The International Energy Agency’s has just released it’s annual publication the World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2008. IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said that the report highlights that current trends in energy supply and consumption are “patently unsustainable, environmentally, economically and socially. They can and must be altered.”

The WEO-2008 Reference Scenario assumes no new government policies, and shows that world primary energy demand grows by 1.6% per year on average between 2006 and 2030—an increase of 45%. This is slower than projected last year, mainly due to the impact of the economic slowdown, prospects for higher energy prices and some new policy initiatives.

One truly shocking statistic, bearing in mind that 500 parts per million is considered the point of no return, is the projected rise in greenhouse gas emissions if there is no change in government policies. It is predicted that they will rise to an atmospheric concentration of around 1 000 parts per million of CO2-equivalent by the end of this century. This would lead to an eventual global temperature increase of up to 6° C.

Despite the predicted progress of Renewable Energy projects, fossil fuels will still account for 80% of the world’s primary energy mix in 2030. Oil remains the dominant fuel, though demand for coal rises more than any other fuel. The share of natural gas in total energy demand rises marginally. Modern renewable technologies grow most rapidly, overtaking gas soon after 2010 to become the second-largest source of electricity behind coal.

These trends take account of current policies to reduce subsidies on energy consumption, which amounted to $310 billion in the 20 largest non-OECD countries alone in 2007 (of which oil subsidies accounted for $150 billion).

The two giants in growing demand are predictably, China and India, which account for more than half of incremental energy demand to 2030 while the Middle East emerges as a major new demand center. The share of the world’s energy consumed in cities grows from two-thirds to almost three-quarters in 2030. Nearly all of the increase in fossil-energy production occurs in non-OECD countries.

World oil demand is set to continue to expand through to 2030 on current trends, albeit more slowly than over the past two decades. In the Reference Scenario, primary demand for oil (excluding biofuels) rises by 1% per year on average, from 85 million barrels per day in 2007 to 106 mb/d in 2030.

This is a significant downward revision from last year’s Outlook, reflecting mainly the impact of higher prices and slightly slower GDP growth. New policies to promote more fuel-efficient vehicles and encourage biofuels introduced in the past year—notably in the United States and Europe—also contribute to slower demand.

The global trend masks big differences across regions—all of the projected increase in world oil demand comes from non-OECD countries. India sees the fastest growth, averaging 3.9% per year over the projection period (to 2030), followed by China, at 3.5%. High as they are, these growth rates are still significantly lower than in the past. Other emerging Asian economies and the Middle East also see rapid growth.

In contrast, demand in all three OECD regions (North America, Europe and the Pacific) falls, due to declining non-transport demand. The share of OECD countries in global oil demand drops from 57% in 2007 to 43% in 2030.

Around three-quarters of the projected increase in oil demand worldwide comes from the transport sector. Despite continuing improvements in average vehicle fuel efficiency, the growth of the world car parc—from an estimated 650 million in 2005 to about 1.4 billion by 2030—is expected to continue to push up total oil use for transport purposes.

There is not expected to be any major shift away from conventionally-fueled vehicles before 2030, though the penetration of hybrid-electric cars is projected to rise, reducing oil demand growth.

The IEA projects that the crude oil import price will average $100 per barrel (in real year-2007 dollars) over the period 2008-2015, rising to more than $120 in 2030. This represents a major upward adjustment from last year’s Outlook, reflecting the higher prices for near-term physical delivery and for futures contracts, as well as a reassessment of the prospects for the cost of oil supply and the outlook for demand.

In nominal terms, prices double to just over $200 per barrel in 2030. However, the IEA cautions, pronounced short-term swings in prices are likely to remain the norm and temporary price spikes or sharp falls cannot be ruled out.

These oil demand projections, combined with the price assumptions, point to persistently high levels of spending on oil in both OECD and non-OECD countries. As a share of world GDP at market exchange rates, oil spending rose from a little more than 1% in 1999 to around 4% in 2007, contributing to the economic downturn experienced by most oil-consuming countries. IEA projects that to stabilize at around 5% over much of the projection period. For non-OECD countries, the share averages 6% to 7%.

The IEA says that total oil production will not peak before 2030, although the production of conventional oil, including crude oil, natural gas liquids (NGLs) and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is expected to level off toward the end of the production period.

Conventional crude oil production alone increases only modestly over 2007-2030—by 5 mb/d—as almost all the additional capacity from new oilfields is offset by declines in output at existing fields. The bulk of the net increase in total oil production comes from NGLs (driven by the relatively rapid expansion in gas supply) and from non-conventional resources and technologies, including Canadian oil sands.

…The projected increase in global oil output hinges on adequate and timely investment. Some 64 mb/d of additional gross capacity—the equivalent of almost six times that of Saudi Arabia today—needs to be brought on stream between 2007 and 2030. Some 30 mb/d of new capacity is needed by 2015. There remains a real risk that under-investment will cause an oil-supply crunch in that timeframe.

—WEO 2008
The IEA cautions that one major uncertainty for supply concerns the rate at which output from producing oilfields declines as they mature. A detailed field-by-field analysis of the historical production trends of 800 fields (including all 54 super-giants holding more than 5 billion barrels) indicated that observed decline rates (the observable fall in production) are likely to accelerate in the long term in each major world region.

