Plugging the Internet into clean power

Google said this week it would invest $100 million in renewable energy sources.

from the November 29, 2007 edition

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"I don't believe in a widespread data center power crisis or other inflated statements," says analyst Chris Mines of Forrester, a market-research company in Cambridge, Mass., via email. "That is a specific problem that some companies face in particular geographies like London and other old center cities." [Editor's note: The original version misidentified Mr. Mines.]

Regardless of electricity supply, Google and other tech giants have serious fiscal reasons to go green. There's a huge expense for companies when computing and storage demands max out individual existing data centers. "The energy density of the servers is so high that the cooling capacity and the power capacity of existing data centers are running [out]," says Rich Brown, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. To forestall having to spend major capital on new data centers, companies are aggressively pursuing energy-efficiency measures. These efforts include upgrading equipment, redesigning air-flows, and reprogramming machines to handle more computations at the same time.

This summer dozens of technology giants including Google, Intel, Dell, IBM, and Microsoft launched the Climate Savers Computing Initiative that commits members to energy-efficiency targets.

But there are still lots of inefficiencies to squeeze out, says Mr. Brown. His team analyzed data center energy use for a congressional report given by the Environmental Protection Agency this summer. "We were really shocked when we dug into this and found out how inefficiently those centers were being operated," Brown says. He estimates small changes could cut energy use at these centers by 20 percent.

However, streamlining can only go so far in offsetting rapid data-center growth. Not only is Google growing extremely fast, it has also pledged to become carbon neutral – a goal forcing them to buy either renewable energy or expensive carbon offsets.

"Google is finding out that making renewables a bigger part of their energy portfolio is really expensive right now," says Brown. Hence the drive for price parity with dirt-cheap coal.

Google's investment is not overwhelming in dollar terms for the clean energy sector, note experts. Last year, $100 billion was invested globally in clean energy, according to Ron Pernick, author of "The Clean Tech Revolution." But Google's announcement is significant for its ability to mainstream the idea that wind and solar can cost as little as coal.

"They've set the bar high and they've given a clear objective, and I think that's what's important about their announcement today," says Mr. Pernick.

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