Iceland Bets on Green Data Centers

It’s always interesting to see a project you’ve been tracking for some time come to fruition. I’ve been following Verne Global, and its plans for a data center campus in Iceland, for almost two years, so it was rewarding to see its progress first-hand at the official launch event last month.

The Verne Global data center is based on a former NATO facility west of Reykjavik, near Keflavik International Airport. Iceland’s advantages as a staging post between North America and Europe are important, but it’s the availability of a dual-sourced renewable energy supply that makes the project unique. Iceland’s electricity is provided 100 percent by hydropower and geothermal energy. In addition, Iceland’s temperate climate enables year round free air cooling without the need for chillers, helping the site to operate at a power usage effectiveness (PUE, a measure of how efficiently a data center uses energy) of around 1.2.

The data center’s location provides strong green credentials, but it also offers important commercial advantages. Iceland’s renewable energy resources mean a stable and cheap source of electricity for data center operators and other businesses. Landsvirkjun, the local utility, is able to offer up to 20-year terms for electricity rates and has, for example, been offering a public rate of $43 per megawatt for 12 years. This allows Verne Global to claim that the total TCO for its customers could be 60 percent lower than a similar deployment in London.

The choice of location has been combined with an innovative approach to data center development through a close partnership with Colt. I’ve written previously about Colt’s approach to modular data center design, and the Keflavik data center is its first public showcase, though it has since announced another data center customer in UK luxury car maker Jaguar Land Rover. The partnership with Verne Global also involves Colt installing a new point-of-presence (POP) for its Pan-European communications network within the facility. Having had a chance to see the actual data center and talk to Colt’s engineering and management team, I understand more clearly how far its offering differs from containerized approaches to modular design.

“Pre-fabricated data centers” is perhaps a better term for what Colt is doing, building the components at its factory in the north of England and shipping them for rapid installation on-site. Colt’s approach is also modular in that it supports an incremental build-out of the data center in 500 square-meter units, which is also helping Verne Global manage its capital investment.

Another key stakeholder in this venture is the Icelandic government. During the launch, the local mayor and an Icelandic government minister gave speeches that showed their clear enthusiasm for the project. Iceland is keen to exploit its natural advantages to develop a large-scale data center industry and has been clearing away regulatory and tax issues that might hamper expansion of the sector.

 Iceland, of course, was one of the countries most badly hit by the banking crisis and it is now betting on data centers as a more stable basis for the future growth. The availability of the new Emerald Express Trans-Atlantic Cable System, a 5,200 km ultra-high bandwidth link between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Iceland, planned for late 2012, will help Iceland and Verne Global better target U.S. data center business.

Today, Iceland’s energy surplus supports a power-hungry aluminum smelting industry. The government hopes that in future, processing bits may be equally important to the island’s economy.

Meygen Marine Tidal Power Environmental Impact Assessment Moves Forward

 Sponsor and developer of the world’s largest marine tidal power project announced to date, Meygen’s contracted Norway’s Kongsberg Maritime (KM) to carry out underwater noise studies for its 400-MW project in Scotland’s Pentland Firth. KM will measure and monitor noise levels from prototype Meygen tidal turbines at a European Marine Energy Center (EMEC) site to assess their effect on marine life before they are approved for installation at the project site.

KM’s also helping MeyGen monitor progress of turbine suppliers’ trials at EMEC in Orkney. “The results of the underwater noise impact studies being carried out by Kongsberg Maritime at Emec will affect how the devices are positioned on the seabed [at the MeyGen project site] to deliver optimum power while having minimal impact on marine life,” Recharge News quoted KM’s general manager for offshore, David Shand.
“Crown Jewel” of Scotland’s Marine Tidal Resource Base

MeyGen is aiming to install marine tidal turbines at depths between 20-40 meters over a 3.5-square kilometer area of the Pentland Firth between Scotland’s northern coast and the island of Stroma, an area considered the “crown jewel” of Scotland’s rich marine tidal resource base. Currents there average 4 meters/second, according to Recharge News’ report.

A joint venture between investment bank Morgan Stanley, independent power company International Power and marine tidal technology provider Atlantis Resources, Meygen’s moving forward with plans to install a 20-MW pilot installation of marine tidal turbines from Atlantis Resources and Rolls-Royce-TGL (Tidal Generation Ltd.) at the Pentland Firth site. Overall project completion is slated for 2020.

The underwater noise studies are a big part of the Meygen project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) and consenting processes. The project’s EIA will span the entire project development process, spanning the environmental impacts of the marine tidal power generation array to the substation connections to the UK national electricity grid.

MeyGen’s produced an EIA scoping document as per Scottish regulations for Phase I of the project. The EIA scoping document is meant to ensure Meygen’s EIA process is comprehensive and conforms with Scottish environmental protection regulations.

In it, Meygen states it will “conduct a preliminary review of the environmental baseline and risks which require more detailed assessment and provide a framework for consultation and identify the relevant regulatory bodies and statutory and non-statutory stakeholders.”

