FCC Broadband plan and impact on environment

1. FCC Broadband plan versus the environment Bill St. Arnaud Bill.st.arnaud@gmail.com Unless otherwise noted all material in this slide deck may be reproduced, modified or distributed without prior permission of the author

2. Global Average Temperature

3. 2010 warmest year ever

4. Global warming since 1970 See the world heating up 1884-2010 in this new NASA animation. http://bit.ly/NasAni 1970-1979 2000-2009

5. Rapid Increase in the Greenhouse Gas CO2Since Industrial Era Began Black Death Allowed Reforestation in Europe and North America reducing CO2 Medieval Warm Period Little Ice Age 2000 1800 1400 1600 1200 1000 You are Here

7. 11°C increase in Northern Canada & Europe

8. http://globalchange.mit.edu/pubs/abstract.php?publication_id=990

9. Last Ice age average global temperature was 5-6°C cooler than today

10. Most of Canada & Europe was under 2-3 km ice

11. Nearly 90 per cent of new scientific findings reveal global climate disruption to be worse, and progressing more rapidly, than expected.

12. http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/Freudenburg_2010_ASC.pdfMIT

13. Climate Change is not reversible Climate Change is not like acid rain, water management or ozone destruction where environment will quickly return to normal once source of pollution is removed GHG emissions will stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years and continue to accumulate Planet will continue to warm up even if we drastically reduce emissions Weaver et al., GRL (2007) All we hope to achieve is to slow down the rapid rate of climate change

14. Climate tipping points USGS report finds that future climate shifts have been underestimated and warns of debilitating abrupt shift in climate that would be devastating. Tipping elements in the Earth's climate - National Academies of Science “Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic climate change. “

16. The most severe drought in recent history, in the Sahel region of western Africa in the 1970s, had a PDSI of -3 or -4.

17. By 2030 Western USA could see -4 to -6

18. By 2100 some parts of the U.S. could see -8 to -10 PDSI, while Mediterranean areas could see drought in the -15 or -20 range.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39741525/ns/us_news-environment/

20. Can easily break up once sea water gets under ice

21. Originally thought that breakup would take hundreds of years

22. New evidence indicates that breakup will happen within 40 years when planet warms up 1C (we are already up .8C)

23. S ea levels would be 3.3m – 4.8m

24. Ice collapsed as recent as 125,000 years ago

25. IPCC says ice is one of the poorest understood areashttp://news.discovery.com/earth/how-stable-is-the-west-antarctic-ice-sheet.html Sea levels may rise 3x faster than predicted by IPCC http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/09/sea-level-rise-six-feet-three-times-faster-than-the-ipcc-estimat/

27. Rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, a thousand-year deluge swamped Nashville and storms just north of Rio caused the deadliest landslides Brazil has ever seen.

29. The Global ICT Carbon Footprint isRoughly the Same as the Aviation Industry Today But ICT Emissions are Growing at 6% Annually! According to IEA ICT will represent 40% of all energy consumption by 2030 www.smart2020.org ICT represent 8% of global electricity consumption Projected to grow to as much as 20% of all electrical consumption in the US (http://uclue.com/index.php?xq=724) Future Broadband- Internet alone is expected to consume 5% of all electricity http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/people/rst/talks/files/Tucker_Green_Plenary.pdf

30. Education biggest contributor Per employee Per sector Australian Computer Society Study http://www.acs.org.au/attachments/ICFACSV4100412.pdf

31. Growth Projections Data Centers Half of ICT consumption is data centers In ten years 50% of today’s Data Centers and major science facilities in the US will have insufficient power and cooling;* By 2012, half of all Data Centers will have to relocate or outsource applications to another facility.* CO2 emissions from US datacenters greater than all CO2 emissions from Netherlands or Argentina http://bit.ly/cW6jEY Coal fuels much of Internet 'cloud,' Greenpeace says http://bit.ly/bkeSec Data centers will consume 12% of electricity in the US by 2020 (TV Telecom) Source: Gartner; Meeting the DC power and cooling challenge