Decline rates are lowest for the biggest fields: they average 3.4% for super-giant fields, 6.5% for giant fields and 10.4% for large fields. Observed decline rates vary markedly by region; they are lowest in the Middle East and highest in the North Sea. This reflects, to a large extent, differences in the average size of fields, which in turn is related to the extent to which overall reserves are depleted and whether they are located onshore or offshore. Adjusting for the higher decline rates of smaller fields explains the higher estimated decline rate for the world.

—WEO 2008
Greenhouse gases and global warming. WEO 2008 includes a 550 Policy Scenario and a 450 Policy Scenario as alternative policy scenarios that stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 550 ppm (approximate 3&degC temperature rise) and 450 ppm (approximate 2° C increase). The two policy scenarios have a similar emissions trajectory until 2020, but emissions fall much more sharply after 2020 in the 450 Policy Scenario.

Both climate-policy scenarios assume a hybrid policy approach, comprising a combination of cap-and-trade systems, sectoral agreements and national measures.

Achieving those levels of reduction requires much more investment in energy-related infrastructure and equipment. Global energy investment in 2010-2030 is $4.1 trillion (or 0.25% of annual world GDP) higher in the 550 Policy Scenario than in the Reference Scenario. Most extra spending is on the demand side, with $17 per person per year spent worldwide on more efficient cars, appliances and buildings.

To achieve the 450 ppm level, the IEA projects global energy investment is $9.3 trillion, or 0.55% of annual world GDP, higher than in the Reference Scenario. Achieving such an outcome will require much more rapid growth in the use of hydropower, biomass, wind and other renewables, which together account for 40% of global power generation by 2030. Yet-to-be-demonstrated technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) also contribute significantly to lower emissions.

For all the uncertainties highlighted in this report, we can be certain that the energy world will look a lot different in 2030 than it does today. The world energy system will be transformed, but not necessarily in the way we would like to see. We can be confident of some of the trends highlighted in this report: the growing weight of China, India, the Middle East and other non-OECD regions in energy markets and in CO2 emissions; the rapidly increasing dominance of national oil companies; and the emergence of low-carbon energy technologies. And while market imbalances could temporarily cause prices to fall back, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the era of cheap oil is over.

But many of the key policy drivers (not to mention other, external factors) remain in doubt. It is within the power of all governments, of producing and consuming countries alike, acting alone or together, to steer the world towards a cleaner, cleverer and more competitive energy system. Time is running out and the time to act is now. WEO 2008

We cannot let the financial and economic crisis delay the policy action that is urgently needed to ensure secure energy supplies and to curtail rising emissions of greenhouse gases. We must usher in a global energy revolution by improving energy efficiency and increasing the deployment of low-carbon energy. Nobuo Tanaka

The guts of ITER, a pioneering fusion reactor; include the massive electromagnets needed to hold 200-million-degree hydrogen fuel in place. © Eric Verdult/Kennis in Beeld

For more than half a century, engineers have been trying to build a miniature sun in a bottle: a fusion reactor. Now an international team is embarking on the most intense effort ever to make it happen. If the group succeeds, we could soon generate nearly boundless power from an isotope of hydrogen that is plentiful in our oceans. That’s a big if, though.

In a basic fusion reaction, hydrogen atoms collide, creating helium and releasing energy. Making the reaction work requires heating the atoms to tens or hundreds or millions of degrees Fahrenheit. At these temperatures matter exists only as a plasma, a soup of negatively charged electrons and positively charged atomic nuclei. In a star like our sun, the plasma is held tightly together by gravity. On Earth, a fusion reactor needs a container—and no material is tough enough to withstand direct contact with the plasma.

There is a way around the problem. Plasmas are made of charged particles, and charged particles are affected by magnetic fields. Physicists have been able to design machines that use electromagnets to trap and manipulate plasmas. The catch is that no machine yet devised can hold a fusing hydrogen plasma long enough to produce more power than is consumed by the electromagnets. The best reactor gets just 6.5 watts out for every 10 watts it takes in. A device that eats more energy than it produces obviously cannot be a power plant.

Researchers from Europe, Japan, the United States, China, India, South Korea, and Russia are working to break the power barrier by building the best plasma container ever devised, known as the International Ther­mo­nuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER. After more than two decades of planning, the $15 billion project is finally getting under way in southern France.

ITER will house a doughnut-shaped magnetic vessel, called a tokamak, with a diameter of 17 meters [56 feet]. It will be surrounded by superconducting nio­bium coils that create magnetic fields 100,000 times as powerful as Earth’s. These fields will do double duty: They will heat a cloud of hydrogen to the searing temperature required for fusion while forcing the resulting plasma to sit in a ring-shaped cloud away from the tokamak’s walls.

The goal of fusion physicists is to use the heat from a fusing plasma to keep the reaction going indefinitely, without the need to pump in external energy. ITER will not quite get to that point, but with luck, when the reactor is turned on in 2018, it will be able to hold a burning plasma for five minutes or more, allowing it to? release 10 times as much energy as is put in. That would make ITER the first fusion reactor to produce a net surplus of energy. Scientists can then begin working out how to harvest fusion energy for practical use.

