Saving money, not corporate social responsibility, is the primary driver in the green IT movement. As awareness of and support for environmentalism increase, technology organizations are implementing green initiatives at a rapid pace.

Moves toward greater energy efficiency, however, and the resulting environmental benefits, are motivated primarily by the desire for cost savings, not the much-touted environmental consciousness of big business.

Economic rather than altruistic reasons have been the impetus for green IT initiatives, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 148 technology company executives. The desire to decrease expenditures by reducing energy consumption is the main driver of the sustainability movement in the technology industry, the survey concludes.

A key reason for the growing interest in more energy-efficient products is the rising cost of energy. Companies now spend as much as 10 percent of their technology budgets on energy, says Rakesh Kumar of research firm Gartner. Much of that is spent on cooling, but around half

of the budget is used to run servers and computers.

details center managers are particularly concerned with the rapid increase in potential and cooling requirements, and the rising cost of electricity. The Energy info Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2008 indicates that the price for electricity increased by an average of 9.3 percent in 2006, the largest one-year jump since 1981. goods centers in the United States spent approximately $4.5 billion in potential costs in 2006, and are expected to see that cost increase by 40 percent by 2010, according to a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.

Increasing capability consumption has plus become a huge area of concern, however, as computing and storage needs escalate.

within 1996 and 2006, the number of servers in use increased from six million to 28 million, and the average ability consumption of each server grew from 150 watts to 400 watts, says…

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