How Green Is your IT? By Peter Judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Feb 22 2010)

1. 

   In the last few days, another level of scrutiny emerged for green data center managers. It's not just how little electricity you use that counts  - it is where that energy comes from. 

   And, like many other green issues, this is one where - depending who you are - the PR gains and losses may be out of proportion to the actual measurable environmental effects of your choice. 

   
   Facebook was pretty proud of its new data center in Prineville, Oregon, and in particular of an energy efficiency regime that makes it very sparing in the amount of electricity it uses. But then someone claimed that the electricity it does use is "dirty", coming from a provider that mostly generates using coal. This being Facebook, the criticism escalated pretty quickly to a petition at Change.org which currently has more than 3000 signatures, and of course a group on Facebook itself - though I can't find it there now. 
   
   

   Now, there have been some data centres that use wind power, and there have been others that use different renewable sources - but green sources of energy are a different thing to using energy more efficiently. And while efficiency saves money, using cleaner energy, by and large does not save money. 

   There are exceptions to this, for instance Iceland, where our hosts here, Verne Global are building a data center, which they say will get power for around four cents per kiloWatt hour, (compared to ten cents in the US and 20 cents in London). And this being Iceland, a lot of that energy is either geothermal or hydroelectric. So it seems that some people do get to save money and their conscience at the same time. 

   
   Facebook had to make a humiliating response to the site which had broken its "dirty energy" story, even though the company had actually done nothing wrong - it was operating more efficiently than it had been, and buying the best energy it felt it could afford, from a company that does in fact have a mixed generation model which includes at least some renewable energy. 
   
   

   Other companies have been playing the game to their advantage, for instance the Illinois data center which is wind-powered. Although wind power is not a good match for the power needs of a data center - its a variable supply feeding a steady demand - the company has a deal to feed the electricity into the local grid, and minimise other electricity use. 
   
   

   The moral here is that, you have to not only do good, you have to be seen to be doing good. And you may have to do some PR work to make sure you are seen that way.  

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