The United States: Post-Copenhagen IT
COP15 has come and gone… leaving behind a bad taste for some and a grain of hope for the others. But no matter which of those two groups you belong to, outside of your window the movement toward more sustainable world continues.
The Information Technology is only one area of industry that is in full focus right now in the US. Just recently, the government and private sectors announced a $115 million dollars investment into 14 IT projects that would work on improvement of energy efficiency in the following areas:
- IT equipment
- Software
- Power supply chain and cooling
IT equipment and software projects will focus on servers and networking devices and how they can be optimized in order to be more energy efficient. Power supply chain projects will look at how to “minimize power loss and heat generation that occurs in server-based IT systems.” The cooling projects will focus on improvement of cooling equipment in order to use less energy.
From $115 million claimed, $47 million is coming from the U.S. Department of Energy. The following is a breakdown of how the funds will be distributed among IT companies based on their areas of specialty:
Funding for IT equipment and software projects will go to:
- SeaMicro Inc. – $9.3 million
- IBM T.J. Watson Research Center - $1.6 million
- Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs – $300,000
- California Institute of Technology – $300,000
Funding for power supply chain projects will go to:
- Hewlett-Packard Company – $7.4 million
- Power Assure, Inc – $5 million
- Columbia University – $2.8 million
- Lineage Power Corporation – $2.4 million
- BAE Systems – $222,000
Funding for cooling projects will go to:
- Yahoo! Inc. – $9.9 million
- Edison Materials Technology Center – $2.8 million
- IBM T.J. Watson Research Center – $2.3 million
- Alcatel-Lucent – $1.8 million
- Federspiel Controls, Inc. – $584,000
So if you, like so many, feel that the Copenhagen summit took away our last hope for change – think again. The only reason we didn’t reach the new treaty is because the countries couldn’t agree on the financial and legislative commitment toward each other at this time. But, that doesn’t mean that the commitments don’t exist on the national level, as we can see with the US – they just need to be re-thought and re-engineered in order to fit into the international level, as well. Once countries are clear on what they can do inside their own borders, they will become clearer on what they can offer between international borders, as well.
So, let’s just keep going.
We should obviously remain optimistic, Rome wasn’t built in a day and wasn’t even really destroyed in a day… Any effort that decreases emissions of greenhouse gasses is important and of all people, the US has to start to lead by example in being the good guys without waiting for the Chinas of the world, it was the gas-guzzling bad guy for much too long.
But entertaining a consistent boycott of goods produced in countries that don’t want to sign the strict climate protocols should be on the table as well.
Now, one other thing: getting paid for doing good is great, but of course even more commendable is what I have seen in Copenhagen: people living the green life: not owning cars, riding bicycles all year round, wearing an extra sweater instead of turning up their thermostat, cutting down on meat and befriending people who do the same… Now the peer pressure and a fear of exclusion may be a great motivator starting as early as in grade school.
And yes, boycotting the bad guys, well, it has worked with Walmart, it will work with GM and China, sooner than we believe.