Greening the (other) IT Grid

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, January 10, 2013 Contact: Liz Boyle, Sustainability Consultant, Contributing Writer <boyle.liz@gmail.com> cell:1.917.514.0139

The New York Times recently featured an article; Power, Pollution and the Internet
www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industryimage.html?emc=eta1 an

expose that reveals the dirty side of todays proliferating data centers. With power consumption worldwide in excess of ;30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants the cloud where our data lives is rich in greenhouse gas. Exacerbating the situation ; To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. Clearly the carbon footprint we now require to Google others, Tweet our thoughts and Facebook the world is deep. Offsetting all the greenhouse gas produced by our data centers is a daunting if not impossible task, however, a small company based in Charleston, SC has been doing just that since 1997. Before Recovery and Reinvestment was a congressional act and when green was just a color, Access Floors OnSite (www.accessfloorsonsite.biz) (AFO) has been reducing emissions, putting people to work and saving their clients money, but not exactly within the power grid. How do they do it ? One raised access floor panel at a time. A raised floor (also raised flooring) or access floor(ing) (also raised access computer floor) are types of floor that provide an elevated structural floor above a solid substrate to create a void for the passage of mechanical and electrical services as well as conditioned air. They are widely used in, IT data centers, computer and server rooms where there the cable and wiring requirements are substantial. Originally developed to support the massive first generation mainframe computers developed in the 60s, access flooring quickly evolved into the 2x2 grid and structural panel system employed today.

Greening the (other) IT Grid

Founded by Robert Boyle in response to the needs of the Federal Aviation Administration and their 24x7 Enroute Air Traffic Control Centers, Access Floors OnSite does what the name says, delivers onsite solutions for access floor installations. An access floor panel is made of two separate products, a structural panel with a wear surface such as high pressure laminate tile (pictured above) or in the case of FAA, conductive carpeting. When the wear surfaces do what they are wont to do, wear out, the general notion is to discard the entire assembly and buy a whole new panel + surface from the manufacturer of the original. Boyle, then a raised floor manufacturers rep and contractor recognized the waste here. Starting in a small shop in New Jersey, Bob turned to stripping and re-laminating panels for his customers. The caveat in this model he says, In a word? Logistics. FAA facilities associated with aircraft on the ground or in the air are always on and populated with folks engaged in a very important job, You cant take them out of service, create job-site hazards or make any noise. We were picking up the old panels placing a temporary panel in its place, trucking it back to our shop, strip it, laminate it, drive it back to the site swap it out and do it all over again. Again recognizing the waste and the cost involved Boyle decided to bring his laminating process to the source of the material. Enabled by advancements in adhesives and his own innovation, today, Access Floors OnSite operates out of a self contained, factory on wheels which can be deployed anywhere. Since 1997 Access Floors OnSite has delivered their unique brand to a business footprint that stretches from Fairbanks, AK to Miami Fl and to a customer demographic that includes federal, state and municipal government agencies, private sector businesses, hospitals, manufacturing concerns and of course, colocation and tier one data center operators, the latest of which is Google. The structural core material for most raised floor panels is steel, steel that is milled into coil, shipped to a raised flooring manufacturer where they; die form it into 2x2 isotropic panels, weld, paint and perhaps inject the panel with concrete and then truck it to the user. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the steel industry accounts for between 3-4% of total world greenhouse gas emissions. On average, 1.7 tons of carbon dioxide are emitted for every ton of steel produced. A computer room grade raised floor panel contains around 28 lbs of cold-rolled steel. Under a current contract with State Farm Insurance in Phoenix, AZ, aided by a hydraulic device that strips their panels clean, AFO will be directly returning 5000 of them right back into service. State Farm in

