The Political Pressures are Building on Green Data Centers

A friend in the UK sent this following.  And is an interesting political movement given US Assistant Secretary of Energy Presentation to the UN.

The authors of this report recently presented its findings to the UK Parliament, citing that the Impact of IT to the environment is more damaging than that of the Airline industry.  It makes for powerful reading and, whilst it does not single out specific suppliers or vendors for criticism, it’s content points to increased vocal concern over IT’s footprint.  I would be very interested in the international point of view on this.

I agree with his assessment on the report and it is interesting how they pulled this fact together to get public's attention. The pressures are going to build for anyone who has a large # of servers. Let's see what data centers get identified as bad for the environment. This is why I think Google has chosen the renewable energy area as a public relations issue.

It is estimated that a medium-sized server has roughly the

same annual carbon footprint as an SUV vehicle doing 15

miles per gallon

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. The power required for a rack of highdensity

server blades can be 10-15 times greater than a

traditional server

(30)

.Carbon Neutral Company

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Rakesh Kumar, Gartner Analyst, Sep 2006

(29)