The Greening of IT: How Companies Can Make a Difference for the Environment

C Comparison of Different Power-Generation Methods

“Pocketbook environmentalism is powerful. If marketers can help consumers understand the hidden costs in products and services that are not environmentally friendly, they can grab consumers’ attention.”

—Joel Makower, Author of Strategies for the Green Economy

The comparisons in this appendix include renewable methods—for example, wind turbines, solar, geothermal, and so on. Although the topic of establishing green IT should be independent of methods used to generate electricity—with the possible exception of fuel cells that have been proposed as a potential part of green data center technology—power-generation technology is having an impact on the location of data centers. Here’s an example. ...