As of recently, Obama signed an executive order known as a
National Strategic Computing Initiative which focuses on energy efficiency – a movement
which is revealed as his “Clean Power Plan” targeted to shrink the nation’s
carbon footprint by reshaping its energy sector [the Texas Tribune]. This eco-friendly drive for a
cleaner environment has already got Texans to introduce change. Texas Secretary
of State Carlos Cascos will be joining the University of Texas, specifically Texas Advanced Computing Center, and partnering
with the Japanese government through its New
Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization to achieve
roughly a $13 million project aimed to make data centers more energy efficient
saving millions of dollars in the long run. Heavy reliance on the amount of
technology advancements, data sharing and storage on computers generate much
bulk data and digital information from data centers across Texas and around the
country. These powerful supercomputers take up a lot of energy from the power
grid costing tech companies millions of dollars in utility bills. By partnering
with the Japanese government, Texas is finding a way to eliminate the costs of ineffective
energy consumption and utilize that energy towards more productive means. The
partnership will produce a high-voltage direct current power system boosting data
efficiency by avoiding costly energy conversions from solar panels, backup
batteries and computing racks. The Japanese organization will be installing a
250-kilowatt solar farm as a power source for the computers on sunny days. The
trade-off of the partnership is simple and generous: the university will get
more computing power while Japan gets to study the technology with the help of
Texas researchers to save energy use elsewhere.
This plan for a better environment and effective use of
energy consumption should be allowed and funded as needed. If this partnership
were to achieve its goal, data centers around Texas will be using less energy while
working around the same (or better) efficiency and lowering utility bills for
tech companies. U.S. data centers used up about 91 billion kilowatt-hour of
electricity in 2013 – enough to power all homes in New York City twice – and will
continue to grow to 140 billion kilowatt-hour by 2020 in a report by the NationalResources Defense Council and Anthesis. By reducing the amount of energy spent
on data centers, perhaps Texas’s carbon footprint (as well as the nation) might
also decrease leading to less pollution and the burning of fossil fuels. Also
this project between Texas and Japanese government organizations will create a
stronger alliance between Japan and the U.S. Although this might increase the
debt that Texas might have to pay, in the long run, this will save the state
more money by efficiently using and allocating energy resources and lowering
the cost of utility bills.
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