IT and Green Power--Solutions for a Hungry Cloud

Alta Terra Research Network recently released an informative overview on the state of IT and green power.  Data centers consume about 2% of US electricity. It’s a short, readable post on its website, perfect for green office teams and busy IT managers.   Alta Terra’s Eric Paul and Don Bray write, “Major IT and cloud computing companies have been working to improve energy efficiency in their data centers, and yet mitigation of GHG impacts from power use has lagged.  This matters, because recent growth of the internet and cloud-based computing is resulting in rapid proliferation of data centers and massive incremental power requirements.” 

“Sustainability is now important to a significant majority of hosting services customers and is a factor in purchasing decisions. Finally, an emerging set of solutions is making green power a more realistic option for many new data centers currently exploring a wide range of green power solutions, including sourcing cleaner forms of energy from utilities and energy suppliers, purchasing renewable energy, and deploying onsite renewable energy systems.”

The balance of the article explains the options available to data centers to utilize green power, such as siting centers in service areas of utilities that use renewable sources of power, and concludes, “A wide variety of clean energy solutions are available for IT companies looking to mitigate GHG emissions in their data centers. Yet these solutions must be evaluated on a site-by-site and solution-by-solution basis, in the context of a comprehensive data center energy strategy comprising both energy efficiency and clean power.”