Environmental Stewardship and Green Computing

In March 2007 President Simpson signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) on behalf of the University at Buffalo, making UB one of the charter signatories of this initiative aimed at reducing one of the great threats of our age: global climate change. The ACUPCC currently has more than 400 institutional members across the U.S. and commits us all to achieve "climate neutrality" according to a plan that we must devise by September 2009.

UB has created a Committee on Environmental Stewardship, charged with conducting an inventory of campus greenhouse gas emissions by September 2008, as well as with creating a plan to lead us to climate neutrality by September 2009.

UB has recently been recognized by the EPA as an "Individual Conference Champion" for their purchase of green power and for taking a leadership role among colleges and universities in support of a better environmental future. See 2008-2008 College and University Green Power Challenge Champions. UB's green accomplishments and additional information on UB's environmental leadership can be found at the following web site: A Greener Shade of Blue: UB Demonstrating Environmental Leadership.

Some current and potential UB Green Computing initiatives follow.

Green Computing – Current and Potential Initiatives - This Site is Under Development

Power Management
Purchasing Energy-efficient Hardware
Green Data Center
Virtualization
Materials Recycling and Reduction of Materials Consumption
Green Transportation Initiatives
Miscellaneous Green Initiatives

Power Management
Power management technology enables systems to automatically turn off components such as monitors after set periods of inactivity. In addition, a system may hibernate, in which it turns off nearly all components, including the CPU and RAM, greatly reducing the system's electricity usage.

What We Have Done

• “Wake on LAN” (WOL) capabilities have been deployed in several units on campus, enabling workstations to be shut down/powered-down when not in use and booted remotely for management, including patching, by IT network/system administrators.

What We Can Do

• Investigate the use of “Wake on LAN” capabilities for additional workstations, particularly those in the public sites and departmental labs
• Building on WOL, add features to the Condor configuration to only wake computers based on computational demand. Condor allows the unused compute cycles of idle computers to be used by research faculty.
• Educate the UB community to enable power management features on their PCs and Macs and to turn off workstations when they are not in use

Purchase of Energy-efficient Hardware: Low Power Systems and Thin Client Workstations

What We Have Done

• UB2020 standardized workstations and laptops (Dell, Apple) available for heavily discounted purchases are green (energy/power efficient machines).  We projected campus sales of ~4000 UB2020 workstations/laptops annually and reached 2,315 UB2020-standardized Dell computer purchases by the end of January this fiscal year. More than 80% of UBMicro sales are for the UB2020 standardized machines.
• The latest UB2020 Dell Optiplex 755 workstation is especially efficient: Energy Star 4.0-qualified.
• IT Transformation consolidation efforts have enabled the shutdown of several campus servers with more to come
• We have also replaced several end-of-life servers with more energy- and space-efficient servers

What We Can Do

• Low power thin client workstations are being considered to replace higher power consumption PCs/workstations in CIT
• We are looking at the Sun Ray technology to see if it would be an eco-friendly replacement for staff workstations in Enterprise Infrastructure Services, CIT
• Use cycles/watt or other energy criterion in the selection of server hardware
• The UB2020 Workstation Standardization Committee is adding more configurations/options to the array of computers available for discounted purchases, in order to meet additional campus needs. This will result increase purchases of these “green” energy-efficient computers.

Green Data Center
Data Centers with their concentration of servers with high-end power and cooling needs are among the largest consumers of electricity on campus. "Green Data Centers" are designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimum environmental impact. Dell is providing their expertise in designing and configuring energy efficient data centers.

Data Center Efficiency Statistics (From www.infoWorld.com and McKinsey and Company)

Virtualization
With virtualization, several physical systems are combined into virtual machines on one single, powerful system, thereby enabling unplugging of several physical systems/hardware and reducing power and cooling consumption.

What We Have Done

• Currently in the process of deploying hardware virtualization in CIT, reducing power and cooling consumption

What We Can Do

• Increase hardware virtualization use as campus IT server consolidation efforts proceed

Materials Recycling and Reduction of Materials Consumption

What We Have Done

• Print Management technology has greatly reduced paper and toner consumption in the public computing sites.  We began implementing print management solutions in 2004. The following chart shows the reduction in page volume from 2003-2008.
  
  
  
• Re-engineered paper transaction and other administrative processes to reduce paper usage
• Provide on-line grade processing and inquiry
• Replaced paper transactions with electronic transactions; Examples: ereq & eptf
• Use of email notification to students rather than USPS mail: Use of MyUB for communication rather than USPS mail
• Changed to recycled paper for copiers/printers as recommended by purchasing
• Use of  ink jet printers (more efficient than laser printers) where possible and recycled printer cartridges

What We Can Do

• We are currently working on rolling out the public computing sites print management technology (iPrint) to academic decanal/departmental student computing labs, beginning with the Schools of Nursing and Public Health and Health Professions. Nursing/PHHP have reduced paper consumption in their public lab for students greatly from ~5 reams a day in the Fall Semester to ~3 reams a day this Spring.
• Promote "green" practices to staff
• Replace printed reports, agendas, and meeting notes with electronic versions
• Re-engineer additional processes to
  • Reduce paper usage
  • Eliminate the need for customers to go to an office for a transaction
  • Increase workflow processing
  • Use electronic document management systems
• Encourage charitable donations of older equipment where possible; promote green recycling of old equipment via vendor/retail recycling programs and municipal recycling drives in order to keep equipment and dangerous materials out of land fills

What We Have Done

• Use two electric GEM cars for staff summer transportation needs in Operational Support Services
• UBMicro IT Support also uses electric cars for transportation/deliveries.

What We Can Do

• Investigate telecommuting for staff
• Develop simpler and more robust video and audio conferencing capabilities
• Expand our own use of these conferencing tools for routine meetings – once a month—and long distance travel
• Encourage staff to take campus transportation when possible, car pool to meetings on campus

Miscellaneous Green Initiatives

What We Have Done

• Encourage recycling in the office and at central receptacle locations
• Currently have deployed or are deploying new switches
• VoIP: Use of VoIP reduces power consumption in the communications closets

What We Can Do

• Investigate alternative work schedules such as a four day work week for staff
• Promote the aggressive use of online document management tools; discourage the use of paper for routine meetings
• Replace light switches in the conference rooms/classrooms we manage to be motion activated
• Encourage recycling in the CoE – currently RPCI cleaning staff don’t separate out paper
• Look for opportunities to conserve energy when we build the new data center
• Dell is coming in this spring to provide their expertise in energy efficiency.