Green Data Centers Bring Environmental, Financial Gains

Everyone knows that data centers consume tremendous amounts of electricity. In fact, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity in 2006, according to the National Data Center Energy Efficiency Information Program (NDCEEIP). That is double the amount of energy used in 2000 and represents 1.5 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption. NDCEEIP, which is a joint program of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts growth in energy consumption by data centers will continue to skyrocket by 12 percent annually. EPA’s projected energy consumption by data centers for 2008 is more than 80 billion kWh.

In its August 2007 report to Congress, EPA’s ENERGY STAR Program estimated that state-of-the-art technology could drastically reduce energy use in many data centers. Even if data centers were only 10 percent more efficient, they could yield energy savings of 10.7 billion kWh by 2011, according to ENERGY STAR calculations.

Energy is at the heart of a burgeoning effort to make data centers greener. But the word “green” has multiple meanings when applied to data centers.

On the one hand, it refers to efforts to minimize the environmental impact of business activities. Boardrooms want to be perceived as respectful of Planet Earth, so they are taking steps to reduce energy use and use more sustainable materials in concerted efforts to reduce their carbon footprints.

But green is also the color of money. Data centers are crucial to global business. Billions of transactions travel through them daily. And the high cost of down time requires corporations to make substantial investments in facility infrastructures to ensure appropriate levels of reliability.

The challenge for facility executives is to reconcile these diverse meanings of green — data centers that are more environmentally friendly, that are cost-effective and that meet reliability targets.

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Green Building Solutions
Siemens Data Centers