How green is IT’s future? 6 billion kwh—at an electrical cost of about $450
million.
The Environmental Protection Agency expects power The EPA also outlined some ways to mitigate the
consumption at data centers to continue rising, but some issue, including standard-
systems makers see a time when facilities won’t need cooling izing metrics for data cen- ters, creating an Energy
Star performance rating
system and giving financial incentives, such as tax
credits and utility rebates.
Reaction to the EPA
report here was generally
positive.
“It should significantly
boost awareness of the
energy issues associated
with our ever-increasing
reliance on computers, and
it provides a very preliminary set of benchmarks,”
Eric Birch, executive vice
president of thermal and
airflow solution provider
DegreeC in Milford, N.H.,
Reporters and analysts take a look at Sun’s Project Blackbox mobile data center in October. told e Week.
By Chris Preimesberger that we’ll eventually get to the Environmental Pro- “I expect many orga-
IN STANFORD, CALIF. full data centers that won’t tection Agency’s Energy nizations—corporations,
When steve sams need cooling equipment,” Star program outlining universities, cities and
looks into the not- Sams said. “These will be the energy challenges fac- states—will find various
so-distant future, hundreds of times more ing the IT industry and stakeholders asking new
he can see a time when efficient. And what a sav- possible steps that can be and more pointed ques-data centers will no longer ings in power draw that taken to alleviate some of tions about what’s being
be the power-consuming will be.” the problems. done and what’s the plan,”
beasts they are now. Power, coolingandenergy It won’t be easy, though, Birch said. “The ques-
And when he looks efficiency have become key according to the report. tions may come from the
around now, he sees issues in the IT industry The technology sector is desire to ‘gogreen,’ or they
the seeds of those self- as data centers become seeing power consump- may be mainly about the
contained data centers more densely populated tion rise rapidly. The EPA money, but by September
already being sown. by power-hungry systems estimated that the IT [after everyone returns
“We do have a num- and businesses move away industry consumed about from vacation], all sorts
ber of data center com- frompaper-basedprocesses 61 billion kilowatt-hours of organizations will need
ponents now available to digital information man- in 2006—about 1.5 per- to have some answers for
that are rugged enough agement. cent of the total electricity such questions their stake-to withstand constant 50- It was the same story at consumed in the United holders will be asking.”
degree Centigrade [122- the event here, as officials States—at a cost of about The report is a key step
degree Fahrenheit] tem- with IT vendors, analysts $4.5 billion. in educating customers,
peratures,” Sams, IBM and attendees wrestled Power consumption in policy-makers and the
vice president of global with the myriad aspects the industry could nearly public on opportunities to
sites and facilities, said involved in the issue. double by 2011, the report conserve energy in data
at the AlwaysOn Stanford A key part of the discus- said. Federal servers and centers, said Paul Perez,
Summit here Aug. 3. sion was a report submit- data centers accounted vice president for scalable
“It’s not hard to imagine ted to Congress Aug. 2 by for about 10 percent—or [CONTINUED ON PAGE 22]
