Published: February 03 2010, 10:35 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Sonny Masero

On January 24, 2010, The Times published a story highlighting the impact shortages in our water supplies may have on businesses.  The article precedes a report from the UN expected in a few weeks that will inform companies about future requirements to report on water use – “water footprinting” - similar to greenhouse gas emissions reporting.

I wrote a letter to the editor in response to the article, which was published on January 31, 2010, edited for length.  Following is the unedited version of my letter that I wanted to share with you. What do you think?  I welcome your thoughts in comments to this post. 

Dear Sir:

Your report (Now companies face a green squeeze on using water, January 24, 2010) rightly highlights the emerging issue of water footprinting compared to that of carbon but the response of global businesses to sustainability issues are less haphazard than you allow.

First, environmental responsibility as well as business continuity, stakeholder activity and regulatory demands means that corporate social responsibility activities are being influenced by a range of environmental indicators. These include carbon and water as well as waste and energy usage, and each carries particular reporting and management challenges.  For some years, we have seen businesses seeking to understand the global and local impacts of their operations and they are now working towards locating key facilities based on considerations such as energy security and water availability.

Second, effective world-wide monitoring and reporting is going to be critical to assessing businesses’ use of the earth’s resources. Real progress is being made on a global basis by initiatives such as the Carbon Disclosure Project - supported by many large companies - while at the corporate level, sustainability management platforms are starting to simplify firms’ monitoring of their environmental impacts across their operations.  Experts in this field believe these tools will eventually become as important as financial accounting, particularly as corporations will be required to manage the risks and communications issues around such fundamental issues.

The enterprise frameworks and reporting tools that address global sustainability challenges are becoming available and businesses are making use of them.

Yours faithfully
Sonny Masero, Vice President, CA

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Published: January 28 2010, 04:35 PM | no comments
by Christine Needles

We're excited to announce that our board has unanimously elected Bill McCracken as CA's chief executive officer. Bill has been CA's interim CEO since John A. Swainson's retirement was announced in September 2009.

To learn more about the beginning of this new chapter in CA history, visit the press release , view his bio, or check out the recent Carbon Council interview he had with CNBC in December:

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Published: January 05 2010, 11:05 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Dhesikan Ananchaperumal

Did you know that implementing an energy efficiency project can have an adverse effect on your energy efficiency metrics?  Many organizations today are taking a hard look at their energy efficiency and developing programs to improve on their stats.  Many of these initial projects are taking place within the datacenter – a large consumer of energy (and high energy cost center) within most enterprises.  If you’re relying on PUE or similar metrics to track your progress, you might be surprised at the results.

As you know, PUE is inversely proportional to the power consumed by the IT infrastructure.  And our goal is to keep the PUE as low as possible for greater efficiency.  A datacenter with a PUE of 1.2 is using 83.33% of the incoming power for running IT infrastructure related load. According to a recent Virtualization Journal post, “Most data centers today consider a target value of 1.5 good, with some companies such as Google trying to drive their PUE below 1.2 – an industry benchmark.” There’s always room for improvement, so now, suppose the IT team is planning to implement a virtualization project that will reduce the number of physical servers in a 5:1 ratio.

The goal is to reduce power consumption and total space needed for the devices, and to improve heat dissipation. The IT team decreased the number of server/network-gear racks from 5 to 1, which is approximately an 80% reduction in physical space, and as a result, reduced the server/network-gear power consumption. By improving circulation, they also reduced the amount of cooling required.

All told, let’s say this project resulted in a 50% reduction of power consumed by IT load – a respectable result. Now, what happens to our overall PUE value? Before the virtualization project, the datacenter’s PUE was 1.2. If you do the math, after implementing the virtualization project, the PUE has gone up to 1.4!

One way to interpret these numbers is to assume that the overall energy efficiency went down.  But that is not true. Another interpretation is that we need some energy optimization on the Non-IT load side, bringing the PUE value back to 1.2 or less. Based on the business needs and infrastructure set up, we might be able to come up with some user specific formulas to provide more clarity to these variations.

Herein lies the rub when it comes to interpreting energy efficiency metrics. Although we did a project to increase energy efficiency within our datacenter, the overall PUE metric shows the opposite results. How do we make sense of this?

Overcoming this discrepancy is an area that is still being worked on. It involves improving the definition of energy efficiency metrics like the PUE. One approach, in my view, is to associate the PUE variation to the energy and environmental variables within a datacenter. For example, we can have a PUE variance chart/graph with different function definitions for PUE variance. If we consider PUE variance as a function of outside air temperature, then the PUE variance chart/graph will provide the various details on what the actual PUE value should be depending on the outside temperature at any instance. A template of such visualization may look like the one below.

If we do a trend analysis using any type of regression, then the following may be one of them in which the regression type is linear.

In our previous scenario, where the PUE went from 1.2 to 1.4 after implementing an energy saver virtualization project, we should consider PUE variance as a function of the IT load. By doing this, the PUE variance chart/graph will clearly provide the necessary justification for the increase in the PUE value.  

