Green IT

Modular and prefabricated data centres are significantly cheaper and more energy-efficient than traditional site-constructed facilities, according to a new report from The Green Grid.

Deep in the mountains of West Virginia lies the most sophisticated and largest battery system ever made. I travelled on Thursday to the alpine hamlet of Laurel Mountain to attend the unveiling of the 32 MW, 8 MWh system, which has just been built by AES Energy Storage. What I found was the next iteration of energy storage technology: bigger, better and cheaper.

Many have seen it: that picture of a small child playing in a heap of discarded metal scraps and wires in a Third World country. Images such as these have raised awareness about a fact of life in the computer era that's tainting corporate brands and creating a huge environmental problem: electronic waste.

A tag-team effort by Kaiser Permanente's data center IT and facilities groups delivered a one-two punch to energy consumption in the company's three data centers this year, cutting an eye-popping 7.2 million kilowatt-hours of power from overall data center operations -- and over $770,000 from power budgets. "We are one of the few companies that have the data center facilities team as part of IT," says Steve Press, executive director of data center facilities services, who credits collaboration for the results.

When Mary O'Malley became Prudential's environmental task force chairperson in 2007, she found that the company's IT department was already focused on being green.

Baker Hughes, a provider of oil and gas services, has made energy consumption a major factor in its decision-making processes.