Green Computing meets Green Energy

This summer school was held in 2021.

Key Details:

Target group: early-stage PhD students and MSc students.

Location: This summer school was held in Lille, France.

Motivation and Description:

Green Energy is produced from renewable sources, while Green Computing refers to the study and practice of environmentally sustainable computing. The goal of green computing, therefore, consists in maximizing energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy. Modern IT systems rely upon a complicated mix of people, networks, and hardware; as such, green computing must cover all of these areas. Cloud computing and large data centres have a severe impact on the worldwide energy demand accounting for about 1% of the world's total energy use in 2018, and thus are a primary focus for proponents of green computing. Data transmission networks account for a similar share. This calls for integrating renewable power sources in order to progress towards carbon-free cloud and networking infrastructures. Energy-efficient data centre design should address all of the energy use aspects included in a data centre: from the IT equipment to the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) equipment. The efficiency of algorithms and protocols affects the number of computer resources required for any given computation or communication function and there are many efficiency trade-offs in writing software programs. This meeting of green computing with green energy poses special challenges: green energy from solar and wind fluctuates and can be intermittent. Novel mechanisms to shift processing to times when green energy is available or other locations that have a current abundance of green energy are important. This particular form of demand-response applications in large-scale data centres can also bolster the stability and efficiency of power grids, which becomes increasingly challenging and important with the prevalence of distributed renewable generation.

This summer school covered a comprehensive collection of theoretical and practical aspects at the intersection of energy-efficient computing and renewable energy, including their reciprocal impacts and benefits.

Speakers from both industry and research institutions presented their work on the intersection of energy-efficient computing and renewable energy, including their reciprocal impacts and benefits.

Course organisers:

The Summer School was organized by several European universities and research institutions through the LUCS and PACE INTPART projects. The partners are: University of Lille (France), Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering (Norway), University of Oslo (Norway), University of Stavanger (Norway), Technical University of Berlin (Germany), GT-ARC (Germany), and Technical University of Munich (Germany).