Posted by Dave Klecha - Greenedia Editor on March 1, 2008 at 05:12:48 PM

Energy efficiency in the IT industry needs a broad-spectrum attack on most every aspect of the information technology experience, but the area most in need of attention is that of servers.  Data centers and server farms tend to be dramatically inefficient, especially as they have a tendency to hold onto old and outdated equipment which runs less efficiently as it ages.  But they're also high concentrations of high powered computers that run hot and need a commensurate amount of cooling hardware to keep them running at their peak.

The US Environmental Protection Agency's EnergyStar division has long been a player in making computers more efficient, but now they're stepping it up in order to make the servers that are the hub of the entire industry more efficient.  Virtually every business, down to some of the smallest, uses servers to store their critical data and guide their operations, and EnergyStar's attempt to create meaningful guidelines should help improve them.  Together with Google and Intel's industry-wide effort to create more efficient desktops, this kind of move should have a quick and positive impact.

A recent study would suggest that, despite the reduction in paper used, reading newspaper hardcopy is actually greener than reading the news online.  The bulk of the reasoning would be that newspapers draw no power while one is reading them, but EcoGeek disputes the validity of the numbers and suggests that the study ignores the potential negative environmental impact of the printing and production process (which only has to occur once for a computer, but many times each day for newspapers).  What could settle the argument, in fact, is a leaner, greener IT infrastructure.

The reality is that periodical news and entertainment reading is increasingly moving on-line.  Traditional newspapers are hemorrhaging money, while Google has demonstrated that on-line advertising is a viable income stream, even though most people do still get their news on paper.  Arguments about which is greener is irrelevant, because the driving factor is which is more flexible, more in tune with the needs of today's consumers.  What needs to happen is that experience--and all the other thousands of things people today get done on-line--needs to be more efficient, and EnergyStar's proposed guidelines are a big step in that direction.