Water usage and a challenge to Silicon Valley: learn to lobby by building a cooler and dryer data center.

By
Andrew
on April 29, 2008 11:11 PM | | Comments (833) | TrackBacks (0)

In this space, when we write about  Silicon Valley and its' relationship with the federal government, it's usually something nasty or hot-button, like net neutrality, energy, patent reform, intellectual property, or copyright. When people bring up environmental issues with the technology sector, usually it's the air pollution from all the cars, or whether or not Apple uses too much packaging, or what materials go into hardware and whether or not it should be illegal to throw away that old computer in a landfill. 

Today however, Congress (both chambers) passed the Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 which, among its many, many provisions, earmarks and programs of varying validity, sanity, and importance, includes funds covering 25% of the cost to construct facilities to recycle water across the state, with two in the Bay Area to receive approximately $15 million of that federal dough. The facilities fall into two types: one that will clean up water so it can be used for irrigation of crops and watering the Redwoods, and another that doesn't clean so much but makes the water usable for industrial parks, manufacturing, etc

President Bush is expected to sign the bill, which was supported by a multitude of environmental  and government groups like the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and it's a good bill for him to sign. Water recycling, according to the Bay Area Clean Water Agencies, is a way to prevent droughts from depleting the potable water supply (aka the stuff you drink) because the water that doesn't need to be so clean because instead of quenching your thirst it's greening up your golf course.

What does this have to do with technology policy? Consider the following:


 I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro. It's hot. Data centers are very, very hot. Well, not really, since they have massive air cooling systems to keep all those machines from cooking. Cooler processors use less energy and are more efficient, allowing computers to get more done. In the Web 2.0, the environmental footprint of data centers will continue to grow as companies like Google roll out their App Engine and Microsoft gets ready to unleash Mesh (which even I think is cool) on the world. When you think about the amount of power needed, not only to run all those busy machines, but keep them cool enough to run well, the numbers get larger than I can wrap my head around.

The Feds are paying for 25% of these public utility projects, and that's OK. But while we're all about to get our "economic stimuli" over the next few weeks, here's an idea for the tech industry to try their hands at uniting to lobby, so maybe they can be a bit more successful at the hot button issues:

Since keeping processors cool keeps them energy efficient, but keeping them cool requires lots of energy and tons of water, how about the Feds deliver some incentives to a company that can build a data center with a totally closed loop for their cooling systems. If the problem is that reusing the water makes it less efficient, well go after that problem, too. Maybe develop a cooling system that doesn't need  as much water? Surely we know enough about the physics of heat transfer that a smart enough engineer can get rid of the heat more efficiently, and maybe come up with something other than using a liquid to suck the heat out of a machine and then sucking the heat out of the liquid. 

Water usage is a big deal in the Valley, just like power usage. Data centers use tons of both, sometimes wastefully, and yet those centers are the beating heart of the region's economy. That economy is driven by fiercely competitive companies that often would rather kill each other than work together in any way. As I've said time and time again, this dog-eat-dog mentality lets the established players, entrenched use their knowledge of how to work the system to pass laws or establish regulations that protect their sector at the expense of innovation. Example? 

Google, a relatively new player on the DC scene,  has quickly established one heck of a lobbying operation, and even brilliantly got the FCC to require the next generation 700Mhz wireless networks to be "open" so anyone could buy an Android phone from anywhere and still use it. Meanwhile, the little guys like Skype asked the FCC to apply the decades-old Carterfone rule to the existing mobile networks, but because the "Big 4" as Alex calls them know how to play the game, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, aka K-Mart, wants at least two more of his brethren to deny Skype's petition, making sure that you can't buy an unlimited data plan for your iPhone but save on voice minutes or long distance charges by installing a mobile version of Skype.

When I bring up that start-ups and many established players still don't try and understand Washington, I keep hearing the rote response that they're too busy trying to put each other out of business or raise capital, or figure out what the competition down the street is doing than they are about what the people in DC are doing. Unfortunately, to be successful in Washington you need to know the system or hire people that can, and most start-ups don't have that kind of cash by themselves.

So, I'm issuing a challenge to the established high tech community and the new "Web 2.0" start-up community in Silicon Valley: put aside your differences stop trying to kill each other long enough to do something good for all of you: form a coalition to successfully lobby the Federal government for research funding on more water-efficient, and eventually waterless cooling systems for large data center environments. You don't have to do the research yourselves, but you need to get the Feds to dole out serious dough to someone that will, whether it's a tax break for a private company, more funding for DARPA, or grants to universities.

It will be much easier to avoid water restrictions during dry times, and better for the earth if the data centers that power the companies that pay you aren't competing for water with your lawns and golf courses. It's a big enough project that the funding would have to come from either the Feds or Bill Gates, and Bill is too busy fighting AIDS. Plus, all of you still need to learn how to work in Washington. 

This could be a fun project that will change the world when it pays off. Now, who is ready to help make it happen?



A tip of the hat to Robert Scoble for pointing me towards this issue and getting me to come up with this post.

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