Some companies like Google and Yahoo are proud of their Green programs, but watch out for what what comes from trying to position yourself as an advocate for the environment. Here is an MSNBC.com article pointing out Paul McCartney's receiving a Lexus Hybrid that was shipped by air instead of ship to save 2 weeks.

Paul McCartney chided for carbon footprint

Lexus had luxury hybrid sent to him in Britain by plane instead of ship

The 2008 Lexus LS600h, one of which was given by the company to Paul McCartney, is a hybrid that delivers more efficient performance while still proving fast at a top speed of 155 mph.

Best of all, it was to be a gift from the Lexus car company, which sponsored McCartney's 2005 tour of the United States.

But environmentalists quickly pointed out that the use of a cargo plane to deliver the car to England completely offset any environmental gains resulting from the car's use.

"It's like driving the car 300 times around the world," says Gary Rumbold, the director of the British branch of co2balance, which helps businesses and individuals gauge their carbon emissions footprint. "It seems like somebody at Lexus made an error in judgment. They wanted to get something to McCartney promptly, but it backfired. They should have waited a few weeks and sent it by ship."

The article points out that the action was an innocent victim, but you need to manage your supply chain to be green as well.

It was not clear if McCartney knew the vehicle would be sent to him via air freight rather than by ship. Rumbold said it seems likely the singer was an innocent victim of a mistake made by Lexus executives.

As much as this calls attention to Paul McCartney, the negative PR will hit Lexus harder.

HP's purchase of EDS is all over the news with a bunch of an analysis on how it better prepares HP Services to compete against IBM services.  IBM is the top go to market services company in Green Data Centers initiatives.

I even found a blog post at IT Business Edge on Green Data Centrers, HP hopes interest in green services will help it take on big blue.

It sure sounded ambitious when in March HP unveiled a bundle of hardware, software and services that it said would help transform the data center into a more efficient and flexible entity.

Turns out that was only the tip of the ambition iceberg for HP. Perhaps spurred by recent news of Google’s and IBM’s intent to partner on a cloud computing initiative, HP announced that it is purchasing EDS, a company that can help it advance even further into the growing data center outsourcing business, for $13.9 billion.

Companies’ interest in offloading their data centers to third parties is increasing, driven at least partly by their desire to run “greener” businesses. Data centers are notorious energy hogs. Companies can shave up to 40 percent off their energy costs by outsourcing IT and data center functions, according to IDC.

But, then I found this post on an EDS blog, Green Data Centres - It's Easy, Follow the Sun

If you are an advocate of solar energy, then one of the biggest debates that you are likely to get into is around the question of Grid Parity. If you carry out some simple sums, then in terms of the cost to build a new power plant, we are already there.  The supporting evidence is the number of new base load solar plants that are springing up, like this one in Arizona. But the phrase that has captured my interest is that of a Solar Continent. Australia is, like much of the US, very well positioned to capture a great deal of energy from the sun. With the falling prices of PhotoVoltaic (PV) panels, it is very likely that in the next ten to twenty years much of the western world will be powered with some form of distributed energy (DE). So how does this affect our data centres?

The problem our data centres have is that they are unable to tap this energy early enough to shed the large running costs now being experienced. Many of the world's data centres are not on a path to long term reliability or sustainability. With the complex business interactions now necessary to complete transactions, the availability of reliable energy is paramount. Consequently, the state of data centres is now seen by industry observers as being parlous; however, as outlined in this Synnovation article, The Future Looks Green, the path to sustainability is not insurmountable.

The blog continues, and supports the idea of following the sun to use solar energy.

Hopefully this is not representative of other thinking in EDS, because this will increase the costs of a data center dramatically vs. a following the moon strategy when you could use off peak power.

I've been told Green Data Centers are not a priority in India, but I found this article, on Express Computer, an India IT business weekly.

Powering the data center

Chris McPherson, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, APAC, Raritan, and Sanjay Motwani, Country Manager, India, Raritan share their views with Neeraj Gandhi on handling the power and cooling issues in a data center, and why a power management strategy is so important.

Chris McPherson

Sanjay Motwani

Data centers today are stuck in a heat loop. They actually end up creating new heat (by powering cooling solutions) while trying to dissipate heat generated by servers. How can enterprises get out of this vicious circle?

Why is it so important to have a power management strategy in place?

Motwani: A power management strategy is important for the following reasons:

a) Firstly, power, especially within countries like India is scarce and its optimal utilization is imperative, not a desirable feature.
b) Secondly, the IT infrastructure devices today are both growing in number and consuming more and more power. Hence the power costs for running a data center are increasing exponentially. In some cases the cost of power (for both IT infrastructure & cooling) account for nearly 60% of the costs.
c) Thirdly, at a global scale we are facing the threat of global warming, hence it is the duty of all to ensure that we contribute in whatever way to minimize the negative impact on the environment.

