ICTs and the Environment

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ICTs and the Environment ISACC Perspective
DOCUMENT GSC13-PLEN-03
FOR Presentation
SOURCE ISACC
AGENDA ITEM 6.9 (Plenary) ICTs and the Environment
CONTACT(S) Jim MacFie

• Jim MacFie
• ISACC

Submission DateJune 26, 2008
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Highlight of Current ActivitiesJanuary 29, 2008,
Plenary

• ICT and the Environment
• Industry Canada
• Electronics Product Recycling Standards
• Electronic Product Stewardship Canada
• Smart Metering
• Triacta Power Technologies
• Saving the Planet at the Speed of Light
• CANARIE
• Energy Efficient Ethernet
• IEEE 802.3az

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Strategic Direction

• No clear operating standards for Waste
  Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
  recycling industry in Canada
• Founded Electronics Product Stewardship Canada
  working with regulators to implement shared
  responsibility stewardship model with roles for
  industry, government, and consumers.
• EPSC drafted the Electronics Recycling Standard
  to establish basic criteria electronics recyclers
  must meet
• Incorporates concerns and feedback from
  electronics manufacturers, environmental groups,
  and electronics recyclers
• Goes beyond provisions of ISO 14001 and addresses
  specific issues resulting from recycling
  electronics
• Enhanced requirements for Environment, Health
  safety
• Prohibits use of prison labour
• Prohibits shipping material to developing/non-OECD
  countries
• Reinforces downstream accountability of waste

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Strategic Direction

• More efficient computers and network equipment
• Marginal gains
• Zero carbon data centers at remote renewable
  energy sites linked by optical networks
• New Internet architectures with servers,
  computers and storage collocated at remote
  renewable energy sites such as hydro dams,
  windmill farms, etc
• New routing and resiliency architectures for
  wired and wireless networks for massively
  disruptive topology changes due to setting sun or
  waning winds that power routers and servers
• New grid and data storage architectures with
  distributed replication and virtual machines
• New stats and measurement analysis of bits per
  carbon (bpc) utilization, optimized carbon
  routing tables, etc

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Challenges

• Measure of value for energy efficiency is lacking
• Some considerations
• watts normalized per bit, per line, per
  subscriber
• busy vs. idle values
• network element vs. end-to-end application
• instantaneous vs. time integrated
• Test specifications will also be required

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Next Steps/Actions

• ISACC is willing to partner with GSC members on
  energy efficiency metrics and recycling
  harmonization.
• ISACC proposes a new GSC Resolution on ICTs and
  the Environment and has provided draft text.