Can the airline industry give us any insights to green computing?
On Thursday 24th April I was at a lecture at the RI given by Ian Poll, Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Business Development and Technical Director of Cranfield Aerospace Limited, and Bill Glover, Boeing's environmental strategy chief, on what the airline industry is doing to make air travel greener.
A number of parallels struck me between the Airline Industry and the IT industry and this blog explores those parallels. There were no handouts provided at the lecture so the source for this Blog are my notes plus cited internet searches.
Both industries contribute around 2% to global CO2 emissions so you would expect little excitement from the public and media.
However the airline industry's visibility, the discretionary nature of tourist travel, and concern over "food miles" make it a focus for green campaigners.
In IT we are under less immediate media attention however the increasing demand for electric power and the inability of our current data centres to meet this demand, especially around London with the demands of the Olympics coming, mean data centre electricity could be rationed.
| Aspect | Airline | IT |
| Utilisation - the higher the utilisation the lower the CO2 | Higher seat occupancy means lower CO2 per passenger and lower the costs. Airlines have a range of aircraft with different capacities and ranges to optimise utilisation. Variable pricing is used to make use of unused capacity. | Higher server utilisation the lower the CO2 per unit of work. Many servers operate at less than 15% utilisation. Consolidation and Virtualisation techniques allow multiple applications and disparate workloads to be run on the same server. |
| Consumer behaviour | Reduce air travel frequency and distance. Buy local (not always the greenest option overall). Travel lighter. Air traffic management enhance safety, maximise capacity and minimise environmental impact. | Although we have technology solutions to sharing servers and storage we struggle to assist customers to adopt charging models that encourage shared services. Another technique is to use s/w as a service rather than purchase it and run it yourself. This Software as a Service (SaaS) is taking off slowly. |
| Industry targets | Reduce CO2 emissions per passenger mile by 50% by 2020. | |
| New Technology and packaging | 2nd generation bio fuels e.g. derived from algae. New aircraft shapes - e.g. Blended wing design Engine efficiency improvements. | Multi core chips, 3D chips. Dense low-power memory e.g. phase change memory |
| Application efficiency | Reduce stacking so fuel isn't wasted. Route optimisation. | Application and middleware design using compiler options to optimise performance. (I read somewhere that COBOL was 10 times more efficient than Java in terms of use of system resources) |
The January 2008 edition of Aerogram from Cranfield University focuses on green issues and gives more detail.
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Comments (5)
Leave CommentDoes the 2% of CO2 contributions include any offset for - the internet, providing communication without travel - home-working, enabled through electronic means - online shopping, allowing far more efficient distribution mechanisms than individual car journeys - improved efficiencies in manufacturing, power generation (and transmission), distribution networks, etc, resulting from deployment of IT systems Switch off the computers and CO2 emissions will rise.
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Excellent points well made, Alan. One thought on the "plus side" for ICT is the amount of travel we are now eliminating through use of ICT - I find myself attending far more meetings through video conference and travelling far less than ever before. A sea-change in the last year or two (in my own experience) from occasional use to a really quite regular part of my working life. That is not to detract from the points that you make - the parallels are fascinating - but these parallel tracks also cross occasionally!
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This comparison points up the importance of having the right target. We need to reduce our total emission of greenhouse gases. There's scope for disagreement about how far and how fast but no doubt that REDUCTION is essential. So the goal to "Reduce CO2 emissions per passenger mile by 50% by 2020." is the wrong one. Even if achieved the benefit will almost certainly be wiped out by increases in passenger-miles. What's needed is a set of goals for reducing total aviation-related emissions by: * 3% by 2009 * 6% by 2010 * ... * 50% by 2020. Of course, the aviation industry (which keeps planes in service for many years and constantly seeks growth) won't meet its own target - the technical challenge is too great. In IT, however, we can deliver real reductions if we put our minds to it. The longest journey starts with a single step - making the first 12 month reduction.
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If you are looking for information about algae biofuel, you may want to check out: www.nationalalgaeassociation.com
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What does it mean by air travel greener? From where I can get more information about this?
http://www.globester.com/
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