Originating Author: Scott Houthuysen
The term “green” can mean many things, from reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to implementing environmental health and safety (EH&S) best practices. Companies can easily go green today, working from a small transitional step like recycling to driving a larger initiative such as incorporating low power technologies into their data centers.
Why go green? Key environmental concerns and business drivers include:
- Growing global awareness of various environmental issues and their impact.
- EH&S regulations and power, cooling, floor-space and EH&S (PCFE) impacts that extend beyond geographical borders and industries.
- Rising energy prices coupled with sustained increases in demand, and a limited electrical power supply and distribution infrastructure. which can constrain sustainable growth.
- Existing and emerging environmental initiatives/regulations regarding greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiencies.
- Evolving EH&S regulatory, industry, customer, and existing legislative requirements (Montreal Protocol, Kyoto Protocol; End-of-Life Vehicles Directive (EVLD); Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive; Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) Directive; Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Regulations) pertaining to elimination of hazardous substances including but not limited to lead, mercury, cadmium, chlorine, antimony, bromine, PFOS, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), etc.
- The annual power consumption of data centers in the United States, which continues to soar – doubling to 44 billion kilowatt-hours between 2000 and 2006, according to U.S. EPA estimates.
- Data center electrical power and cooling needs, which are 10-40 times more costly per unit area than normal office environments.
- New legislation and voluntary green initiatives calling for the recycling of water, paper, packaging and other materials used as a part of administrative activities, research, development and product distribution.
How to go green, options for your company:
- Develop a company-wide green philosophy for a reduced environmental footprint including material content, recycling, low power consumption, and other EH&S related aspects
- Build data centers with storage systems that incorporate low power technology, such as energy efficient power supplies and disk drives that will perform more work per unit of energy.
- Implement virtualization technologies into your servers and storage, which compliments low-power and energy efficient technologies.
- Work with suppliers and partners that provide detailed measurement of their EH&S performance.
Action Item: Companies like LSI should continue to invest in products, services, and solutions that focus on low-power, energy efficient, and effective green solutions that do more work using a smaller physical footprint. This, along with measurement and monitoring of new legislation and green initiatives, will help drive the industry toward sustainable growth.
Footnotes: For more detailed information on what LSI is doing to drive its green initiative, visit www.lsi.com