Energy Matters

ET, IT, EIT : Solving Energy and Economic Crisis

ET: Energy Technology

IT: Information Technology

EIT: Energy and Information Technology

Monday September 29th, 2008 - Wall Street dropped 777.68 points yesterday. 

Got everybody's attention, didn't it?

Had a global impact too.  Asian and European markets down and Russian markets closed early.  The price of oil dropped & gold shot up.

Markets are back up today but the fundamental problem is still with us. 

What's this got to do with energy?  Especially IT energy?

Author and Columnist Tom Friedman suggests that re-thinking energy technology (ET) may be the way out of both the economic and the energy mess.  And if he's right, if that's the way out, then information technology (IT) is the way to enable that way. 

So, I think we should combine the two. Make it EIT, energy and information technology.  The perfect combination.  The way to spin gold from IT, as well as the way to spin the global economy to more productive and efficient operation.

Of course we still need to deal with the financial mess on Wall Street and to help out individual mortgage holders.  And it would be great if governments would encourage energy innovation. Get beyond drilling - which will take too long and never solve the problem. Friedman likens drilling to demanding more IBM selectric typewriters as the Internet boomed.

(Typewriters?. Yep.  That's why some of us "type" and some "keyboard".  It's a generational thing.)

Friedman's idea makes sense to me:

"America has a problem and the world has a problem....And I  think we solve our problem by solving the world's problem.  ...what I call ET, energy technology, is going to be the next IT, the next great industrial revolution."

It's a provocative idea. And judging by the activities yesterday in Congress, we need some new ways to think about these things.

Friedman thinks the way to do this is in much the same way IT and the Internet developed - not a Manhattan Project but 100,000 inventors - big companies, small companies, people in garages. 

The venture capital pool was already investing here.  Events of the last few weeks shouldn't be allowed to slow it down.  Just the opposite.

We need that investment to innovate our way to cleaner power and out of this economic mess. 

Who better to fuel that innovation and leadership than those who did it for IT?

Who better to discard carbon technologies for advanced clean technologies?

Like tossing the selectric but more far reaching.

IT professionals know that IT efficiency is gained through a strategic systems approach that innovates individual parts and then assembles and integrates the whole.  It takes planning and hard work and imagination. 

It pays off in competitive advantage and shareholder value.

How about virtualization and cloud computing as models?  As integral resources too.

At the end of an interview, Tom Brokaw asked Friedman about skeptics who say, "...I just don't believer climate change is real."

His answer was that it doesn't matter.  "Because everything we would do to get ready for climate change, to build this new green industry, would make us more respected, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, more healthy as a country."

Same is true for green IT.  You can be an environmentalist or a hard-nosed business person. 

It doesn't make a difference. 

Actions to save IT energy and to become more efficient are the same regardless of your motivation.  They serve to drive out costs and increase value.

Question is, can the same be done for the global economy - EIT?

Worth a try. 

Probably faster than Congress.

Technorati Tags: EMC,data storage,Symmetrix,CLARiiON,energy,IT energy,data center,DMX,CX,Energy Efficiency,Green IT,VMware,RSA,Energy Plans,IT energy strategy,useable capacity,ET,EIT,financial crisis,climate change

Spinning Gold from IT

"To-day do I bake, to-morrow I brew,

The day after that the queen's child comes in;

And oh! I am glad that nobody knew

That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"  

Rumpelstiltskin turned straw to gold. 

It only happens in fairy tales.

For more practical wealth creation, try Information Communications Technology.   There's a growing list of innovations aiming to do just that with energy, efficiency and the environment as central motivation - next to gold of course.

All the green ink spilled on IT energy inefficiencies has tended to overlook positive impacts on the general economy.  More important to individual businesses, there are positive bottom line impacts too.

Back in February, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) published a study that pointed to productivity gains resulting from ICT as a major force in overall energy efficiency advances.  Their analysis was that:

"For every extra kilowatt-hour of electricity that has been demanded by ICT, the US economy increased its overall energy savings by a factor of about 10”

“Huge cost reductions and important ICT innovations have worked together to drive the expansion and diffusion of new applications that have subsequently enabled the development of additional high-tech products and services, new investments, and new ways of doing things. In other words, the positive economic feedback generated by most ICT innovations has stimulated higher levels of economic productivity and driven net gains in cost-effective energy savings throughout the U.S. economy.”

Said another way, ICT helps save energy. 

You could argue the cause and effect relationships but now they are becoming more direct.

An article appeared in the 9.14 Boston Globe's Innovation Economy section titled "Energized by New Career Prospects" .  It includes example opportunities for entrepreneurs,  investors and job seekers to explore green ventures.  There are several related tracks, including green building, transportation, renewable energy,  smart grids and more. 

IT is fundamental to nearly all of it.

Energy Matters More

Last week was the one year anniversary of this blog.

I thank Chuck Hollis for urging me to do it and I thank my kids for laughing at the idea - which provided the motivation to stubbornly prove that I could.

I wish I could devote more time but still, it's been a fun and enlightening experience,  For example, I've learned that there is more to energy than, well, energy. 

Think of that big many-mirrored  spinning ball over a disco floor. (Look here if you asked "What's disco?").  A single beam of light is split into thousands of divergent, shiny moving beams.  Each started as light energy. Each moving in a different direction.  How many can you chase?

The baseline story is that Information Technology uses lots of power.  Energy costs are on the increase and energy supplies are much tighter.  Consequences for IT are growing.

Still, fixing the IT energy problem can be deceptively simple. 

Easy to say:

"Become efficient in your use of energy and you will improve your business while helping the environment at the same time."

Easy to do:

Repeat what's easy to say.