A Green Data Center is a sustainable data center, and companies have focused on carbon emissions and renewable energy, but water is often overlooked in the green strategy.  MSNBC reports on Lake Mead's 50-50 chance of being dry by 2021.

If you've been thinking of locating a data center in the Southwest due to Solar Energy, you should also plan on how to run your cooling systems without water.

What are the chances that Lake Mead, a key source of water for more than 22 million people in the Southwest, would ever go dry? A new study says it's 50 percent by 2021 if warming continues and water use is not curtailed.

"We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us," co-author Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said in a statement. "Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest."

"It's likely to mean real changes to how we live and do business in this region," added co-author David Pierce, a Scripps climate scientist.

And, hydroelectric power from Hoover Dam is also an issue. Here is the distribution of Hoover Dam's power

The Bureau of Reclamation reports that the energy generated is allocated as follows:^[17]

Area Percentage

Arizona 18.9527%

Nevada 23.3706%

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California 28.5393%

Burbank, CA 0.5876%

Glendale, CA 1.5874%

Pasadena, CA 1.3629%

Los Angeles, CA 15.4229%

Southern California Edison Co. 5.5377%

Azusa, CA 0.1104%

Anaheim, CA 1.1487%

Banning, CA 0.0442%

Colton, CA 0.0884%

Riverside, CA 0.8615%

Vernon, CA 0.6185%

Boulder City, NV 1.7672%

Greenwashing is normally a bad term for any company/product. But, Clorox may be able to use this term for their Green Works products. Clorox is transforming their company to be Green.  They purchased Burt's Bee products.

Today, the couple’s quirky enterprise is owned by the Clorox Company, a consumer products giant best known for making bleach, which bought it for $913 million in November. Clorox plans to turn Burt’s Bees into a mainstream American brand sold in big-box stores like Wal-Mart. Along the way, Clorox executives say, they plan to learn from unusual business practices at Burt’s Bees — many centered on environmental sustainability. Clorox, the company promises, is going green.

The Treehugger Blog even writes favorably about this move,and has the endorsement from the Sierra Club.

The bottle itself has a couple of things that make what's on the outside almost as compelling as the cleaner inside. First of all, the Sierra Club (whose Conservation Director, Greg Haegele, blogs here at TreeHugger) will endorse the product by placing their logo on the label. "We'll definitely have some folks who are surprised by this decision, but also people who are pretty excited about it," said Sierra Club spokeswoman Orli Cotel. "We are supporting Green Works in hopes that more people will have access to these kinds of products, some of which aren't even available in the middle of the country."

The Sierra Club approved the use of their logo as part of the Green Works brand after it asked several of its volunteer committees to review the cleaners; it's the first time the non-profit has given its blessing to a household cleaning product. "We hope we are transforming the marketplace by doing this," said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. "These products are clean, they're green, they're not going to hurt you, and they're not going to hurt the environment."

This brings us to one of the other eyebrow-raisers: Clorox cheerfully lists the ingredients for Green Works on the label -- something it doesn't do for its conventional cleaners -- and also prominently displays the Clorox logo. They're hoping that the equation of "trusted brand (and the proven efficacy that comes with it) + transparency = success," and Joel Makower thinks it'll be a pretty big deal: "This is a kind of watershed moment. We finally have major consumer companies taking the green marketplace seriously, and not as an afterthought." (He also did some consulting on the project).

The Green momentum continues to build.  There are interesting lessons to be learned by what Clorox has done.  Buying Green expertise to change the mindset in the company, creating a critical mass of people who think sustainability and green. Working with a non-profit and consumers to get feedback on their Green initiative.  And the hope that, Trusted Brand + transparency  = success.

Popular Science has an article about the 50 Greenest cities in the USA. It was interesting what they highlighted as green efforts by different cities.

CASE STUDY: Grass Power
Boston has preliminary plans for a plant that would turn 50,000 tons of fall color into power and fertilizer. The facility would first separate yard clippings into grass and leaves. Anaerobic bacteria feeding on the grass would make enough methane to power at least 1.5 megawatts’ worth of generators, while heat and agitation would hasten the breakdown of leaves and twigs into compost.

CATEGORY LEADER: Electricity
Much of the wet Pacific Northwest draws its energy from hydroelectric dams. But Eugene draws an additional 9 percent of its municipal electricity from wind farms. It also buys back excess power from residents who install solar panel

See how Chicago's power plants produce twice the energy with a third the carbon, here.

CASE STUDY: Green Concrete
Fly ash, a by-product of coal-burning power plants, usually ends up in landfills. Researchers at the University of Colorado Denver found a way to reuse this industrial by-product. They add it at concentrations of about 20 percent to a new green concrete mix. The addition of fly ash also reduces the amount of sulfur- and carbon-spewing concrete production needed to finish a job. The mayor has signed an executive order requiring the use of green concrete in new city projects, and a $550-million infrastructure bond makes demand for the mix likely to grow.

CATEGORY LEADER: Recycling and green perspective
Lexingtonians recycle everything from surplus electronics to scrap metal, and they listed the environment as their third most important concern (behind only employment and public safety)—the highest ranking in our survey. 

NetworkWorld attended the Green Grid Technical forum and wrote an article titled, Wanted: Energy efficient standards for data centers.

The article has customer interviews from Allstate, ADP, Enterprise Rent-A-Car integrated, but I cant' tell if the interviews were done at the Green Grid Technical Forum, or they are from previous interviews. (Appended Feb 9, 2008, there were presentations by these companies at the Forum)

The only part I can find about the Forum is

A number of speakers at the Green Grid event said user education was the first challenge to greening their data centers. Educating internal users -- even IT staff such as application developers -- and computer component vendors of the need to focus on data center efficiency instead of raw speed and power were two such challenges.

Here is one report on The Green Grid's Technical Forum. Matt Stansberry makes the point that the forum leaves the users hungry for something meatier. His point is summarized in his last paragraph.

Miles Kelly, vice president of strategy at the San Francisco-based hosting giant 365 Main (a Green Grid end user member) spoke for the masses of data center pros when he took the microphone at the end one of the sessions and asked the panel for some guidance. “Give me something I can take back to my operations team. What is your prescription for a company like ours?” he asked.

The panel looked at each other in silence before essentially giving a non-answer as Kelly walked back to his seat.

This observation identifies the opportunity for sharing the best practices, but what company has set up their business model to meet this need?