Government Technology - May 2008 - (Page 24) PAU L W. TAY LOR | CHI EF STR ATE GY OFF ICER | CEN TER FOR DIG ITAL GOV ERN MEN T G artner predicts energy costs could soon consume as much as half of an organization’s IT budget, so running cleaner, cooler and cheaper — from the data center to the farthest reaches of an organization — may make “green” the last best chance to stay out of the red. “Data centers are the energy hogs of the 21st century,” said Aneesh Chopra, Virginia’s secretary of technology, “and if we all believe we need to have renewable energy and energy independence in this country, those of us in the IT community must step up and acknowledge that we are net consumers in a significant way.” Indeed the hogs have a huge appetite. Data centers consumed 61 billion kilowatt-hours of power in 2006, according to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report last year to Congress. That’s 1.5 percent of all power consumed in the United States — at a cost of $4.5 billion. The EPA offered no approxima- tion of how much of that is attributable to state and local government, but it estimated federal data centers were on the hook for 10 percent of that total. If there is an imperative, it is over energy waste. “The information technology function is responsible for a major portion of an organization’s power consumption — often needlessly so,” said Mike Mittleman, deputy CIO of New York state. The remedy begins with a “focus on improving power efficiency for those business aspects unquestionably under CIO control, [which] should have a salubrious impact on the organization’s carbon footprint,” Mittleman said, referring to emissions of man-made carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. “Given the spiraling cost of power, the CIO is obligated to implement strategies that will reduce consumption; responsible organization citizenship demands nothing less.” . S. ENERGY HOGS HEIR APPETITE CENTERS ARE GT DATA IPS FOR TAMIN HERE ARE T EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM SIMPLY GREEN, A NEW WHITE PAPER FROM THE CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT. THE ENTIRE PAPER IS AVAILABLE AT WWW.CENTER DIGITALGOV .COM. MAY_08 24 http://www.centerDIGITALGOV.COM
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