Going Green

The data centers that provides us headline news, online videos and social media sites (e.g. facebook, myspace & twitter) are some of the most power hungry facilities. With seemly countless racks of servers within the data centers, the amount of energy to power and cool these servers have been increasing at an alarming rate, not just damaging the bottom line due to rising energy costs but also the carbon footprint that is left behind.

Data center facilities are constantly built and a few companies are going the green way to not just construct and manage energy efficient data centers but to also show that it does not cost a lot more to build a green data center, and energy savings for the long term outweighs the initial cost.

The US Green Buildings Council established the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard to set a national benchmark for the design and construction of high performance green buildings. Already a growing number of companies have built their office cum data centers to attain the LEED certification, a small handful have even achieved the highest certification tier, LEED Platinum.

Building green data centers or LEED certified office buildings still only reduces some of the carbon footprint. The other problem lies in the energy source which unfortunately may be coming from coal or natural gas. These still are fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide contributing to global warming. Fortunately governments and alternative energy companies are investing to build wind farms, solar farms, hydroelectric dams and offshore wave energy facilities to supply clean energy to the national grid.

Web hosting companies have also gotten the green route to colocate their servers in some of the few green data centers or purchase green energy certificates to offset their carbon footprint. While it may seem insignificant if everyone plays a small step to go green, a large online community can make a difference.