Rising energy costs and a focus on Green IT mean that it is time to find ways of reducing energy consumption and cutting data center bills. There are several best practices that will help guide you towards a greener and more efficient data center solution. by Konstantin Gorshkov, Green Economy Post When it comes to […]
Educating employees about energy efficiency,conservation, recycling, waste reduction and other similar measures benefit not only the companies that institute them, but also the organization’s employees, but also the communities in which they operate.
The Department of Energy is awarding $47 million to support the development of new technologies and knowhow aimed at improving energy efficiency in the information technology (IT) and communication technology sectors. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that 14 projects across the country will share in this award. Information technology and telecommunications are vital and rapidly growing sectors of our overall economy and will become even more central as the smart grid is deployed. As our country increasingly comes to rely on an information economy in sector after sector the underlying physical infrastructure that supports it, such as the data centers, networks, routers and so forth, is expected to continue to rapidly grow.
Geothermal heat pumps (GHPs), also known as ground-source heat pumps, are similar to ordinary heat pumps, but use the thermally stable mass of the earth below the ground instead of outside air to provide heating, air conditioning and, in most cases hot water as well. Because these systems use the earth’s natural reservoir of stable temperatures, they are among the most efficient and comfortable heating and cooling technologies around. GHPs can save substantial amounts of energy and significantly reduce peak demand in buildings that incorporate them.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the 1.0 version of the Energy Star for Servers specification. This first release only covers standalone servers with one to four processor sockets; it does not yet cover servers with more than four processor sockets, or blade servers of any size. Three criteria are being weighted by the specification: power supply efficiency, virtualization functionality, and energy-efficiency benchmarks and standards for measuring and reporting energy use.
This, the fourth article in our series on green (sustainable) buildings focuses on the twin subjects of energy efficiency and water efficiency two fundamental areas of importance for green buildings. These are important not only because they reduce usage of and promote reuse of these precious resources, but because in so doing to minimize the building environmental impact. A well designed green building, can not only reduce its own environmental impact, but can improve a surrounding environment.
