Survey says: Increase IT Efficiency or Risk Worldwide Brownouts

February 26, 2009

Email this story Print this post Add your comments

A new survey by Siemens AG examines IT efficiency attitudes and practices of Fortune 2000 companies and reveals that while many companies feel increased efficiency is important, most are unsure how to go about it.

While 87 percent of companies surveyed think energy efficiency is important, only 48 percent have goals for improving their efficiency, and even fewer have actually begun to take action. Of particular concern is the rapidly growing number of datacenters, says Siemens.

Datacenters in the U.S. use more electricity than all U.S. color TVs put together, and their energy consumption rate is skyrocketing at 12 percent a year. Ken Cornelius, chief executive officer of Siemens One, said, “If we do not start looking closely at our data centers now, 70 percent of the world’s data centers will have tangible system disruptions by 2011 and the systems will experience world-wide brown outs over the course of the next five years.”

So why aren’t companies more invested in improving their data center energy efficiency?

72 percent said the size of the investment was the primary barrier.
38 percent said lack of specific information on the ROI for making changes.
38 percent cited server down time required to implement changes.
34 percent were concerned about running legacy software on new systems.

Other concerns revealed in the finding:

27 percent worry a “brown out” or exceeding process capacity will affect their data centers.
27 percent are worried about losing data.
15 percent worry about aging facilities.
10 percent are concerned about high energy costs.

America’s servers and data centers consumed about 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006, or twice as much as in 2000, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Email this story Print this post Add your comments

Advertisers

Enhance Sustainability. Improve Profitability.

Learn how at the SAP Sustainability Resource Center. >>

Unclear about the EPA's new GHG Rule?

Learn how it could affect your business. >>

EPA mandatory emissions reporting starts Jan 1st

CSA Standards can help your organization get ready for compliance. Find out how. >>

Product Environmental Compliance Best Practices

How to achieve compliance at a significantly lower cost. Download the full report. >>

Join the Discussion

Reader Comments

We at Emerson Network Power applaud the work done by Siemens to showcase the issues surrounding IT energy consumption and the slow pace of change within the IT community. We have highlighted a set of ten simple strategies that IT professionals can deploy today that over time will help them reduce overall energy consumption up to 50% while significantly increasing productivity. These can be found in our white paper on energy efficiency metrics – http://www.emerson.com/edc/docs/EnergyLogicMetricPaper.pdf.

One other aspect worthy of consideration is the idle power performance of IT assets. It is time that IT professionals and data center managers take a hard look at idle power as in most servers idle power is in excess of 50% of full-power draw and frequently as high as 70%. And since most servers are sitting idle for 80% of the day the potential savings from bringing idle power down to say 10-15% would be staggering!

Fortunately the US EPA is attempting to drive an ENERGY STAR specification for servers that will start to address idle performance. We call on the data center community to contact the US EPA and demand improved server idle performance.

By Phone (9:00 am – 5:00 pm Eastern time)
ENERGY STAR Hotline (888) STAR-YES / (888-782-7937)

Jack Pouchet | February 27th, 2009

Recent Daily News [ see all ]

11/20/2009
11/19/2009
11/18/2009

Charts [ see all ]

European Paper Industry Cuts CO2 Emissions by 42% since 1990

S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks

Nike Tops Annual Climate Action Scores

Oceans May Trap more Carbon than Forests

Jobs

View All Jobs >> Post a Job >>

Comments and Discussions

Trade Association on Trade Group on EPA Chemical Regs: ‘If Everything is a Priority, Then Nothing is a Priority’
"Seriously… that..."

Gary Markowitz on Supermarkets Tackle Emissions Reductions, Fuel Efficiency
"Supermarkets waste over 10 percent of their energy through improper..."

peter in ireland on Ontario May Follow California’s Lead on TV Energy Efficiency
"Governor Schwarzenegger is shooting himself in the foot! 1...."

Environmental Leader on S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks
"The survey respondents (the PDF report mentions 4,000 respondents in 38..."

Jake on UPS Trying New Hydraulic Hybrid Trucks
"A point of clarification: the Reuters press release referenced herein reports that 20 UPS will purchase..."

Custom Organic Shirts on S. America Takes Most Urgent View of Copenhagen Talks
"90% of North Americans believe it is urgent to get a global climate..."

peter dublin on California City’s Green Building Ordinance Applies to Commercial Buildings
"Why energy efficiebnt regulation on buildings –..."

Environmental Leader