32. The Challenge of Energy Efficiency Most current approaches to reduce carbon footprint are focused on increased energy efficiency of equipment and processes No question it save money, but does little for the environment But greater efficiency can paradoxically increase energy consumption by reducing overall cost service and therefore stimulates demand Khazzoom-Brookes postulate (aka Jevons paradox - not to be confused with rebound effect) In last Energy crisis in 1973 Congress passed first energy efficiency laws (CAFÉ) which mandate minimum mileage for cars, home insulation and appliances Net effect was to reduce cost of driving car, heating or cooling home, and electricity required for appliances Consumer response was to drive further, buy bigger homes and appliances The issue is not the amount of energy that we use, but the type of energy

33. Zero Carbon strategy essential Zero carbon strategy using renewable energy critically important if governments mandate carbon neutrality, or if there is a climate catastrophe With a zero carbon strategy growth in demand for services will not effect GHG emissions Anything times zero is always zero Wind and solar power are most likely candidates because of opportunity cost/benefit analysis especially time to deploy Nuclear has high opportunity cost because of time to deploy http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/14/stanford-study-part-1-wind-solar-baseload-easily-beat-nuclear-and-they-all-best-clean-coal/ But renewable energy sites are usually located far from cities and electrical distribution systems are not designed to carry load http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/12/pdf/renewable_transmission.pdf Local wind/solar will be an important component

34. MIT to build zero carbon data center in Holyoke MA The data center will be managed and funded by the four main partners in the facility: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cisco Systems, the University of Massachusetts and EMC. It will be a high-performance computing environment that will help expand the research and development capabilities of the companies and schools in Holyoke http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2009/06/11/cisco-emc-team-mit-launch-100m-green-data-center

35. GreenStar NetworkWorld’s First Zero Carbon Cloud/Internet World’s first zero carbon network Nodes in Ireland, USA, China, Spain and Belgium to be added shortly http://www.greenstarnetwork.com/

36. Ontario Smart meter experience Ontario Hydro’s smart meters give dumb results http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/ontario-hydros-smart-meters-give-dumb-results-critics/article1707808/ Largest Smart meter program in North America with time of day billing Over $1.5 billion on 4.5 million smart meters Plus >$1 billion on smart grid and massive data center to collect billing information 9.9 Cents peak versus 5.3 off peak End result consumer behavior has hardly changed with most consumer bills increased significantly Experts say peak rates need to be between three and five times greater than off-peak ratesto get consumers to change consumer behavior Bandwidth requirements trivial

37. Cap and reward instead of taxes? Although carbon taxes or cap and trade are revenue neutral, they payee rarely sees any direct benefit No incentive other than higher cost to reduce footprint Rather than penalize consumers and businesses for carbon emissions, can we reward them for reducing their carbon emissions? Carbon rewards can be virtual products delivered over broadband networks such movies, books, education, health services, collaborative education and research technologies etc Carbon reward can also be free services (with low carbon footprint) such as Internet, cellphone, fiber to the home, etc

38. Carbon Reward Strategy for last mile infrastructure Provide free high speed Internet and fiber to the home with resale of electrical and gas power (ESCOs) http://www.newamerica.net/files/HomesWithTails_wu_slater.pdf Customer pays a premium on their gas and electric bill Customers encouraged to save money through reduced energy consumption and reduced carbon output Customer NOT penalized if they reduce energy consumption May end up paying substantially less then they do now for gas + electricity + broadband + telephone + cable Network operator gets guaranteed revenue based on energy consumption rather than fickle triple play

39. Case Western pilot with Kindle DX One Kg of printer paper generates 4 Kg of CO2 One Kg of newspaper produces 3 Kg of CO2 Average textbook weighs 2 Kg CO2 cost is 10 Kg Not including shipping and transportation Babcock school of Management textbooks for 160 students alone produces 45,000 Kg CO2 http://www.stewartmarion.com/carbon-footprint/html/carbon-footprint-stuff.html

40. Cyber-infrastructure in a Carbon Constrained World http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0960.pdf

41. Final remarks The problem we face is NOT energy consumption, but carbon emissions Think carbon, not energy We must start addressing climate change now – not in 2050 or 2020 80% reduction in CO2 emissions will fundamentally change everything we do including universities and networks Huge potential for innovation and new business opportunities for green communications enabled applications because 30% of energy must come from renewable sources

42. Let’s Keep The Conversation Going E-mail list Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com Blogspot Bill St. Arnaud http://green-broadband.blogspot.com Twitter http://twitter.com/BillStArnaud