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5: The Magic of “Incentive”—The Role of Electric Utilities 77

Power Company Incentives for Companies to Go Green

Companies in every industry—from nonprofits to consumer goods—are
paying much closer attention to their power bills, as the amount spent on
data center power has doubled in the past six years. The CFO is getting the
bills, and IT is the biggest user of energy, as data centers can use up to 100
times more energy per square foot than normal office buildings. IT execs are
happy that their conservation efforts have a social good, but they measure
their progress in dollars saved. However, IT execs would be wise to keep an
eye on more than the economics of energy-efficient computing. Energy con-
sumption is huge—U.S. data centers consume as much power in a year as is
generated by five power plants—and governmental policy makers are taking
notice and considering more regulation. A group of government and industry
leaders is trying to set a clear standard for what constitutes a green computer,
a mark that IT execs might find themselves held to. Global warming con-
cerns have begun to spark a public opinion swing. This can result in either a
backlash against big data centers or a PR win for companies that can position
themselves as green. IT vendors are responding to the call for energy conser- ptg
vation, making energy efficiency central to their sales pitches and touting
ecofriendly policies such as carbon-neutral computing.
A Gartner poll in 2008 showed that more than 69 percent of data centers
are constrained for power, cooling, and space. Yet, energy-efficient servers are
available from all the major vendors. For example, Sun’s CoolThreads tech-
nology is said to make servers more efficient by a factor of five. Efficient
processors from IBM, AMD, and Intel have made their way into the main-
stream, so your favorite server is now available in green, with efforts to con-
tinue to improve energy efficiency an ongoing commitment. Key
measurements to determine the greenness of a server are performance per
watt or logical images/watt. Benchmarks for both idle and load conditions
are frequently touted by server vendors. Ideally, purchase decisions on energy
efficiency should be made with a consideration of server use. Energy-aware
servers will become commonplace as vendors offer the ability to throttle back
and turn off servers when they are not needed. Running servers at 100% all
the time is like driving a car at top speed just because you can. Using the per-
formance you need rather than what the machine is capable of will use much
less energy.
The payoff of efficient servers is twofold. Servers that consume less
energy also throw off less heat, requiring less energy for cooling. Today’s