Google expands purchase of green power in Africa and Europe

In two separate deals in the last two weeks, Google has increased its investment in green power to source its vast electricity needs for data centers. 

After signing a 10-year deal with a South-african solar power plant, they closed also a 10-year deal with a Swedish onshore windfarm (72 megawatts) to power their Finnish data center. The best thing about this is that they specifically looked for a net new green energy opportunity to ensure their funding would add additional positive impact rather than purchasing from existing sources. This engagement secured the funding to even begin with the wind farm.

This adds to their existing $1bn portfolio of green energy investments. Well done, Google!

Reinventing fire

Watch Amory Lovins give an information-packed talk on how we can go from the current gridlock mess to a bright future of energy independency. In in the meantime savings trillions of dollar and providing lots of entrepreneurial opportunities.



A must see! Then go visit Rocky Mountain Institute's "Reinventing Fire" site to learn more about this can be done in this graphic.

Google ends RE <C

In a recent announcement of out-of-season spring cleaning (EOL for Google projects that didn't play out as planned), Google decided to end their efforts to make the production of Renewable Energy more cost efficient than Coal (RE < C). This ambitious initiative ran for four years and results on solar thermal (heliostat) and geothermal energy are published and broadly available.

Stopping this project does not mean Google abandons their attention to green energy. They continue to invest heavily in Renewable Energy (more than $850 million) and also are leading on Data Center efficiency. However, some doubts remains about their future direction as Bill Weihl, google.org's Green Czar and driving force behind many initiatives,  has decided to leave the company in November 2011.

Cloud Computing is Greener

A recent study from Microsoft (with Accenture and WSP), "Cloud Computing and Sustainability" showed that companies can reduce the energy use and carbon footprint of computing by up to 90 percent by outsourcing applications.

Check out this HBR article Cloud Computing is Greener for more information.

New Dublin office measures electricity consumption in real time

As part of the new office build out, our local Dublin green team has installed electricity smart meters. The system, made by Eniscope, measures consumption in real time, collects the data from one or more meters and offers it up in powerful analytics. They also offer a service to review your consumption patterns and recommend improvements in energy efficiency. This, plus the overall consumption awareness, will lead to lower energy usage and lower cost.

We are planning to monitor this in our Dublin facilities and consider broader roll out to more facilities.

Green IT initiatives rising

In 2009 the number of green IT initiatives has been rising to 28% of major companies as outlined in a survey by Forrester.

Of the companies with green IT projects, 2/3 list reduction in energy cost as the driver and 1/3 name "the right thing for the environment" as their driver.

Workday certainly can help on both ends as a SaaS solution...

First Green Conference for Internet Tech

In March '09, San Francisco hosted an interesting conference on Green Internet Technologies called Green:Net 09. This conference had lots of interesting talks, most of which you can view for free on YouTube.

Start with this panel talk and hunt for related videos from there. Lots of cool stuff going on out there...

Rent green with Enterprise

Good news! Workday has negotiated a new Rental Car Agreement with Enterprise. They offer us the lowest rates in the "Bay Area". And, as reported recently, Enterprise currently offers a carbon offset option, which is even matched 1:1. The best part is, you can now select the carbon offset option and expense it along with your rental cost, so any of the CO2 emitted during your drive will be offset by clean energy with TerraPass.

When you get to the page "Verify your information and Book your Rental" the option Go Green with your Rental is on the right and you click Add. This will add $1.25 to the rental and recalculate the price. (We cannot auto-elect this option, individuals have to do it.)

We have not signed a national agreement with them yet but will in the very near future. So these low price deals are only in the Bay Area which include Pleasanton, SFO, Oakland and San Jose Airports and all other downtown locations. We'll let you know when we have our national agreement.

Thanks to Betty and our Finance execs for making this happen! Let's give Enterprise lots of good business for being green leaders.

p.s. with this we should not select the more expensive hybrid vehicles as our offsets compensate.

Green Workday!

Hey, that was my original blog title, but someone else took it! Anyways, there is a new initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by leveraging videoconferencing and to promote telecommuting. A bit self serving (to the conferencing software company), but still a contribution. Check out Green Workday...

Green Predictions 2009

InfoWorld's Ted Samson has asked 10 industry IT leaders for their predictions for 2009. Will the economic downturn kill green initiatives? Or will the energy savings drive more initiatives? What will happen in Green data centers?

My favorite was by Microsoft: "What are best practices to reduce energy and computational resource consumption for application design? Sloppy code is wasteful. Not only is it slow, error prone, and often not extensible, it usually wastes energy and utilizes unnecessary computational resources. This has a significantly negative impact on the environment. However, most architects are given the "virtualize the problem away" answer for environmental sustainability."

So let's build the most efficient apps we can and be green. :-)

Also noteworthy:
* AMD predicts the start of carbon budgets to prepare for coming regulations.
* Forrester thinks energy savings will shift from data center focus to all distributed PCs (think Energy Star 5.0)
* Cisco calls cloud computing the next green killer app and Microsoft predicts cloud providers will report environmental metrics and provide concrete green operational level agreements for enterprises

Climate Action Report 2008

The Climate Action programme, an international organization aimed to help governments and companies to reach their climate goals, has posted their latest Climate Action Report 2008.

This free online report offers lots of interesting articles on legislation, technology, finance and other related categorizes. Go take a look...