Educate the Public on Alternative Energy

One of the most effective ways through which young people can learn about alternatives might use kits, books, or even PicoTurbine projects. This company, called PicoTurbine, is the main promoter of alternative energies, a company that has created awareness worldwide of the numerous advantages of using large scale of these energies. The environment must be protected and alternative energy sources definitely take into account this aspect. Therefore, if mankind is to benefit in the future environment, active measures of protection must apply.

PicoTurbine devices operate on several concepts; for example, that actively incorporate knowledge about alternative energy sources and make sure that people are remembered from time to time, this approach. The company receives a lot of customer feedback, thus modifying their solutions to traditional energy sources in a way young seem to find the setting. Therefore young people come to get their hands directly on the real life situation and make a change. The company has received suggested carrying out experiments on the production of wind power, using the image cable known common need for heating elements.

 PicoTurbines has also pointed out that when people think about wind energy, usually conjure the image of energy cold and therefore are surprised to actually see the benefits of this technology. A suggestion for the projects was to give you the opportunity to young people to participate in group projects and therefore make their own discoveries and pose your own questions to the creation of his own, power plant, capable of producing energy in real time. Groups, then, will be able to see if the experiments were efficient and one of them was able to produce the greatest amount of electricity or the least amount of electricity. They could then modify the draft once more and versions revised from what you are working in.

PicoTurbine has even been implemented in the school curricula; teachers are now starting to instill in the senses for their students appreciation for environmental protection and awareness of alternative energy sources. Teach alternative means children solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and biomass energies which can produce significant amounts of electricity under given conditions …cuando combining alternative energies which we are diminishing the dependence of the countries our traditional energy derived from fossil fuels. Foreign oil supplies are more expensive by the day, so it would be much less costly produce the importer in the country and if it is possible, then become importer of energy. Judging from the effects of long-term, alternative energy sources are certainly less expensive than fossil fuels.

The company has also promoted sales of wind farms, as well as solar panels; These products are entering the market in growth rates and are already becoming best-sellers. To give an example of how time has helped to reduce the total cost for certain things, story photo voltaic cells. Twenty years ago, they were assessed in thousand dollars for each cell; Now, each of these cells costs only $4.

Therefore, economists and specialists in alternative energies have trumped that it is possible to have the kilowatt sold for one dollar, in 2015. Therefore, there is to imagine the impact extraordinary that alternative energy sources would have around the world. Fossil fuels are beginning to use his popularity, mainly because they greatly hurt the environment and the air we're breathing. Thus, it has been reported recently many cases of asthma attacks and pneumonias and the risk of developing allergies is extremely high. Such long-term effects may even lead to cancer, therefore it is advisable to switch to the alternative because this would mean no pollution, more protection for the environment and less money spent on energy costs.

DIA de Reyes, No Child Without a mile

Today we briefly change focus to speak of those who are our most important resource, our most valuable reality and promise: the children. So today we briefly tell the story of a group of young Spaniards that transformed, through its action, a small great gesture: the face of a sad child into one with a huge smile.

He is "any child without smile" who is a self-styled group of of young volunteers who chose to take hands to work to try to child continued life due to them despite the crisis for which Europe is currently happening.
Volunteers are placed on campaign especially for the dates of Christmas and Reyes collecting second-hand toys or which companies cannot sell by having a defect. They restored, so clean and prepare so that they could become a perfect gift of Kings for those families in disadvantaged situation that can not give a present to their children.

How is the procedure for those families access to the gift wanted for their children is really simple: families only have to fill out a short form with the following information: name, age and sex of the child and that is what you would like that they regalasen. Filling this form volunteers then seek the toy that is best suited to the request and so prepare a package to be delivered to the family in question.

Another way is that the same child complete the letter to the Kings by making arrive the letter via e-mail of the organization or sending it directly by mail directed to the entity Any child without smile.

Nuclear energy like a fantastic vaccine?

In the 1950s, “too cheap to meter” was the tag line for then-nascent atomic energy. That promise, which Bill Gates now calls a “fantastic vaccine,” has thus far been more of an intractable virus.

Last week Mr. Gates revived the “nuclear is cheap” message to promote his TerraPower nuke startup venture. He also came off decidedly pessimistic about the world’s prospects for combating climate change.
The nuclear industry has long touted “cheap” alongside “clean” in its bid against renewable energy to supply electricity to a power-hungry world. It has also argued loudly against subsidies for renewables, and claimed that nuclear is the only way to slow global warming.

Gates has joined that chorus, stating that he’s skeptical that the world can dramatically cut greenhouse-gas emissions in less than 75 years, and suggesting that wind and solar subsidies should be conditional upon commercializing energy storage technologies first.

To make the “cheap and clean” argument, you have to ignore some significant externalities. A big problem with “cheap” nuclear power has been the cost — construction budget overruns, bailouts, storing spent rods, site clean-up, and human lives. The caveat with “clean” (low-carbon) nuclear power is its multigenerational legacy of radioactive waste.

