There’s a lot of talk about reducing your carbon footprint these days, but many data center managers are left scratching their heads as to how to go about making their operations more environmentally sustainable.

First, it helps to understand exactly what is meant by “carbon footprint.” Basically, the carbon footprint is a measurement of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases, such as water vapor, methane, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons, created by the life cycle of a product or service and is used as a metric for the overall impact a person or organization has on the environment.

What’s The Problem?

Tracking and reducing carbon footprints has become critical in recent years as many believe the sharp rise of greenhouse gases over the past century has led to a change in global weather patterns, including an increase in the number and severity of storms, coastal flooding, and drought. In turn, these climatic shifts have led to widespread personal and economic devastation throughout the world.

“Data centers have had a steady growth in capacity, which translates into more greenhouse gases,” explains William Forrest, associate principal for IT at McKinsey & Company. According to a joint report released by McKinsey and the Uptime Institute, “between 2000 and 2006, the amount of energy used to store and handle data doubled, with the average data facility using as much energy as 25,000 households.”

As consumers are increasingly conscious about lessening their impact on the planet, organizations that make a concerted effort to reduce their overall carbon footprints have become more competitive in this tight market.

The Uptime Institute and McKinsey & Company also estimated that CO₂ emissions from data centers worldwide will increase from 80 metric megatons calculated in 2007 to 340 metric megatons by 2020. Energy accounts for the majority of the carbon footprint, but there are a number of additional ways organizations can reduce their overall environmental impact.

Reduce Energy Consumption

Virtualization, optimization, and consolidation are the heavy hitters when it comes to reducing power and cooling needs in the data center. “On average, servers only use about 15% of their total computing capacity,” points out Dr. Jonathan Koomey, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (www.lbl.gov) studying energy consumption within data centers.

Although the majority of Koomey’s research focuses on energy consumption, he adds that underutilizing assets such as servers is economically a poor business practice. “There is all this capital sitting around and not being utilized, yet [it is] consuming energy.”

Other companies are choosing to tackle their increasing carbon footprints by completely retooling with newer, highly efficient data centers altogether. Later this year, Syracuse University, in conjunction with IBM, is set to unveil one of the greenest data centers in the world. The 6,000-square-foot data center cost about $12.4 million to build but will consume just half the power of a traditional data center. This is the second green data center for a university on which IBM has collaborated. Its first project with Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia, netted an estimated reduction of 230 tons of CO₂ per year.

Renewable Resources

With energy being the elephant in the room when it comes to your carbon footprint, many companies have also chosen to take the EPA Green Power Partnership’s Fortune 500 Green Power Challenge in addition to reducing overall power consumption. The Green Power Partnership is a voluntary program that helps organizations purchase energy from renewable resources such as wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric.

For example, Intel uses 1.3 billion kilowatt hours each year. The company is currently purchasing 46% of its total energy from wind-generated sources. At its Foster City, Calif., facilities, IBM procures 100% of its power from renewable resources, as does AMD at its Austin, Texas, location.

Similarly, many organizations opt to purchase carbon credits, which means they are buying the energy savings of another organization in an effort to offset their total carbon footprint. Carbon credits are created when an organization opts to “trade” its energy savings to another organization that may not be able to reduce its energy consumption.

Accountability

Jim Cerwinski, senior product manager at Raritan (www.raritan.com), believes that in order to effectively reduce their carbon footprints, organizations need to have an inherent understanding of the power consumption of the equipment within the data center. “To effectively reduce greenhouse gases, you must have some method for tracking and auditing power consumption,” he says.

To effectively address the carbon footprint issue, forward-thinking organizations are appointing “chief environmental officers” and “energy czars.” In these roles, individuals are responsible for researching energy-saving programs and technologies, creating metrics, and tracking success. “There are numerous benefits from being able to quantify carbon usage,” says Cerwinski.

Responsible Life Cycles

Although companies tend to focus on reducing their energy consumption, the method of disposing of outdated and nonfunctional equipment, as well as other types of consumables, at the end of their usefulness can significantly contribute to a reduction in the carbon footprint. Because a carbon footprint is calculated over the life cycle of a product, emissions from the raw materials procurement, the actual manufacturing process, and eventually the disposal are all part of the overall footprint equation.

“When companies repurpose outdated, yet still useful, equipment, it is not only a good business decision but an environmentally sound choice,” says Vuk Trifkovic, senior analyst at Datamonitor. “It is critical to follow through the entire life cycle of an electronic product. It’s not enough anymore just to examine a product’s efficiency. The entire manufacturing process must be considered, and then we need to make sure it gets recycled or disposed of in a proper way.”

by Sandra Kay Miller