Keeping a miniature sun under control is a huge engineering challenge. Some of ITER’s walls will be bombarded with charged particles escaping the plasma, necessitating the walls’ replacement several times during the reactor’s 20-year lifetime. Then there’s a difficulty known as a “vertical displacement event.” According to ITER physicist David Campbell (pdf), such an event occurs when the plasma in the doughnut drifts out of control, unleashing tremendous electro­magnetic force. Within a tenth of a second, he says, “the whole structure is pushed up or pushed down” by a force equivalent to about 8,000 tons. ITER will have to be strong enough to withstand such stresses.

Of all the challenges, the biggest may be finding the money to keep ITER going. A previous incarnation of the project died in the late 1990s when the United States pulled out as costs spiraled. History might repeat itself: Late last year Congress gutted the budget for the American portion of ITER, leaving fusion scientists scrambling to keep the project on track. With bulldozers now clearing the site in France, though, ITER scientists swear that this time they are within reach of their dream. “We’re very excited to have the construction project under way,” Campbell says. “We’re keen to make this work, given that we’ve waited for so long.”

And then there was light – and it was powered by the sun. The Vatican has activated a new solar energy system and announced an ambitious plan that could one day make it an alternative energy exporter.

The massive roof of the "Nervi Hall" where popes hold general audiences and concerts are performed, has been covered with 2,400 photovoltaic panels to provide energy for lighting, heat and air conditioning.

After weeks of tests, the system went on line at full throttle hours before Pope Benedict held what officials called the "first ecological general audience in the Vatican."

The new system on the 5,000 square meter roof will produce 300 kilowatt hours (MWh) of clean energy a year for the audience hall and surrounding buildings.

The 1.2 million euro system, devised and donated by German companies SolarWorld and SMA Solar Technology, will allow the 108-acre city-state to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by about 225 tons and save the equivalent of 80 tons of oil each year.

"This is a very courageous initiative," said Carlo Rubbia, the Italian who won the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics and attended the unveiling ceremony in the Vatican.

"The sun has 100,000 times the energy produced by traditional sources of energy on earth. This why we need so much science, so much investment in research for the future," Rubbia said at the unveiling.

FIELDS OF SOLAR PANELS

Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, the governor of Vatican City, said the Vatican was thinking of a much more ambitious project at a huge tract of land it owns north of Rome which is used as a transmission centre for Vatican Radio.

"We are thinking of a solar energy system on 300 hectares (740 acres) at the site," he said.

Pier Carlo Cuscianna, head of technical services for Vatican City, said such a project could produce six times the amount of energy needed to power the transmission antennas.

"The rest could be transferred to the (Italian) national grid for power for surrounding communities," Cuscianna said.

The site, called Santa Maria di Galeria, is owned by the Vatican and such a project would make it an exporter of alternative energy.

Cuscianna said it was "just an idea" for now but that he expected it to move on the project stage eventually.

Officials said the Vatican planned to install enough renewable energy sources to provide 20 percent of its needs by 2020, broadly in line with a proposal by the European Union.

The Nervi Hall has a sweeping, wavy roof and the solar panels are virtually invisible from the ground. Church officials have said the Vatican's famous skyline, particularly St. Peter's Basilica, would remain untouched.

The modern corporation runs on data. Data centers house the thousands of servers that power applications, provide information, and automate a range of processes. There has been no letup in the demand for data center capacity, and the power consumed as thousands of servers churn away is responsible for rising operating costs and steady growth in worldwide greenhouse gases.

Our work suggests that companies can double the energy efficiency of their data centers through more disciplined management, reducing both costs and greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, companies need to manage technology assets more aggressively so existing servers can work at much higher utilization levels; they also need to improve forecasting of how business demand drives application, server, and data center–facility capacity so they can curb unnecessary capital and operating spending.

Data center efficiency is a strategic issue. Building and operating these centers consumes ever-larger portions of corporate IT budgets, leaving less available for high-priority technology projects. Data center build programs are board level decisions. At the same time, regulators and external stakeholders are taking keen interest in how companies manage their carbon footprints. Adopting best practices will not only help companies reduce pollution but could also enhance their image as good corporate citizens.

A costly problem

Companies are performing more complex analyses, customers are demanding real-time access to accounts, and employees are finding new, technology-intensive ways to collaborate. As a result, demand for computing, storage, and networking capacity continues to increase even as the economy slows. To cope, IT departments are adding more computing resources, with the number of servers in data centers in the United States growing by about 10 percent a year. At the same time, the number of data centers is rising even more swiftly in emerging markets such as China and India, where organizations are becoming more complex and automating more operations and where, increasingly, outsourced data operations are located. This inexorable demand for computing resources has led to the steady rise of data center capacity worldwide. The growth shows no sign of ending soon, and typically it only moderates during economic down cycles.

This growth has led to a sharp rise in IT costs (Exhibit 1). Data centers typically account for 25 percent of total corporate IT budgets when the costs of facilities, storage devices, servers, and staffing are included. That share will only increase as the number of servers grows and the price of electricity continues its climb faster than revenues and other IT costs. The cost of running these facilities is rising by as much as 20 percent a year, far outpacing overall IT spending, which is increasing at a rate of 6 percent.

