Earth2Tech has an excellent writeup of IBM’s push to reduce the amount of power (carbon footprint) that is required to run, maintain, and cool its data centers… a staggering 5 billion kilowatts. the problem:

IBM, which hosts computing operations for itself and external customers, needs more compute power because more applications and entities are demanding it. It’s kind of like buying a hybrid car and doubling your commute. You may consumer less gas per mile, but your energy expenditure remains the same.

The solution(s):

On the software side last year IBM added updates to its power management programs and its Tivoli systems management software. The updates can be used to reduce power as well as see ways hardware can be more efficiently configured to conserve power. The company is also taking a look at its software code to see if it can be trimmed to run without taxing a processor as much as older software can. On the hardware side, IBM is focusing on more power efficient chips. It is also designing chips with air pockets for cooling or using water to cool chips, such as in its Hydro-Cluster supercomputer. Water can be used to cool heat dissipated from server racks, which IBM employs in the iDataPlex products announced this week. These sort of tricks should reduce heat coming from servers and cut down on the amount of air conditioning a data center requires. On the services and consulting side, IBM is helping clients reduce their data center footprints by using server consolidation, improving the layout of the racks in the data center, and other power-saving techniques. IBM also has a hardware recovery program that recycles older equipment.

The cost/ benefit:

Leichner says IBM spends $100 million a year designing its products to be more recyclable and recycling them. Last year about half of the internal parts in IBM servers were comprised of recycled plastics. The company also recycled 1 billion pounds of equipment last year and currently accepts 40,000 devices for recycling every week.