They seem to be the new buzz word and the new hype in the green movement. Companies can’t wait to promote their latest green initiatives and tell the public how they’re going green. On the one hand, it’s essential for large corporations to find ways to cut energy use in order to reduce carbon emissions and do their part to slow the green house effect. However, these initiatives aren’t always based on the desire to help the environment. For many companies, these decisions are purely business choices and based solely on economic factors.
Reducing the Carbon Footprint
Data centers are taking up more and more energy with each passing year. Very soon data centers will use more energy than any other industry as demand for servers, colocation and data storage increases. That is why government and environmental organizations and looking to data centers to cut their energy use.
There are many ways in which data centers are going about tackling this problem:
Power efficient servers- by installing power-efficient servers in the data centers, facilities are able to reduce the amount of energy they use per server. This allows for the same number of servers to occupy the data center without using as much energy.
Recycled heat- with all the heat generated by servers, some companies are looking for ways to harness that power and use it rather than continue to let it go to waste. Ways that companies are recycling heat is by using it to heat other parts of the building, other buildings nearby, to heat a swimming pool or even to heat a greenhouse.
Recycled power- with the current technology, there is a certain amount of power that doesn’t get used. Instead of wasting it, some data centers have found a way to harness the extra power and recycle it back into the system. This way instead of using only 70% of the available power, they are able to save that extra 30%, recycle back into the system and use it again.
Environmental or Economic Motivation
While all these initiatives are great, the question comes down to the motivation behind them. Do these companies really care about the environment or are they trying to save money on rising oil prices and using the green movement as a benevolent front?
Energy is becoming more and more expensive and companies are forced to pay high prices for a product they previously got for much cheaper. Not only are energy costs rising, but there is a limit to how much power is allocated to each facility. This limits the number of servers that can be brought into the data center and in turn puts a cap on the amount of business a facility can do.
Instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars on additional power lines into the building, it’s easier and cheaper for data centers to “go green” and cut the amount of power they use. This, in turn, will increase the number of servers they can put in the data center and increase their business.
In some cases, going green isn’t due to the desire to reduce carbon emissions or to help preserve the environment. Instead it’s motivated by money and the desire to do more business. In either case, the end result is a greener data center, which reduces carbon emissions; so maybe, just maybe the motivation behind it is irrelevant.
Author: Saleh Tousi
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Import duty tariff
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