Raritan, which has been providing basic level power tools, is now providing tools for power optimization. These tools allow for measurement and analysis thereby giving the necessary inputs to the IT team to take corrective action.

And, they do admit Green Data Center awareness is low.

There is a lot of discussion on green data centers. Of what importance is this concept in India?

McPherson: The level of awareness with regards to greening of data centers in comparatively low in India. Although I must add that it is increasing and enterprises here are getting serious about making their data centers green. Power is extremely expensive in this part of the world, and data centers are suffering as a result. Consumers are not aware of what an impact this has on the TCO of a data center. Therefore, essentially the awareness around this whole concept of going green needs to be increased.

Motwani: Greening of the data centers largely depends on the corporate philosophy of the enterprise. India today houses data centers of the US. And since the concept of green is being pursued there in a big way, we are witnessing a trickle down effect here in India too. Indian data centers in India are also making an effort in this direction. In addition, compliance is expected to play a big role to help achieve this.

I found this web site www.energyhog.org with a wikipedia reference

Energy Hog is an energy efficiency campaign developed by the Ad Council and run by the Alliance to Save Energy that engages children and raises awareness of the benefits of energy efficiency. He is a villainous character who wastes energy in the home.

The campaign is a non-profit effort with more than twenty sponsors, including The Home Depot, the U.S. Department of Energy, and several state energy offices.

[edit] Goal

The main goal of the Energy Hog campaign is to raise awareness of energy efficiency so that people can save money on their energy bills which were expected to rise throughout the winter of 2005–2006.

[edit] Criticisms

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats called the new campaign "a toothless" energy savings program following an inaccurate media report

And, it got me thinking who are the Energy Hogs in the data center industry. The largest consumers? Or those that use it the most inefficiently? Given the secretive nature of data centers are you hog if you don't share your energy efficiency best practices.

For an interesting example of Energy Hog behavior check out this article on Aspen vacation homes: 61% of the energy consumption is from vacation homes even though they are occupied only 90 days a year on average.

Aspen vacation homes: Energy hogs

Sprawling, little-used second homes sock it to Aspen by generating most of its residential greenhouse gases

By Steve Lipsher Denver Post Staff Writer

Article Last Updated: 08/30/2007 03:12:59 AM MDT

Construction continues on a 15,000-square-foot home on Red Mountain, overlooking Aspen and the town's ski hill. The average single-family home in Aspen measures 3,272 square feet. (Special to The Post / Zach Ornitz)

With their heated driveways, outdoor hot tubs and 24-hour surveillance systems, Aspen's vacation homes each use more electricity than a block of average American homes, a new study reports.

As a result, the luxurious second homes generate most of the town's residential greenhouse gases, even though many of them are occupied only a few weeks each year.

They emit more carbon than Aspen's fully occupied homes, according to the study by the Sopris Foundation.

"I suppose if you make a million dollars or more, and there are several people in Aspen who do - many, actually - you can afford the utility bills," said Richard Heede of Climate Mitigation Services, who conducted the study.

Still, Heede was surprised to find that second homes generate 61 percent of the town's residential carbon dioxide emissions - the main man-made greenhouse gas - even though they are unoccupied an average of 277 days a year.

Aspen vacation homes each generate 43.8 tons of carbon dioxide a year compared with 32.4 tons by each full-time, single-family residence, the report calculates.

The average U.S. household with four people generates between 30 and 40 tons of carbon dioxide a year, depending on elements such as its type of heating fuel, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency's carbon calculator.

Aspen's vacation homes are often much larger than locally owned homes and use, even when empty, as much energy as full-time residences, Heede said.

"Many energy demands are unnecessary and egregious, such as driveway heating, roof-melt systems, hot tubs (and) towel-bar heaters," he said.

Then there are the whirring motors of cigar humidors and wine cellars, and the flicking on and off of 24/7 floodlights, the report says.

While disproportionate energy use in second homes exists in every mountain-resort community, it is most pronounced in Aspen, where conspicuous consumption is a status symbol and there are 150 homes exceeding 10,000 square feet.

As part of writing the Green Data Center Blog, I was curious on how the blogging worked and was waiting for the right subject to blog on.  Well after 6 months of blogging, and specializing on Green Data center, I made #1 on Google Search.

Thanks for visiting my site, and special thanks to those who have linked to my site.