Spending increases on data centers are reshaping the economics of many businesses, particularly those that are intensive users of information such as finance, information services, media, and telecom. The investment required to launch a large-enterprise data center has risen to $500 million, from $150 million, over the past five years. The price tag for the biggest facilities at IT-intensive businesses is approaching $1 billion. This spending is diverting capital from new product development, making some data-intensive products uneconomic, and squeezing margins. The environmental consequences also are stark, as rising power consumption creates a large and expanding carbon footprint. For most service sectors, data centers are a business’s number-one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Between 2000 and 2006, the amount of energy used to store and handle data doubled, with the average data facility using as much energy as 25,000 households. Already, the world’s 44 million servers consume 0.5 percent of all electricity, with data center emissions now approaching those of countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands. In the United States alone, growth in electricity used by data centers between now and 2010 will be the equivalent of ten new power plants. Without efforts to curb demand, current projections show worldwide carbon emissions from data centers will quadruple by 2020 (Exhibit 2).

Regulators have taken note of these developments and are pressing companies for solutions. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed that large data centers use energy meters as a first step toward creating operating-efficiency standards. The European Union, meanwhile, has issued a voluntary code of conduct laying out best practices for running data centers at higher levels of energy efficiency. Government pressure to reduce emissions will likely increase as data center emissions continue to rise.

Far-reaching challenges

In information-intensive organizations, decisions affecting the efficiency of data center operations are made at many levels. Financial traders choose to run complex Monte Carlo analyses, while pharmaceutical researchers decide how much imaging data from clinical trials they want to store. Managers who develop applications decide on how much programming it will take to meet these demands. Those managing server infrastructure decide on equipment purchases. Facilities directors decide on data center locations, power supplies, and the time frame for installing equipment ahead of predicted demand (Exhibit 3).

These decisions are usually made in isolation. A sales manager may choose to change transactions from overnight to real-time clearing, or a financial analyst may want to store multiple copies of historical data—without thinking about the impact on data center costs. Applications developers rarely think of fine-tuning their work to use the fewest number of servers, or of creating design applications that can be shared across servers. Managers buying them may select those with the lowest prices or those with which they’re most familiar. But these servers may waste electricity or space in data centers. Frequently, managers purchase excess devices to guarantee capacity in the most extreme usage scenarios, creating large amounts of excess capacity. And managers often build facilities with excess floor space and high cooling capacity to meet extreme demands or all expansion contingencies.

Multiplied across an organization, these decisions result in both costs and environmental implications. In many cases, existing servers could be decommissioned and plans for new ones shelved without diminishing the ability of companies to manage data. This can be accomplished using well-known techniques, including virtualization, which in effect share capacity by seeking unused portions of servers to run pieces of applications. But this doesn’t always happen, since no one executive has end-to-end accountability. Within the organization, managers optimize for their own interests, resulting in the inefficiency observed in most data centers. In many instances, only a single software application runs on a server.

Within one media company, almost a third of the nearly 500 servers we analyzed had utilization rates below 3 percent, and nearly two-thirds were below 10 percent. This company used none of the number of readily available management tools for tracking use. On a global basis, we estimate daily server utilization generally tops out at 5 to 10 percent, wasting both energy and employed capital. A common response from data center managers is that the servers exist to provide capacity for extreme situations, such as the shopping crunch on the day before Christmas. However, the data generally don’t support this assertion: when average utilization is very low, so is peak usage. Furthermore, sprawling data facilities are sometimes only half occupied by servers and related equipment, suggesting hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted capital spending. Even in data centers that companies report as full, a walk down the aisles often reveals significant gaps within racks of servers, where equipment has been decommissioned.

These mismatches arise in part from the difficulty of forecasting data center requirements. Operating time frames are one problem. Data centers take 2 years or more to design and build and are expected to last at least 12 years, so capacity is added well in advance of the actual needs of business units. At the same time there is an incomplete understanding of how business decisions affect one another, how they translate into the need for new applications, and how much server capacity is needed to meet demand. Many companies, for example, would have difficulty forecasting whether a 50 percent increase in customer demand would require 25 percent or 100 percent more server and data center capacity. In the extreme, we have seen some facilities lie half empty years after opening; other companies complete one data center only to find they need to build a new one almost immediately.

Considering that data centers have become a costly asset, accountability for financial performance is poor. Financial and management responsibility for facilities often falls to real-estate managers who have little technical expertise and few insights into how IT relates to core business issues. Those managing server operations, meanwhile, rarely see data on crucial operating spending such as electricity consumption or the true cost of the real estate occupied by the IT equipment. Conversely, when IT managers decide on additional applications or new servers, they sometimes use only basic metrics such as initial hardware costs or software licenses. Figuring out the real costs requires consideration of facilities operations and leases, electricity use, support, and depreciation. These charges can multiply the initial purchase cost of a server by a factor of four or five. Combined with the siloed decision making and accountability issues discussed above, extra servers are often added as insurance with little discussion of cost trade-offs or the needs of the business. In the absence of true cost analysis, overbuilding, overdesign, and inefficiency become the rule.

Reforming data center operations

When we began our research, we expected to find that building new energy-efficient data centers would offer the best hope of reducing their cost and carbon footprint. New facilities could take advantage of current technologies that make use of natural cooling and of power supplies that produce fewer emissions. However, we also learned that the most dramatic reductions in cost and carbon emissions come from improving the low efficiency of data centers that companies already operate. Through better management of assets, more accountable management, and setting clear goals for reducing energy costs and carbon emissions, most companies can double IT energy efficiency by 2012 and halt the growth of their data centers’ greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the greenest data center is the one that you don’t have to build.

