Are tech companies really that green?

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To be fair, some data centers are buried too deep within buildings to gulp fresh air. But the main reason for the A/C over-reliance is that data centers were built for one thing — to maximize the performance of the Web sites, computer programs and networking equipment that they run. If the air conditioning is colder than necessary, so be it.

“There are probably two key metrics for the IT guy: no downtime — if the boss’ e-mail doesn’t work, he hears about it right away — and ‘no security breaches on my watch,”’ says Eric Birch, executive vice president of Degree Controls Inc., which sells a system that increases electronics cooling efficiency. “They normally do not know, don’t care and aren’t measured by their electric bill.”

In fact, in many companies, any given department’s responsibility for the overall utility bill is determined by such factors as employee head count or square feet of office space. By that measure, the IT department comes out way ahead.

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Steve Sams, a vice president for data-center services at IBM Corp., estimates this is still the state of affairs 70 to 80 percent of the time. The tech shops “aren’t actually paying their real energy bill,” Sams says. “What it shows me is how immature we are in this area as an industry.”

Not until recently have the industry’s concerns about the issue crystallized. Chip manufacturers such as Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. have ratcheted up the electrical efficiency of their microprocessors — a metric that no one cared about until the past few years. IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. have invested in better ways to manage cooling systems.

One data-center operator, Rackspace Inc., just announced a new facility in Slough, England, powered by renewable sources such as biomass. Some smaller providers have gone solar, including California-based Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO) Inc., which recently ran the Web infrastructure for the Live Earth concerts.

The “green” value in other steps is harder to discern.

One commonly talked-about effort involves virtualization, which lets one computer handle the functions of multiple machines at once. Rather than having dozens of servers operating at far less than their maximum level of utilization, data centers can use virtualization to consolidate those same machines’ functions on just a few computers.

The result can be striking — in its solar-powered center, AISO uses virtualization to mimic the functions of 120 servers on just four machines — and clearly it saves electricity.

IBM claims it will save $250 million — partly in reduced power costs — by taking 16,000 internal servers out of action and shifting their work on 30 big mainframe computers. IBM also is using virtualization and better cooling technologies to expand the capacity of its largest data center, in Boulder, Colo., by nearly half, while leaving it with “the same energy footprint” as before, Sams says.

That’s a solid step, to be sure. But it’s fair to say the information-technology industry — which, after all, makes machines packed with toxic chemicals — will have to do much more to truly merit green credentials.

By consolidating servers and taking other steps to overhaul its internal computing setup, Sun Microsystems Inc. says it cut IT energy usage by a few percentage points in its last fiscal year — and expects to slice it by another 20 percent this year. Dave Douglas, Sun’s vice president for eco-responsibility, says the company is still learning how to make deeper improvements.

“We view green as a destination, in which case we focus on what we have left to do,” he says. “When we look at that, we say, geez, we’re not really green yet. We’re greener — but we’re not green.”

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