat generated in this way would not be substantial. “You can’t do a lot with it,” says Bauer.
The incentive to implement greener energy sources would increase if there was a financial commitment from the provincial and federal governments, notes Bauer.
A few academic institutions have taken initiatives to make energy consumption more efficient, says Bauer. For instance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is looking into creating a green data centre powered by a hydroelectric dam in collaboration with other colleges in the Boston area. The proposed centre is designed to be carbon-free and will generate “huge” network connectivity, he says.
Building such an energy source would be possible in a remote region such as northern Ontario, says Bauer, although it would require laying down extensive fibre network connections, which would also be very expensive.
“Western doesn’t have the money to do this now,” he says. “The good news is that people are beginning to pay more attention. Five years ago, no one talked about this [issue].”
“Carter saw all of this coming,” says Daley. Both professors agree that former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s prescient observation in the 1970s that oil was not a sustainable energy source, and that other viable energy sources must be developed, has proven true.
While it’s true desktop PCs and supercomputers use a lot of power, other appliances on campus, such as kitchen ovens and hairdryers, drain at least as much and often more power than computers.
While a sustainable energy strategy may seem like an insurmountable challenge, the solution is not to simply do away with high-powered technology.
“Either you accept it and find a cure for cancer, or you don’t do it and don’t find the cure for cancer,” says Daley.
What is green ICT?
Adopting environmental sustainability to the use of information technology. Includes computers, printers, servers, communications equipment, storage, networking and related devices and services.
It can include considerations such as:
· Design of equipment, including reduced use of hazardous materials
· Improved energy efficiency
· Improved ability to recycle materials
· Biodegradability
· Factoring total lifetime cost (initial cost+energy use+recycling+other factors) and environmental impact into purchases
The writer is a graduate of Western’s journalism program.