Intel has been reinventing their products and their company for a few years now with the environment in mind.

Like other Silicon Valley/Bay Area eco-minded technology organizations (i.e. Google), Intel is not only working to make their products better for the world, but also the overall operations of Intel and the operations of their customers. 

Customers from small businesses to retail giants support their operations with servers that run 24/7 collecting online orders and delivering web content. These data centers require serious amounts of electricity to operate, air conditioning to cool the room as the machines generate heat, and typically, back-up power supplies. 

Intel is looking to tap into IT brainpower for innovation by sponsoring the Data Center Efficiency Challenge calling on all techies to find ways to increase the energy efficiency of data centers that house hundreds and thousands of servers. Techies are asked to send a video detailing their plan for reducing energy needs while maintaining performance, power and durability of the data center. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that in 2006, data centers around the nation consumed 60 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, or nearly two percent of the nation’s total energy consumption estimates. 

Consuming two percent of our electricity on running data centers, much less computers in general, begs for a smarter energy efficiency plan.

If techies and Intel can significantly increase efficiency, the energy savings can pay for switching to renewables, which in many cases cost slightly more. It will be interesting to see if any techies propose to restructure the energy efficiency of data centers or develop plans to directly incorporate renewable energy. One of the concerns IT has about onsite solar or wind power generation is that is intermittent and hard to plan against.

Clearly, the options are endless and not only should the IT world look to increase energy efficiency, but also consider decreasing the environmental impact of a largely fossil fuel-driven electricity system.