Vol 2 - An Interview with AMD Senior Strategist Larry Vertal

The Sustainable Enterprise Report spoke with Larry Vertal, a senior strategist with Advanced Micro Devices of Sunnyvale, Calif. AMD makes chips, turning silicon into processors that drive PCs, servers, graphics applications, and mobile and video systems.

Larry Vertal is a senior strategist for AMD. In this role he is responsible for both the strategy and execution of selected corporate and commercial initiatives. Vertal has over two decades of operational management, strategic relations, corporate governance and marketing experiencewith technology companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 corporations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in bacteriology with a minor in philosophy from California State University, Los Angeles, followed by graduate research in chemistry focused on paramagnetic resonance.

Q: What are you doing at AMD with regard to sustainability?

A: We are proud of our achievements in this area and we think it is essential to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk internally. To frame what we do, we have three areas focused on sustainable issues. First is our products. By designing and creating energy-efficient products, we have a magnification effect on society as a whole, as they are used by our customers and their customers. Second, we are focused on collaborative initiatives that have an impact. We have been a long-time member of EPA Climate Leaders, as well as a sponsor of California Clean Tech Open. We are also one of the founding companies of The Green Grid. For these efforts, Innovest awarded us last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos for being one of the 100 most sustainable companies on the planet.

Third, in terms of our operations, we publish results and goals around our sustainability efforts very transparently in our Global Climate Protection Plan. In terms of our footprint – both in energy and greenhouse gases – from 2002 - 2007 we actually exceeded our initial commitment and reduced greenhouse gases in our operations by 50 percent, and energy by 30 percent on a normalized basis based on production. Since then, we have recommitted to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent and our energy usage by 40 percent by 2010, using our 2006 levels as a baseline. I think one of the highlights in the last year that reflects AMD’s point of view is our newly opened 3,000-person campus in Austin, Texas, which is getting the final certification to LEED Gold. This facility and all our Austin facilities are supported 100 percent by renewable energy through Austin’s wind energy program.

Q: Why did you become involved in The Green Grid and what benefits are you seeing through that association?

A: Back in 2006, AMD, along with HP, IBM and Sun, got together and decided to form a consortium to address data center energy. The context was stimulated by a number of studies that AMD sponsored. Back in 2005, we sponsored independent studies with data center managers to identify what issues were on their horizon, what difficulties they were having, and energy was one of those key areas. We also sponsored a couple of independent studies by Dr. Jonathan Koomey of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories on data center energy usage in North America and worldwide that highlighted energy usage
by data centers being a looming problem. As a result, in 2006, we and our partners helped bring together the industry to form The Green Grid. If you look at the board member companies, you’ll see it’s a true industry effort. Right now the Grid has over 190 member companies inthe United States, Japan and Europe.

Q: And together, are you seeing developments? Are you moving the needle?

A: Yes. The Grid has technical committees, which are someof the best and brightest people from these corporations working together to develop metrics and standards. One of the key issues around data centers is that the people who run them have no standards by which to measure their own energy consumption, and thereby manage it. You cannot
really manage something you cannot measure. So the Grid has been working hard on metrics. It is good to see on the technical committees the best and brightest technical minds of these vicious competitors all working together cooperatively. We’re making progress within the Grid. It is a very hard problem because data centers are very complex organisms.

Q: We have certainly seen some very high num-bers in terms of data center energy usage. Is that something that ignited this new-found solution?

 A: If you take a step back, why is this happening around data centers? It is a macro trend. A concentra-tion of cycles in data centers serve the edge devices out there. Think about the Web and your PC at home, your Blackberry, the various mobile devices. What is happening is that data centers are being built larger and larger to serve all these edge devices and that’s why you see this problem coming to the forefront. Q: With the technological developments in sustainability in the business sector, is there anything you have seen recently that has got your attention? A: We take a conservative view and we are wary of exag-geration. I mentioned we use wind energy to power all our operations in Austin. Wind in certain locations is definitely an appropriate technology and it is getting quite exciting because of the increased efficiency of turbines. At the same time, we tend to be a bit conservative, so we do not go through third parties. We go to renewable energy resource companies or organizations where we can go out and inspect the facilities and ensure we are getting the true clean energy that we are paying for. At the same time, there are some interesting things going on in hydrogen generation, the difficulty being that you have to create a whole new distribution infrastructure. We are watching hydrogen very carefully right now, as well as some of the breakthroughs going on at the research level in solar. Solar is hitting a tipping point with the kind of prices we’re seeing for petroleum-based energy.

Q: Have you found that AMD’s green efforts have increased customer loyalty or shareholder value?

 A: Yes, although it is difficult to measure. What is happening is that there is a demand by customers for their suppliers to have environmental responsibility programs (and to be able to prove it) just to do business with you. Even the companies we sell processors to are now demanding a deep understanding of their supply-chains, both in terms of the environmental side effects and the full-life carbon footprints of the products they purchase.

Q: How has AMD been getting its employees involved, with regard to being more sustainable?

 A: Being in the technology business, we are all a bunch of nerds. The funny thing about nerds is we have interests that go beyond our narrow specialty. Our employees demand that we are transparent and have active environmental programs, because in their own lives they are trying to reduce their environmental impact, and therefore expect it of their employer. The way we stay the leader is by attracting the best and the brightest, but the best and the brightest put tremendous demands on their employers because they know they can get a job anywhere. We have many employee green transportation programs, along with work-at-home programs that help and encourage employees to live a more sustainable life. We will continue to make improvements to our business practices in the areas of sustainability to keep employees interested and involved.

*Footnotes