The traveling wave reactor technology revealed in 2008 as the core of TerraPower’s development is a half-century-old breeder-reactor technology that could run on some of the waste stream from nuclear fuel production. A TWR has been computer-modeled, but never built.

If Gates and his TerraPower partner Nathan Myhrvold want to change the world with nuclear energy, they need to overcome several major issues, and quickly, before the widely imagined nuclear renaissance completely loses steam:

Developed nations, the ones the world is most comfortable with having radioactive materials, have for the most part stopped building nuclear power plants. Emerging nations, even if they can afford to experiment with this new technology, will need to handle the radioactive fuel and waste, including the eventual decommissioning of plants themselves. Convincing populations of a TWR plant’s safety will be a significant hurdle.

Even before Fukushima, John Rowe, chief executive of nuclear power heavyweight Exelon, said in a Politico interview that “except with massive subsidies, there’s really nothing one can do to make a whole lot of nuclear plants economic right now.” The company bought a major renewable energy firm and started moving into wind power.

Nuclear Power Going Down — More Facts (& VIDEO)

Piggy-backing on the news that Japan has just shut down its second-to-last nuclear reactor and that France still subsidies nuclear power to get it down to the price of consumer electricity, here are some rather interesting nuclear versus renewable facts (shared by a reader):

“… between 2004 and 2011, more nuclear-power capacity was decommissioned worldwide than was installed. Last year alone, the world installed 50 percent more new wind-power capacity (41.2 gigawatts) than all new nuclear capacity installed from 2002 to 2011 (27.3 GW). In terms of electricity production, the wind-power industry has installed the equivalent of 1.3 nuclear reactors per month over the past three years.” (emphasis added)

The European Commission projects that only 3% of all new power capacity installed from 2011 to 2020 will be from nuclear power, while it projects 71% will be from renewable energy sources.
Here are some more staggering facts (emphasis added):

In October 2011, former UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said that two-thirds of the budget for the government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, or €2.4bn a year, is spent on nuclear power. But that is a drop in the ocean compared to decommissioning costs. According to Huhne, “the provisions for nuclear decommissioning costs in total were £2m in 1970, £472m in 1980, £9.5bn in 1990, £22.5bn in 2000, and now, £53.7bn. When nuclear power was held up to the cold, hard light of the market, it proved to be uneconomic.”

Wind power has received a fraction of the financial support that nuclear energy has received – and yet wind can provide electricity at less than half the cost of new nuclear-power plants. According to the European Environment Agency, 80 percent of the total energy subsidies in the European Union is paid to fossil fuels and nuclear energy, while 19 percent goes to renewables.

Moreover, wind energy has zero fuel costs, minimal waste-disposal and decommissioning costs, and a tiny fraction of nuclear power’s risk to human health or the environment.

Factories and buildings with greenhouse gas emissions

EPA, the U.S. environmental protection agency has a website which has an interactive map where simply by entering the website epa.gov can visualize where there are toxic dumping, radiation or garbage dumps, etc.

The latest addition to EPA was mainstream sites with higher emissions of greenhouse gases. In this article we will tell how were the impact of this measure, as we have them from the same United States in Treehugger, a very interesting website dedicated to the environment.

Interactive EPA's map shows the location of the major emitters of greenhouse gases in the United States .U.S. Most pollutants among university hospitals, and power generation plants.

In hospitals, a good part of that is due to the use of refrigerants as something old that they have a high incidence in the global warming, which are common in this type of buildings, because here is where it is needed permanently use air conditioning.

Using the website of EPA, and allowing free access to these data in the public domain, institutional investors are already working on the development of statistical patterns. The objective is to incorporate this new information on polluting emissions from industries with its traditional statistics and mathematical models that use of support when deciding what to bet and what does not.

Once develops and has accepted a model in particular, investors will have an indirect indicator which put in evidence industrial processes and/or taking inefficient administrative decisions in companies. And this will have, with great security, its impact on Wall Street.

The good news is that the carbon is in his mira…, and we already know from where the threads of the economy moving. ERGO, the side effect will be greater interest of the companies (some of them, at least) in caring for their emissions and their environmental impact.

Awareness of how the greenhouse gas emissions impact on the financial situation of the undertakings contained in this map is one of the more compelling reasons for the political opposition (not openly declared) against these inventories of emissions of greenhouse gases.

Now that the map of the EPA is already online, large emitters of greenhouse gases represented therein, with any logic they come to attack the Messenger, trying to discredit both the Agency of environmental protection to the methods used to make the inventory.

The New York Times to give coverage to the news of the EPA's map offers an example of this:

"... the inventory of emissions not captures information about the efficiency of thesource." "New York University, for example, it may appear as a large issuer of New York, but a year ago opened a cogeneration plant which produces electricity and uses waste heat to heat and cool buildings, thus doing more work per pound of emitted carbon dioxide than most other sources of these gases".

Source:

TreeHugger

Images:

1.Wikipedia

2 treehugger

Video:

EfE on youtube

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