The business case for greener IT

At Workday Rising, our platinum sponsor Accenture distributed their "Outlook" magazine and it had an interesting article titled "The business case for a greener IT agenda" in it. It outlines that while green efforts are not quite mainstream and fully regulated, they become more and more prevalent, especially in the IT departments. The CIO as eco-champion can drive 5 focal points:
* Don't let up on the data center: Lots of savings to be had here
* Foster green work practices: Anything from telecommuting to duplex printing to turning off the monitors help
* Rewire the office: Use VoiP, be smart about your infrastructure
* Purchase with green intent: Choose the right vendors and products
* Elevate corporate citizenship: Work with your communities on hardware donations and recycling

Finally, Accenture predicts more and more CIOs will be asked for green initiatives so it's better to be prepared!

At Workday, our very own Jim Hopp is definitely an eco-champion. We are on top of the data center efficiency, encourage green employee behavior, purchase energy-efficient laptops and servers (see also our Climate Savers commitment). We should be relentless in our pursuit to be a sustainable green SaaS vendor - it is and will be even more so a strong value-add!

Green sponsor of Workday Rising

Blogging live from Workday Rising 2008, I am proud to announce that this conference does not only have Platinum, Gold, Silver sponsors, but also a Green sponsor. Collaborative Solutions is offering re-usable aluminum water mugs for everyone to replenish during the conference. Also, the re-usable conference (shopping) bag sports a nice "You are GREEN" on the back side...

Go Green!

Workday Germany goes CO2 neutral (of course)

As some might have expected, I was looking for a carbon-neutral way to provide an office in Germany. Starting November, the 5 German employees will have a home in a shared office provided by "Plug&Work". I told them that environmental concerns are high on my list, especially carbon offsetting. Well, turns out their General Manager is big on the topic, too, and is involved in a reforestation effort lead by Global Woods. Although details remain to be found out, the CO2 offsets are provided by CarbonFix, which does reforestation in several project. The main project is named KIKONDA in Uganda. Check it out.

Now I will get on them for recycling and such....:-)

From the green island...

Natasha from our Dublin office has written a great note on how green our Irish office and employees operate:

"I thought I'd give you a snap shot of how we typically live here in Fumbally Square....

We use minimal paper (can quantify yearly consumption if needed), we
have a monthly recycling and shredding service that takes this paper
away.   Paper mostly used by Brian Montgomery and me, for accounting
purposes. 

We have a cargo bin that has a recycle part and a normal rubbish bin in
our kitchen.  We are all used to recycling all we can as at home we get
charged for each bin collection and the weight of it!  Makes us
excellent at the recycling ;-)

I have started purchasing recycled paper note pads for the stationery
cupboard.  Actually this happened by accident but still will claim it in
the name of the green movement. 

We stopped supplying coke/sods cans; we had stocked the fridge with them
for the past few months but decided instead to purchase fruit juices and
stock the fridge with mostly organic chocolate and with fruit from our
local fruit shop - less packaging.   

Since 2002 in the Republic of Ireland, the government has had a 'plastic
bag levy'.  We get charged 22cent for each plastic bag we get from a
shop so everyone typically uses a bag for life or creatively carries
their shopping home. 

At Workday Dublin, we buy our coffee and now tea from Java Republic, a
company that buys directly from  Fairtrade - certified suppliers, or
directly from growers and co-operatives.  Tastes really good too. 

We have a water filter machine that filters the water at source and we
do not use disposable plastic cups or disposable plates/cutlery.  

I'm investigating getting our cleaning company to supply us with
bio-degradable plastic bin bags for bins at our desks and eco-friendly
dishwashing tablets.  This should be achievable. 

For our office move we recycled everything that we could, paper files
that were no longer in use, old CD's etc, we even reused all of our old
furniture ;-)  

We have just three car parking spaces at our new office, meaning that
your Workday Dublin colleagues mostly cycle, walk and get public
transport to work and usually only drive when absolutely necessary. 

We aren't currently doing anything about our flights."

This is excellent - thanks Natasha!

Introducing the Green Team

Many employees of Workday are passionate about environmental causes and are helping to make our company an example of sustainability. Corporate responsibility can never be done by one individual only, so we formed a group called "the green team".

The team spans employees from HR, facilities, Hosting, Sales, Marketing and Development - the entire company. We meet every once in a while to discuss what we are doing today, what we can or should be doing next and how to engage the rest of the workforce in our efforts.

In our first meeting we talked about our current "green marketing message", our carbon offsets level, our recycling activities, our new office plans and how Workday can become a certified green business of Contra Costa. Check out our meeting minutes in confluence for details...

Operating Green

Thanks to Heather and Jenny, I was invited to a seminar this week titled "Operating Green: Green Initiatives to Increase Business Efficiency". It was held at a Woodruff-Sawyer & Co, a company specializing on insurance and risk management and a lot of real estate.

The agenda feature a speaker from law firm giving an interesting update about upcoming green legislation (AB32 and Lieberman-Warner). He was extremely knowledgeable and had actually pushed his own law firm to implement a full green business program in 2003. Other speakers featured a talk about the Green Business Initiative, an interesting opportunity to align your company's operations with green goals. We should evaluate how we could participate in such an assessment.

If you have more interest in any of these topics, let me know...