Greenest data centers: What works and what doesn't

Photo voltaic arrays. Sod roofs. Reflective white membranes. These are some of the far-out techniques that architects are using to build the nation’s greenest data centers.

But the managers of these data centers say some of the most effective ways of cutting back electricity usage -- such as raising the computer room temperature a few degrees -- also are the simplest.

A peek inside the nation’s greenest data centers shows that these facilities are a mix of high-tech and low-tech, innovative and obvious ways of cutting back on electricity and creating more environmentally friendly IT operations.

Building green data centers involves a fair amount of gamesmanship.

Some of the clever ways that architects get new data centers certified by the U.S. Green Building Council have less to do with improving energy efficiency and more to do with other environmental goals such as reducing water usage. Often it’s native landscaping, rainwater recovery systems, waterless urinals and bike racks that earn data centers enough points to qualify them as "green."

To build a green data center, you need "a team that works together and is incredibly creative," says Kath Williams, a Montana green building consultant and former vice chair of the U.S. Green Building Council. "It’s amazing where you can find the energy savings."

Interest in energy-efficient data centers has grown significantly in the past two years, as electricity bills have soared. Additionally, more data center operators are concerned about the effects of greenhouse gasses produced by the most common ways of powering computers and network gear: coal-burning plants.

Data centers are among the hardest commercial buildings to make energy efficient because the computer systems they house require so much electricity and give off so much heat. About half of the electricity consumed in a data center is from the power and cooling infrastructure that supports IT equipment, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"It’s extremely difficult" to build a data center that meets the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, Williams says. "For data centers, the challenge is the energy load."

Earlier versions of the LEED standards excluded the so-called process load, which is the amount of energy used for data processing. But the latest versions of the LEED standards --Version 2.2 and higher -- don’t allow this exclusion.

"Now it’s the complete energy use in the building, with all the computers running 24 by 7," Williams says. "Every bit of energy in that building has to be accounted for."

Feds lead green movement

At the forefront of the green data center movement is the U.S. federal government, which has been required by law to measure and track energy usage in its buildings for more than 20 years.

"We can look at the energy consumption of all our facilities back to 1985," says Kevin Kampschroer, director of research and expert services in the Office of Applied Science at the Public Buildings Service, an arm of the General Services Administration that owns and leases office buildings for more than 1 million federal workers. "We know exactly what’s going on in our buildings, and we manage it at a national level. When we see significant increases, we send in a specialized team to see what we can do in this building."