Does it require a real crisis to produce real change? by peter judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Jun 13 2011)

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   The need to cut energy use continues to generate the same mixture of panic and optimism it has produced since global warming became a political issue. 

   Doug Mohney is on the money when he says that energy is going to get more expensive, as a result of the world suddenly deciding nuclear energy is too risky, on the basis of a couple of poorly-sited Japanese plants. 

   Solar and other renewables - decentralised to business sites - will become more attractive. But that won’t feed through quickly enough, and in the medium term, more coal will be burnt in power plants. 

   The increase in power prices will force companies to use electricity more efficiently, and that will be a boost for green data center technologies. It’s clear that modular, and containerised solutions are growing - HP’s launch of its EcoPod container went well, and secretive Amazon is apparently using modules in its almost insanely fast build out of capacity as it continues to dominate the cloud. 

   Even Apple, when it launched its iCloud service, found itself sharing a little about its data center. Not much, of course - Apple is a company that likes to keep things under its hat, and its whole premise is based on giving users technology that works like magic and which isn’t explained, because the user couldn’t understand it, poor thing. 

   So Steve Jobs said the big new data center in North Carolina is “full of stuff” and its facilities are “as green as they could make them”, using air-cooling and (we assume) the right sort of state-of-the-art tech. 

   There’s nothing about PUE or the rest of it - but there were pictures which the industry has picked over. With no other details, the location tells us that Apple’s iCloud is on coal-fired electricity, which won’t satisfy environmentalists such as Greenpeace. 

   Whatever Apple and Amazon do, power costs are increasing, and the energy mix is shifting, so there will be a move to generating electricity on-site - something Google is doing in its latest Finnish data center. The sea-water cooling is a good idea, but also electricity needs are met from a wind farm. 

   These big factors are starting to look more significant than the energy and carbon taxes which originally seemed to be the things which would push better efficiency. Anyone can meet a government target by buying green credits, without making any real changes. 

   But if the underlying costs go up as well, then it becomes  cheaper to actually cut energy use by altering what is happening at the hardware-and-software level. Greening the IT architecture of your company becomes essential. 

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