Manage IT assets aggressively

One large company’s approach illustrates the potential gains from a disciplined use of existing servers and facilities. The company’s plans for meeting its 2010 information needs called for increasing the server base and building a new data center to house these servers and other IT equipment. Its board already had approved the plans, which represented a significant amount of the company’s capital spending that year. It has since radically revised them. More than 5,000 rarely used servers will be shut down. Virtualization of some 3,700 applications—15 percent of the companywide total—will allow a reduction in the number of active servers to 20,000, from 25,000. The company has also replaced some older servers with those that use electricity 20 percent more efficiently.

These changes enabled the company to shelve its data center expansion plans, saving $305 million in capital investment costs. Projected operating expenses (for fewer servers and less power consumption) are set to fall by $45 million, to $75 million. Taking into account decommissioning and virtualization, the average server will run at 9.1 percent of capacity rather than the current 5.6 percent. The company will still meet its growing data needs, but reduction in power demands means that CO₂ emissions over the next four years will be cut to 341,000 tons, from 591,000 tons.

Companies can also save by better managing rising demand for data. Business units should review policies on how much data should be retained and whether to scale back some intensive data analyses. Some transaction computation can be deferred, thus reducing peak use of servers, and not all corporate information requires extensively backed-up disaster recovery capabilities.

Get better information

Better forecasting and planning is the foundation for data center efficiency gains. Companies should track how their forecasts for data needs vary with real demand and then provide bonuses to those business units that are able to minimize deviations. Data center managers should incorporate the most complete view of future trends in their models, such as organizational growth and business cycles. Input from data centers, applications architects, and facilities operators can be used to improve these models. One global communications company instituted a planning process that included developing scenarios for data growth for each of its business units. While the company eventually concluded that it needed additional capacity, a large portion of future needs were met using existing assets, saving 35 percent in planned capital expenses.

True accounting for costs

In many organizations, data centers are treated as buckets waiting to be filled, rather than as scarce and expensive resources. To combat this tendency, companies can adopt true cost of ownership (TCO) accounting when estimating costs for new servers or additional applications and data. Lifetime costs of running applications and operating servers are rarely included in spending decisions by business units, software developers, or IT managers. Building them in upfront can help limit excess demand.

One financial institution adopted TCO accounting for all the applications that supported its trading and investment-banking products. It resulted in first-ever discussions with IT managers about which investments in software applications were actually producing adequate returns, providing a road map for reducing areas of overinvestment and IT inefficiency. Multiplying these conversations across business units can bring much-needed discipline to decisions that ultimately have an impact on data center costs.

Centralize responsibility

Managing these kinds of changes may be difficult. Many in large organizations don’t recognize the cost of data. Demands for data center services arrive from across the enterprise. Responsibility for meeting those demands falls across IT departments (including operations and application development), facilities planners, shared services groups, and corporate real-estate functions. There is no single standard for reporting the costs.

As part of a program for data center improvement, we suggest employing a new metric: corporate average data center efficiency (CADE). Similar to the United States’ Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mileage standards, CADE takes into account the energy efficiency of facilities, their utilization rates, and the level of utilization of servers in the data center. Multiplying these factors together yields the overall efficiency of the data center, or CADE (exhibit). Companies that reduce costs and emissions will improve their data centers’ CADE scores. That’s similar to how better mileage bolsters CAFE ratings in the auto industry.

To establish targets for improvement, we set five CADE tiers. Those centers operating at CADE level one are the weakest in terms of efficiency; most organizations initially are likely to fall within the lower ranges. Shutting down underused servers, employing virtualization, and using space within facilities more efficiently will raise CADE scores. CADE also allows companies to benchmark across data center facilities, or against those of rivals, as well as set and track performance goals for managers.

We suggest a new governance model for managing data center needs, with full responsibility and accountability falling to the CIO. Under such a regime, the CIO would have much greater visibility into the data demands of business units and could enforce requirements that energy consumption and facilities costs figure into return-on-investment calculations for new data projects requiring additional servers or software applications. We also suggest that CIOs employ a new metric for measuring progress (see sidebar, “Improving data center efficiency”). With sharpened accountability, the CIO will have greater incentive to seek improvements, such as virtualization and better use of existing facilities. Since this model vests much broader responsibility with the CIO for key business decisions, it needs full support from the CEO and a change in organizational mindset that business unit requests for added data center capacity won’t always be met.

In addition, the CIO should publicly commit to the goal of doubling data center energy efficiency as a way of encouraging improvements and of helping the business to get ahead of regulatory or other stakeholder pressures. Our analysis indicates that nearly every company is capable of doubling its data center energy efficiency over the next three or four years using currently available techniques and technology. Achieving this goal requires stronger data center management, better planning, and increased accountability.

Data center inefficiency is widespread, and it has become a major concern worldwide. But there is significant opportunity for improvement. Following the recommendations outlined above can create a virtuous cycle of better data center management leading to more efficient energy use, lower costs, and steady reductions in carbon emissions.

Michael Bernitsas, professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, stands before a prototype of his VIVACE hydrokinetic energy device. (Credit: Scott Galvin)

Slow-moving ocean and river currents could be a new, reliable and affordable alternative energy source. A University of Michigan engineer has made a machine that works like a fish to turn potentially destructive vibrations in fluid flows into clean, renewable power.

