Page 116 -

5: The Magic of “Incentive”—The Role of Electric Utilities 81

practical guide to what’s happening in green computing, and why IT people
should care.

Energy Ratings for Data Centers

Energy consumed by data centers in the United States and worldwide
doubled from 2000 to 2005, according to Jonathan Koomey, a consulting
professor at Stanford University and staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley
National Lab. Data center servers, air conditioning, and networking equip-
ment sucked up 1.2 percent of U.S. power in 2005. The biggest reason for
the power surge: double the number of low-end servers, Koomey says. As a
result, some companies are chasing cheaper data center power. Google is
building a data center on Oregon’s Columbia River to tap hydroelectric
power, while Microsoft builds nearby in Washington for the same reason.
Financial services company HSBC is building a data center near Niagara
Falls. Some such efforts are hardly green, however. Wyoming is trying to lure
data centers with the promise of cheap power from coal-fired plants.
But chasing cheap power isn’t practical for most companies. For Lehman
Brothers, proximity to New York City was crucial because automated trading ptg
programs can’t spare the milliseconds it takes for data to travel to upstate
New York and back, though a remote data center could work for certain
batch jobs. At lighting products company Osram Sylvania, the data center
isn’t so time-sensitive, but the company will not consider the hassle of build-
ing a remote center to lower power costs. For these companies, green com-
puting means staying put and cutting costs.

IT Vendors Help Lead the Charge

It’s not reasonable to recommend that a customer use energy-efficient
technology if we don’t use it already in our own IT operations. Specialists in
IT at IBM are always talking about first “eating our own cooking.” In the
field of green IT, from all the articles on the subject, it’s clear that IT vendors
are also applying green standards to their own operations. There are lots of
reasons for this practice: new revenue opportunities, governmental regula-
tions, fear of a customer backlash, or just the desire to act like good corporate
citizens. It’s also good PR: Vendors are trying to make the case that a key dif-
ference between us and our competitors is that we are more concerned about
the environment. That competition and PR will continue to help push green
computing.