Greening the (other) IT Grid

turn saves us 119 tons of co2 gas in new steel production alone, the number does not include the energy required to produce the panels or the over-the-road trucks required to deliver them. At CSX Technologies in Jacksonville, FL AFO parked their mobile operation near the loading dock and simply re-bonded 3500 panels that had de-laminated. Before finding AFO, CSX was purchasing the entire panel assembly and having them delivered in lots of 28 pieces. Paetec, Inc is a colocation provider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocation_(business) they operate nearly 40,000 square feet of space in Andover MA (and others). Originally built out as a telecommunication operation the two story building was designed with a two-foot high raised floor throughout. After thirty years of service the floor was completely disheveled and yet the core access floor material was sound and the older steel content of high quality. AFO had the panels load tested to assure they would meet todays standards and then resurfaced and re-trimmed the entire 17,000 sq ft. second floor of the building at the same time they safety checked and re-certified the understructure. The untenable floor system was transformed to server-read in two weeks at a fraction of the cost of replacement.

While the private sector can use the carbon credit savings in a recovery and re-use scenario (versus discard and replace) to offset the discharge from their generators (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/22/technology/data-center-tour.html?smid=fb-share), our government agencies can and are utilizing the practice to comply with EPA guidelines for recycling and numerous executive orders including # 13514 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/PresidentObama-signs-an-Executive-Order-Focused-on-Federal-Leadership-in-Environmental-Energy-and-Economic-

that calls for increased environmental and economic responsibility. In their past fiscal year, AFO has completed projects for the US Coast Guard (https://accessfloorsonsite.wordpress.com) USMA West Point, and it is only fitting that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration would use AFO to re-construct their server room floor in North Charleston, SC. These agencies should be applauded for re-employing construction material, saving the taxpayer money and creating jobs locally that otherwise would be elsewhere. The U.S. government is moving ahead with an ambitious consolidation initiative that aims to slash the number of federal data centers from 2,094 facilities to 1,132 data centers by 2015. What a perfect time for recovery and reinvestment, literally... According to Bob, recondition material at the decommissioned sites and ship it off to the new ones, create jobs, green up, save money.
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No longer restricted in a geographic territory dictated by a manufacturer, Boyle moved his hybrid mobile - contracting, re-manufacturing and distribution business to the Low Country of SouthCarolina in Y2K, he was not the first in the industry to do so. In the early 1990s Maxcess Technologies, Inc. set up manufacturing in Summerville, SC, initially a joint venture, they would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Metals and at their peak employed two hundred

Greening the (other) IT Grid

people, running three shifts. Hitachi operated the facility on Demming Way through 2003 then off-shoring happened. A remnant of the business still exists in Ladson, SC under new ownership. After being bought out by Hitachi, Bruce Meade the other half of the original Maxcess began work on another raised floor business ASM Modular Systems, Inc. Out of their sales and distribution facility also in Ladson, they brand and sell raised floor systems and accessories manufactured in China. In July of 2005 ASM Modular Systems was acquired by the Kingspan Group an Irish conglomerate that also owns our nations largest manufacturer of raised flooring, Tate, Inc. with facilities in Jessup MD and Red Lion, PA. Presently, AFO operates out of one mobile unit with plans for placing more regionally throughout the country and beyond. Since its inception in 1997, AFO has returned over 500,000 square feet of structurally sound raised access flooring directly back into service saving the planet an estimated 2972 tons of greenhouse gas . When asked about the future of his business Boyle points to new panel production, (the Kingspan Group alone produces a half a million panels a week) and an industry that has been cranking out product for forty years as his inventory: There are millions of raised floor panels out there, our (AFOs) efforts arent going to reverse melting at the polar ice caps and will employ only a few, but were trying, .................................one raised floor panel at a time. ####
Robert Boyle is the Founder and General Partner at Access Floors OnSite www.accessfloorsonsite.biz . Recently celebrating thirty years in the raised access flooring industry, his prior positions include Project Engineer, Turner Construction Co., Sales Engineer @ Tate Architectural Products and General Manager R.W.Boyle Associates. bob@accessfloorsonsite.biz 877.604.0281 xt9