The machine is called VIVACE.  VIVACE is the first known device that could harness energy from most of the water currents around the globe because it works in flows moving slower than 2 knots (about 2 miles per hour.) Most of the Earth's currents are slower than 3 knots. Turbines and water mills need an average of 5 or 6 knots to operate efficiently.

VIVACE stands for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. It doesn't depend on waves, tides, turbines or dams. It's a unique hydrokinetic energy system that relies on "vortex induced vibrations."

Vortex induced vibrations are undulations that a rounded or cylinder-shaped object makes in a flow of fluid, which can be air or water. The presence of the object puts kinks in the current's speed as it skims by. This causes eddies, or vortices, to form in a pattern on opposite sides of the object. The vortices push and pull the object up and down or left and right, perpendicular to the current.

These vibrations in wind toppled the Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington in 1940 and the Ferrybridge power station cooling towers in England in 1965. In water, the vibrations regularly damage docks, oil rigs and coastal buildings.

"For the past 25 years, engineers—myself included—have been trying to suppress vortex induced vibrations. But now at Michigan we're doing the opposite. We enhance the vibrations and harness this powerful and destructive force in nature," said VIVACE developer Michael Bernitsas, a professor in the U-M Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.

Fish have long known how to put the vortices that cause these vibrations to good use.

"VIVACE copies aspects of fish technology," Bernitsas said. "Fish curve their bodies to glide between the vortices shed by the bodies of the fish in front of them. Their muscle power alone could not propel them through the water at the speed they go, so they ride in each other's wake."

This generation of Bernitsas' machine looks nothing like a fish, though he says future versions will have the equivalent of a tail and surface roughness a kin to scales. The working prototype in his lab is just one sleek cylinder attached to springs. The cylinder hangs horizontally across the flow of water in a tractor-trailer-sized tank in his marine renewable energy laboratory. The water in the tank flows at 1.5 knots.

Here's how VIVACE works: The very presence of the cylinder in the current causes alternating vortices to form above and below the cylinder. The vortices push and pull the passive cylinder up and down on its springs, creating mechanical energy. Then, the machine converts the mechanical energy into electricity.

Just a few cylinders might be enough to power an anchored ship, or a lighthouse, Bernitsas says. These cylinders could be stacked in a short ladder. The professor estimates that array of VIVACE converters the size of a running track and about two stories high could power about 100,000 houses. Such an array could rest on a river bed or it could dangle, suspended in the water. But it would all be under the surface.

Because the oscillations of VIVACE would be slow, it is theorized that the system would not harm marine life like dams and water turbines can.

Bernitsas says VIVACE energy would cost about 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Wind energy costs 6.9 cents a kilowatt hour. Nuclear costs 4.6, and solar power costs between 16 and 48 cents per kilowatt hour depending on the location.

"There won't be one solution for the world's energy needs," Bernitsas said. "But if we could harness 0.1 percent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people."

The researchers recently completed a feasibility study that found the device could draw power from the Detroit River. They are working to deploy one for a pilot project there within the 18 months.

This work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Detroit/Wayne County Port Autrhority, the DTE Energy Foundation, Michigan Universities Commercialization Initiative, and the Link Foundation. The technology is being commercialized through Bernitsas' company, Vortex Hydro Energy.

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Journal reference:

1. . VIVACE (Vortex Induced Vibration for Aquatic Clean Energy): A New Concept in Generation of Clean and Renewable Energy from Fluid Flow. Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, December 2008

A SECONDARY SOURCE

Electricity is the flow of electrical power or charge. It is a secondary energy source which means that we get it from the conversion of other sources of energy, like coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear power and other natural sources, which are called primary sources. The energy sources we use to make electricity can be renewable or non-renewable, but electricity itself is neither renewable or non-renewable.

Electricity is a basic part of nature and it is one of our most widely used forms of energy. Many cities and towns were built alongside waterfalls (a primary source of mechanical energy) that turned water wheels to perform work. Before electricity generation began over 100 years ago, houses were lit with kerosene lamps, food was cooled in iceboxes, and rooms were warmed by wood-burning or coal-burning stoves. Beginning with Benjamin Franklin's experiment with a kite one stormy night in Philadelphia, the principles of electricity gradually became understood. Thomas Edison helped change everyone's life -- he perfected his invention -- the electric light bulb. Prior to 1879, direct current (DC) electricity had been used in arc lights for outdoor lighting. In the late-1800s, Nikola Tesla pioneered the generation, transmission, and use of alternating current (AC) electricity, which can be transmitted over much greater distances than direct current. Tesla's inventions used electricity to bring indoor lighting to our homes and to power industrial machines.

Despite its great importance in our daily lives, most of us rarely stop to think what life would be like without electricity. Yet like air and water, we tend to take electricity for granted. Everyday, we use electricity to do many jobs for us -- from lighting and heating/cooling our homes, to powering our televisions and computers.  Electricity is a controllable and convenient form of energy used in the applications of heat, light and power. 

THE SCIENCE OF ELECTRICITY developed by the National Energy Education Development Project

In order to understand how electric charge moves from one atom to another, we need to know something about atoms. Everything in the universe is made of atoms—every star, every tree, every animal. The human body is made of atoms. Air and water are, too. Atoms are the building blocks of the universe. Atoms are so small that millions of them would fit on the head of a pin.

