I remember using the word "sustainability" about fifteen years ago on an environmental panel that I had been asked to participate on in Emory College's Human and Natural Ecology Department. At the time, the distance in meaning between being "green" and being "sustainable" seemed small. I remember rolling the word on my tongue and thinking, what is the difference? Of course, the last few months have demonstrated how much the meanings of words can change given a change in context. Where before efforts in "being green" were all about "being sustainable," the economic crisis has raised the stakes. Being "green" is no longer a term that relates just to the natural world anymore than being sustainable just corresponds to sound energy practice. As President Wagner said in his January letter, "What the world is experiencing is no passing storm; it is an economic climate change." In this new environment, being sustainable is about rigorously examining your current condition and changing the ordinary to yield extraordinary results. Our cover story this newsletter tells the story of our efforts on behalf of our community to raise our game, change our ordinary, in pursuit of the extraordinary as part of our common practice. It's about working differently.

And it begins with small steps. You can imagine that when the Director's talked about retiring personal refrigerators and personal printers and space heaters, we weren't dreaming of  huge savings, but we were hoping for a broad impact, and the Division delivered. In the month of March, we retired twenty-seven refrigerators, fifteen space heaters, forty-four printers, three micrcowaves, seven coffee pots, one lamp, and two water bottle contracts. Sound like much? Well, on annualized basis, the appliances alone consume 34,019 kW-hr of eleictricity. At a hypothetical cost of  .04¢ per kwH, having retired these appliances yields $1360.76. From an environmental perspective this represents over 17 tons of coal that will not need to be burned. When added to the bottled water deliveries which have been retired at a monthly savings of nearly $565 a month, there is another $6784 of savings. If we also factor in one toner cartridge and two reams of paper per printer being retired, it would add an additional $2200. So without much hardship, our collective action saved the University over $10,000.

So we turn our focus inward to the work of Russ Norman's storage team. This past winter, Russ and his team increased the storage density by profiling applications and moving them to the proper class of service. This resulted in 7,720 kW-hr of reduced annual direct power draw. When the team did this, they discovered an equal, additional power savings associated with cooling for a total of 193,000 kW-hr annually. Using the above assumptions of cost, Russ and his team saved Emory $11,576 in direct annual savings on electricity; the energy savings from storage alone represents nearly 100 tons of coal per year. The amount of energy not consumed would have powered 338 laptops (at 65 watts) turned on 24/7 for a year. Now here is where it gets interesting. By pursuing these measures, the storage group has also avoided cost to build power, space, and cooling that would have otherwise been required; a rough estimate for that added capacity might be $48,000. Now take the original intent of the project, to reclassify storage and increase density, and factor in what the team's more strategic deployment yields, and you don't have to purchase nearly $510,000 of additional infrastructure. Sustainability, $570,000; Russ and the storage team, priceless.

Looking at the ordinary, achieving the extraordinary, sustainability is no longer just a fashion choice. It's the way that this Division in its choices to simplify, and the storage team in its mastery of its technologies, work smart. Though this issue will mark our focus on sustainability, the work of the UTS Green Team and the ongoing dialogue about great "green" ideas should be part of our broader commitment to making this not part of our work, but the work itself. The stakes couldn't be higher--our planet, our workplace, our economic security, our communities near and far to campus, our colleagues--all form part of the complex web. Given this context, there is no alternative to being "sustainable" if we want our institution to compete.

- Alan Cattier, Director, Academic Technology Services