Page 268 -

Appendix A
Green IT Checklist and Recommendations 233

HP has also introduced an energy management system for data cen-
ters, called Dynamic Smart Cooling, which delivers 20 percent to 45
percent savings in cooling energy costs, the company reported. “Cooling
is about 60 percent of the power costs in a data center because of ineffi-
ciency,” Perez said. “The way data centers are cooled today is like cut-
ting butter with a chain saw. The air-conditioning system in my home is
more efficient than cooling systems in data centers today. HP plans to
practice what it preaches in its operations by consolidating 85 of its data
centers worldwide into just six larger data centers using virtualization
and blade servers, combining applications, and smart planning,” Perez
said.
The company is also looking at less-conventional ways to obtain
power. Wind power, water, and methane gas are on the HP radar, as they
are for other data centers. HP is looking at supply management of power
and other ways to generate it, such as cogeneration of power or whether
to generate power using a grid or through local sources.
In 2007, HP purchased 11 million kWh of renewable energy for use
in its operations and also joined the U.S. Environmental Protection
ptg
Agency’s (EPA) Green Power Partnership program—a challenge to
Fortune 500 companies to double their renewable energy purchases by
the end of 2007. HP plans to increase renewable energy purchases by
more than 350 percent by procuring 50 million kWh of renewable elec-
tricity during 2007, the company reported. HP also established an ini-
tiative with the World Wildlife Fund-U.S to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from its operating facilities worldwide.

Sun Green Computing

In 2007, Sun Microsystems unveiled a green data center that has
resulted in a dramatic decline in electricity use. Deploying new server
technology and state-of-the-art cooling systems, Sun consolidated its
Silicon Valley data centers, halving the square footage while cutting
power consumption nearly 61 percent. Although Sun reduced the num-
ber of servers from 2,177 to 1,240, computing power increased 456 per-
cent, according to the company.
Here are some highlights of Sun’s Santa Clara campus’s next-generation
data center. Through virtualization—enabling one server to do the work
of multiple machines—Sun slashed the number of computers in the data