Energy Stars: Wall Street Firms’ Sustainable IT Efforts

financetech.com (Jun 17 2009) Emissions , Cloud Computing , Servers

1. No Wall Street firm could declare its data center truly "green." After all, a fully loaded data center draws somewhere between 7 and 40 megawatts (millions of watts) of electricity, enough to power thousands of homes. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the energy consumption of the nation's data centers will exceed 100 billion kilowatt hours by 2011, ringing up annual electricity costs of $7.4 billion. But some data centers hog less energy than others (see related article on Citi's LEED-certified facilities). And although most firms have ditched the unrealistic phrase "green IT" for the more practical (and perhaps deliberately vague) moniker "sustainable IT" -- sustainable in the sense of its impact on the environment and budgets -- they are achieving real efficiencies. Wall Street firms are deeply engaged in virtualization, consolidation and other energy-efficient initiatives; they're even shutting down entire data centers, turning off servers and ... (Read Full Article)

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