Tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Apple advertise renewable energies and the environment on their website. Is this because they are hugely dependent on energy or is this just a marketing campaign?
Recently, Google invested almost $80 million to build a gigantic solar plant. It will not only provide clean energy to the people around the area, but it also provides a reliable and clean source of energy for its data centers. These data centers require energy because they have a lot of power-sucking servers and air conditioning units. And cooling a huge warehouse to fridge temperatures (which is when computers work best), requires a lot of energy. The amount of energy required is overwhelming.
Companies like Apple are planning to move completely off-grid and produce their own energy. Apple in particular plans to use a green energy source for itself and use the normal power grid as backup. In that way, none of their 24/7 services and productions will come to a halt. Apple is even implementing innovative technologies in buildings so that natural ventilation is promoted and as efficient as an AC. That is break-through development to build a sustainable campus.
Looking at these two examples, it becomes evident that benefits of a energy source owned by the company itself include:
- Integrated energy production exactly matches production and service requirements. There is no power wasted and demand is always met.
- Optimization of the energy production to the business model means that the key requirement for reliability is met.
- Own energy sources are independent of energy price fluctuations and other market factors. They can also be continuously re-adapted to meet new business needs.
- Lower carbon emissions means lower tax rates and hence less costs.
- Green energy sources, such as solar panels, require low maintenance and allow the company to focus on its core business (and not energy production).
Obviously, not every tech company can have its own energy source. Certain economies of scale need to be achieved first before anything remotely similar to the examples above can be achieved. Nevertheless, even solar panels can be worth an investment. Even household consumers are already implementing them successfully.
The key takeaway here is though that the companies are not going for massive coal plants. They are going for solar panels and hydrogen cells. They require less maintenance, are independent of oil prices and are highly sustainable. For a company where energy production it is not its main focus, most of the green energy sources, anything from wind mills to dams, are ideal to produce its own energy.
In conclusion, to ultimately become fully green in IT requires a company to optimize every aspect of its IT structure. As outlined here, this starts with the green energy production and moves to optimization of every chip on a server.
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