Green Business Lie #38: Our data centers aren’t that big a part of our total energy spend. I don’t see any savings there.

Here’s the lie: Green Business Lie #38: Our data centers aren’t that big a part of our total energy spend. I don’t see any savings there.
Here’s the truth — excerpted from The Truth About Green Business:

TRUTH 38: Creating More Efficient Data Centers
To reduce that footprint–and the energy spend associated with it–companies are putting a great deal of effort into designing and operating more efficient data centers. These data centers use more efficient chips and fans, better computers, and better arrangements of computers within their buildings. However, there are still many opportunities to optimize those data centers and run them more efficiently. In fact, Amory Lovins, chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute (an independent nonprofit organization ”fostering the efficient and restorative use of resources”) says data centers can cut power use by 89%.
Greening your data center also can save significant money. The average data center has annual energy costs 15 times as much as conventional office buildings on a square foot basis, and some are more than 40 times as expensive. Factor in rising energy costs (IDC estimates that 50 cents is spent on powering and cooling data centers for every dollar spent on new data center hardware) and the monetization of carbon emissions and you might be spending as much to operate IT systems than you paid to buy them.

Read more in The Truth About Green Business by Gil Friend, from Financial Times Press. Order your copy today! (And come back tomorrow for another Green Business Lie.)