Atoms are made of even smaller particles. The center of an atom is called the nucleus. It is made of particles called protons and neutrons. The protons and neutrons are very small, but electrons are much, much smaller. Electrons spin around the nucleus in shells a great distance from the nucleus. If the nucleus were the size of a tennis ball, the atom would be the size of the Empire State Building. Atoms are mostly empty space.

If you could see an atom, it would look a little like a tiny center of balls surrounded by giant invisible bubbles (or shells). The electrons would be on the surface of the bubbles, constantly spinning and moving to stay as far away from each other as possible. Electrons are held in their shells by an electrical force.

The protons and electrons of an atom are attracted to each other. They both carry an electrical charge. An electrical charge is a force within the particle. Protons have a positive charge (+) and electrons have a negative charge (-). The positive charge of the protons is equal to the negative charge of the electrons. Opposite charges attract each other. When an atom is in balance, it has an equal number of protons and electrons. The neutrons carry no charge and their number can vary.

The number of protons in an atom determines the kind of atom, or element, it is. An element is a substance in which all of the atoms are identical (the Periodic Table shows all the known elements). Every atom of hydrogen, for example, has one proton and one electron, with no neutrons. Every atom of carbon has six protons, six electrons, and six neutrons. The number of protons determines which element it is.

Electrons usually remain a constant distance from the nucleus in precise shells. The shell closest to the nucleus can hold two electrons. The next shell can hold up to eight. The outer shells cans hold even more. Some atoms with many protons can have as many as seven shells with electrons in them.

The electrons in the shells closest to the nucleus have a strong force of attraction to the protons. Sometimes, the electrons in the outermost shells do not. These electrons can be pushed out of their orbits. Applying a force can make them move from one atom to another. These moving electrons are electricity.

STATIC ELECTRICITY

Electricity has been moving in the world forever. Lightning is a form of electricity. It is electrons moving from one cloud to another or jumping from a cloud to the ground. Have you ever felt a shock when you touched an object after walking across a carpet? A stream of electrons jumped to you from that object. This is called static electricity.

Have you ever made your hair stand straight up by rubbing a balloon on it? If so, you rubbed some electrons off the balloon. The electrons moved into your hair from the balloon. They tried to get far away from each other by moving to the ends of your hair.

They pushed against each other and made your hair move—they repelled each other. Just as opposite charges attract each other, like charges repel each other.

MAGNETS AND ELECTRICITY

The spinning of the electrons around the nucleus of an atom creates a tiny magnetic field. Most objects are not magnetic because the atoms are arranged so that the electrons spin in different, random directions, and cancel out each other.

Magnets are different; the molecules in magnets are arranged so that the electrons spin in the same direction. This arrangement of atoms creates two poles in a magnet, a North-seeking pole and a South-seeking pole.

A magnet is labeled with North (N) and South (S) poles. The magnetic force in a magnet flows from the North pole to the South pole. This creates a magnetic field around a magnet.

Have you ever held two magnets close to each other? They don’t act like most objects. If you try to push the South poles together, they repel each other. Two North poles also repel each other.

Turn one magnet around and the North (N) and the South (S) poles are attracted to each other. The magnets come together with a strong force. Just like protons and electrons, opposites attract.

These special properties of magnets can be used to make electricity. Moving magnetic fields can pull and push electrons. Some metals, like copper have electrons that are loosely held. They can be pushed from their shells by moving magnets. Magnets and wire are used together in electric generators.

BATTERIES PRODUCE ELECTRICITY

A battery produces electricity using two different metals in a chemical solution. A chemical reaction between the metals and the chemicals frees more electrons in one metal than in the other. One end of the battery is attached to one of the metals; the other end is attached to the other metal. The end that frees more electrons develops a positive charge and the other end develops a negative charge. If a wire is attached from one end of the battery to the other, electrons flow through the wire to balance the electrical charge. A load is a device that does work or performs a job. If a load––such as a lightbulb––is placed along the wire, the electricity can do work as it flows through the wire. In the picture above, electrons flow from the negative end of the battery through the wire to the lightbulb. The electricity flows through the wire in the lightbulb and back to the battery.

ELECTRICITY TRAVELS IN CIRCUITS

Electricity travels in closed loops, or circuits (from the word circle). It must have a complete path before the electrons can move. If a circuit is open, the electrons cannot flow. When we flip on a light switch, we close a circuit. The electricity flows from the electric wire through the light and back into the wire. When we flip the switch off, we open the circuit. No electricity flows to the light. When we turn a light switch on, electricity flows through a tiny wire in the bulb. The wire gets very hot. It makes the gas in the bulb glow. When the bulb burns out, the tiny wire has broken. The path through the bulb is gone. When we turn on the TV, electricity flows through wires inside the set, producing pictures and sound. Sometimes electricity runs motors—in washers or mixers. Electricity does a lot of work for us. We use it many times each day.

HOW ELECTRICITY IS GENERATED

A generator is a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy.  The process is based on the relationship between magnetism and electricity.  In 1831, Faraday discovered that when a magnet is moved inside a coil of wire, electrical current flows in the wire. 

A typical generator at a power plant uses an electromagnet—a magnet produced by electricity—not a traditional magnet. The generator has a series of insulated coils of wire that form a stationary cylinder.  This cylinder surrounds a rotary electromagnetic shaft.  When the electromagnetic shaft rotates, it induces a small electric current in each section of the wire coil.   Each section of the wire becomes a small, separate electric conductor. The small currents of individual sections are added together to form one large current. This current is the electric power that is transmitted from the power company to the consumer.