Other ideas that are being tossed around for this is to use the old performance per watt kind of metrics to understand datacenter energy efficiency. If we can minimize the IT load by using virtualization or cloud computing, then the associated facilities overhead will also be minimized. Also, there are some concepts on DCP Index (Data Center Productivity Index) in which we define the useful work within a datacenter which is a challenge as well.

Although energy efficiency within the datacenter is a well known area of interest to many of us, it’s clear that there are some unresolved challenges involved with understanding the meaning of available metrics and learning how best to interpret the resulting data.  Depending on the business needs, infrastructure set-up, geographical locations, etc. of a datacenter, both the efficiency metrics being used and the relationship of these metrics to different variables may differ, and even slight changes to any of the variables can lead to misleading results. While clearer guidelines and best practices need to be developed within our industry, in the meantime, it’s important that each organization come up with its own functional definition to be able to show best results for improving the overall energy efficiency.

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Published: December 21 2009, 02:45 PM | no comments
by Sonny Masero

We all know that the expectations for the Copenhagen conference were very high, but after two years of negotiations many of those people closely involved in the negotiations knew, at least for the last few months, that a substantive agreement on global targets, finance and forestry was unlikely at the conference. There was hope that the appearance of so many powerful heads of state would make the difference, but ultimately many feel let down by the Copenhagen Accord.

The Accord has no hard target nor a clear position on measures to prevent further deforestation and perhaps most importantly there is no timetable for the legal agreement required to replace the Kyoto Agreement in 2012. Hope now turns to the negotiations in Germany in June and in Mexico in November 2010.

What can we take from Copenhagen? In the end we did see collaboration between some of the countries with the largest proportions of global emissions: USA, China, India, Brazil and South Africa agreed to the Accord, which included the vital reference point of a limit on global temperate rise of 2 degrees Celsius. Even if there is not a plan to deliver this goal it will be hard for global leaders to now challenge the science and the equity of the need to act on climate change. It is not a case of whether action will happen, but when.

The evidence base for urgent action is building and this includes the economic basis for early action before 2020 rather than further delay. The year 2010 will be a time for domestic climate policy to progress and for organizations to continue to position themselves for the transition to a low carbon economy. There are many who are already leading this change and are benefiting from this enlightened management of risk. Structural change is happening in many institutions on a global scale and only time will tell whether we are making that change quick enough.

As a company CA is preparing for a low carbon economy, both as an organization and in our products. The prospects for 2010-2015 are promising and we are already working with some of the organizations that are the sustainability leaders in their space. Like many other businesses though we need clarity from the UNFCCC negotiations in 2010 to ensure we invest wisely.

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Published: December 11 2009, 10:00 AM | no comments
by Sonny Masero

With President Obama and President Hu Jintao attending the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next week, the climate change community is almost at fever pitch. Why is Copenhagen a big deal? It has been billed as the event when an international agreement on global climate change policy will be agreed to supersede the Kyoto Agreement which comes to an end in 2012. To combat man-made climate change, the Kyoto agreement is responsible for introducing "emissions trading" and was the political basis for the international carbon market being established. The size of the carbon market in 2008 was estimated at between €92bn-€118bn and will continue to grow as more stringent targets are set and the scope expanded. The Kyoto Agreement also sets out greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for 26 countries in the European Union, Canada, Japan and Australia, amongst others. A successor agreement is vital for long term economic growth and for the future of the international carbon market.

In Copenhagen over the next fortnight, the reality is that a political agreement could be reached, which would set out the over-arching principles of a legal agreement. It will then be down to detailed negotiations over the next year before an enforceable agreement will be reached. Whatever the outcome, the fact that some of the most powerful men in the world will be in Copenhagen next week surrounded by the largest corporate lobby group seen at these negotiations in 15 years indicates that climate change is not about to disappear as an issue for the public or the private sector. In fact, the absence of an international agreement will make progress more complicated as regional and voluntary initiatives move forward regardless.

What does this mean for business? This high level of anticipation is an indication of the future direction of the market. Regional and national climate change policy and regulation is moving forward with or without an international agreement. Investors now see climate change as a material business risk. Companies now see carbon management and low carbon products and services as essential for competitive advantage. Governments recognize that their electorate is concerned about climate change and that they need to be seen to be taking action. The changes required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions won't come if the aim is just to protect the planet, but they will happen if the low carbon solutions also help reduce costs, demonstrate regulatory compliance, differentiate products & services, help to retain the best staff and respond to other stakeholder demands on transparency, active management and reporting. As national and international climate change policy grows up, environmental governance will mature as well.

The proliferation of voluntary and regulatory initiatives around the globe means there has been an exponential growth in data collection, analysis and reporting over the last few years. Due to the dispersed nature of the data collection, this is often a hidden cost within organizations, spread across several budget lines. Companies like Tesco have realized that a more intelligent solution is required to bring the spreadsheets under control. Working with CA ecoSoftware, Tesco is efficiently collecting data from its global operations providing immediate visibility through a centralized system. This is a competitive advantage because it provides better and more immediate information on which to make informed decision and make clear communications to a variety of audiences. The nature of this response is one example of the rapidly expanding demand for environmental software in response to the global debate on climate change.

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