Corporate social responsibility is high on the boardroom agenda right now. But all over the world, organisations are rapidly coming to realise that green IT initiatives don't just benefit the environment and salve corporate consciences - they can also help to cut costs and give the balance sheet a rosy glow, too.

That's down to two factors: the cost of power, and the cost of cooling. Both are major concerns for data centre managers. First, they must acquire and pay for enough electricity to feed densely packed server farms. Then they must spend even more to keep those servers at optimum temperature through extensive use of air conditioning, which in turn uses still more power.

That's clearly not great for the environment - but it also leads to increased operating costs. According to a recent US study by Hewlett-Packard, a relatively modest 30,000 square foot data centre will now typically house 1,000 server racks. Depending on how many servers they hold, each rack will consume between 5 and 25 kilowatts per hour, or roughly 10 Megawatts a year when cooling power is factored.

In the US, with maintenance and amortisation charges added, such a data centre would generate an operational bill of $4.2 million. Europe's higher electricity prices could add a further 30% to this bill.

And the cost impact of IT is not confined to the data centre, either. Studies show that PCs and monitors use as much as 14 percent of all power consumed in office environments. 

So perhaps the cost argument may be the best way to lobby for further investment in Green IT when your company's directors are next considering how they might take their CSR programmes forward? Chris Gabriel, head of solutions at Logicalis, certainly believes so.

"The principal benefit [of green IT] is cost reduction," he argues. "I've not come across one green IT initiative that hasn't been good for the bottom line, delivered IT faster or more efficiently, made a company more agile or more able to deliver faster services."

Your Comments and Questions

Gary Edwards, 7 months ago

Does anyone know of any statistics around the impact that the virtualisation of servers might have on power consumption and wastage?

George Black, 7 months ago

Fortunately, it seems that the message is finally getting through. According to an Intel survey of 200 UK-based IT managers I read recently, 66% said energy consumption had become a board-level discussion, while 69% viewed lowering energy consumption as a long-term business priority.

Victoria Furness, 7 months ago

A problem with initiatives that rely on people changing their habits is enforcement. It's all very well telling people to turn their PC off at night, for example, but there's no way of ensuring that it happens unless the process can be automated. All the good 'green' intentions in the world surely won't change that unless one day not being 'green' will be as frowned upon perhaps as dropping litter? Anyone know of any workforces that have adopted strict rules in enforcing green IT policies?

Jon Mell, 7 months ago

I've always thought this was a server issue, reducing unused capacity by using technologies such as VMWare rather than on the desktop. I'd be interested in any Green IT initiatives around the desktop although I would have thought they would be more cultural than technical - ie switch your PC off rather than leave it running or on standby

Victoria Furness, 8 months ago

This all sounds great, at least in theory. But what sort of costs does 'green IT' entail? For instance, I've read that laptops are more efficient than desktops - so does that mean I should replace all desktop PCs with laptops, which sounds rather expensive... Surely there are cheaper ways of being green? Any suggestions for quick, easy wins would be much appreciated!

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