An electric utility power station uses either a turbine, engine, water wheel, or other similar machine to drive an electric generator or a device that converts mechanical or chemical energy to generate electricity. Steam turbines, internal-combustion engines, gas combustion turbines, water turbines, and wind turbines are the most common methods to generate electricity.  Most power plants are about 35 percent efficient. That means that for every 100 units of energy that go into a plant, only 35 units are converted to usable electrical energy.

Most of the electricity in the United States is produced in steam turbines. A turbine converts the kinetic energy of a moving fluid (liquid or gas) to mechanical energy. Steam turbines have a series of blades mounted on a shaft against which steam is forced, thus rotating the shaft connected to the generator. In a fossil-fueled steam turbine, the fuel is burned in a furnace to heat water in a boiler to produce steam. Coal, petroleum (oil), and natural gas are burned in large furnaces to heat water to make steam that in turn pushes on the blades of a turbine.

Did you know that most electricity generated in the United State comes from burning coal? In 2006, nearly half (49%) of the country's 4.1 trillion kilowatthours of electricity used coal as its source of energy.

Natural gas, in addition to being burned to heat water for steam, can also be burned to produce hot combustion gases that pass directly through a turbine, spinning the blades of the turbine to generate electricity. Gas turbines are commonly used when electricity utility usage is in high demand. In 2006, 20% of the nation's electricity was fueled by natural gas.

Petroleum can also be used to make steam to turn a turbine. Residual fuel oil, a product refined from crude oil, is often the petroleum product used in electric plants that use petroleum to make steam. Petroleum was used to generate about two percent (2%) of all electricity generated in U.S. electricity plants in 2006.

Nuclear power is a method in which steam is produced by heating water through a process called nuclear fission. In a nuclear power plant, a reactor contains a core of nuclear fuel, primarily enriched uranium. When atoms of uranium fuel are hit by neutrons they fission (split), releasing heat and more neutrons. Under controlled conditions, these other neutrons can strike more uranium atoms, splitting more atoms, and so on. Thereby, continuous fission can take place, forming a chain reaction releasing heat. The heat is used to turn water into steam, that, in turn, spins a turbine that generates electricity. Nuclear power was used to generate 19% of all the country's electricity in 2006.

Hydropower, the source for almost 7% of U.S. electricity generation in 2006, is a process in which flowing water is used to spin a turbine connected to a generator. There are two basic types of hydroelectric systems that produce electricity. In the first system, flowing water accumulates in reservoirs created by the use of dams. The water falls through a pipe called a penstock and applies pressure against the turbine blades to drive the generator to produce electricity. In the second system, called run-of-river, the force of the river current (rather than falling water) applies pressure to the turbine blades to produce electricity.

Geothermal power comes from heat energy buried beneath the surface of the earth. In some areas of the country, enough heat rises close to the surface of the earth to heat underground water into steam, which can be tapped for use at steam-turbine plants. This energy source generated less than 1% of the electricity in the country in 2006.

Solar power is derived from the energy of the sun.  However, the sun's energy is not available full-time and it is widely scattered. The processes used to produce electricity using the sun's energy have historically been more expensive than using conventional fossil fuels. Photovoltaic conversion generates electric power directly from the light of the sun in a photovoltaic (solar) cell. Solar-thermal electric generators use the radiant energy from the sun to produce steam to drive turbines. In 2006, less than 1% of the nation's electricity was based on solar power.

Wind power is derived from the conversion of the energy contained in wind into electricity. Wind power, less than 1% of the nation's electricity in 2006, is a rapidly growing source of electricity. A wind turbine is similar to a typical wind mill.

Biomass includes wood, municipal solid waste (garbage), and agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and wheat straw. These are some other energy sources for producing electricity. These sources replace fossil fuels in the boiler. The combustion of wood and waste creates steam that is typically used in conventional steam-electric plants. Biomass accounts for about 1% of the electricity generated in the United States.

THE TRANSFORMER - MOVING ELECTRICITY 

To solve the problem of sending electricity over long distances, William Stanley developed a device called a transformer. The transformer allowed electricity to be efficiently transmitted over long distances. This made it possible to supply electricity to homes and businesses located far from the electric generating plant.

The electricity produced by a generator travels along cables to a transformer, which changes electricity from low voltage to high voltage. Electricity can be moved long distances more efficiently using high voltage. Transmission lines are used to carry the electricity to a substation. Substations have transformers that change the high voltage electricity into lower voltage electricity. From the substation, distribution lines carry the electricity to homes, offices and factories, which require low voltage electricity.

MEASURING ELECTRICITY

Electricity is measured in units of power called watts. It was named to honor James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine. One watt is a very small amount of power. It would require nearly 750 watts to equal one horsepower. A kilowatt represents 1,000 watts. A kilowatthour (kWh) is equal to the energy of 1,000 watts working for one hour. The amount of electricity a power plant generates or a customer uses over a period of time is measured in kilowatthours (kWh). Kilowatthours are determined by multiplying the number of kW's required by the number of hours of use. For example, if you use a 40-watt light bulb 5 hours a day, you have used 200 watthours, or 0.2 kilowatthours, of electrical energy. See our Energy Calculator section to learn more about converting units.