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Data Centers: The Move to Renewable Energy Sources by IT Businesses
Despite the drop in oil and gas prices, increasingly businesses, especially IT businesses, are committing to renewable energy alternatives. Apple, Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook, Microsoft and HP are just a few of the businesses that are touting their efforts in going green with how they consume energy. In particular, many new data centers are designed and built to maximize the use of renewable energy/power sources.
Pierre Delforge, director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote that “in 2013, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to the annual output of 34 large (500-megawatt) coal-fired power plants. Data center electricity consumption is projected to increase to roughly 140 billion kilowatt-hours annually by 2020, the equivalent annual output of 50 power plants, costing American businesses $13 billion annually in electricity bills and emitting nearly 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution per year.”
Ryan Schuchard, associate director of climate change of BSR, said that “at least 11 big IT companies have committed to 100 percent renewables. (Tech) has one of the best levers of any sector to move on renewables.”
It’s not just about cleaner power, it’s also about smarter use of energy. Software algorithms, for example, are helping businesses achieve energy efficiencies. Facebook, for example, optimizes the use of their devices. An Ars Technica article quotes Bill Weihl, director of sustainability at Facebook, saying that “we have a system that allows 80-90 percent of disks turned off. When a disk is not touched, it gets turned off. It’s a matter of having storage layer that knows how to have most of the disks off most of the time, but the data is on a disk that’s spinning that you can get to. If you integrate more tightly into the application layer on top of it, you can predict when photos are going to be needed—like when a user is scrolling through photos chronologically, you can see you’ll need to load up images soon. You could make a decision to turn off not just the backups, but all the copies of older stuff, and keep only the primaries of recent stuff spinning.”
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[…] Data Centers: The Move to Renewable Energy Sources by IT Businesses In particular, many new data centers are designed and built to maximise the use of renewable energy/power sources. Pierre Delforge, director at …. Software algorithms. Example, are helping businesses achieve energy efficiencies. Facebook. … Read more on Formtek Blog (blog) […]