Making data centers greener

While the high-tech industry pursues solutions to global warming, it’s also contributing to the problem.

Ever-multiplying computer server facilities will double their consumption of energy in the next five years, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study sent to Congress on Friday. EPA officials and some industry leaders hope the findings will spur policies to make large computer facilities, and the cooling systems they require, more efficient.
Server facilities – ranging from single units tucked away in closets for small office use to huge regional data centers – accounted for 1.5 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2006 at a cost of $4.5 billion, the 133-page report found. That’s equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 5.8 million households, and about the same amount of energy used by the entire U.S. transportation manufacturing industry – the factories that make vehicles, aircraft and ships.

In Northern and central California, data centers used 400 to 500 megawatts, enough energy to power at least 300,000 homes, according to an estimate last year by Pacific Gas & Electric.

The need for more servers and data storage is booming, with the growth of electronic commerce, record-keeping and Internet communication and entertainment. And the U.S. government is the biggest single user, accounting for about 10 percent of the nation’s computer energy demand, according to the report. That cost taxpayers

$450 million

The six-month report, the result of a bill sponsored by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, was based on research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and involved industry representatives who attended a Silicon Valley workshop in February.

The report recommends several ways to limit energy use, from incentives for energy-efficient equipment to new, compatible standards to measure energy consumption. The goal is for the EPA’s Energy Star program – which gives consumers easy-to-read standardized information on appliances, desktop and laptop computers – to provide the same sort of data on large computer equipment.

San jose Mercury News