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Poll: Green Power and Data Center Site Selection
Facebook said yesterday that its data center site location policy “now states a preference for access to clean and renewable energy.” The announcement ended a long-running feud between the social network and the environmental group Greenpeace, which had targeted Facebook in a social media and PR campaign because the company’s two data centers in Oregon and North Carolina each relied upon utility power that originated primarily from coal.
Is Facebook’s announcement an isolated incident in which a company alters its policies in response to outside pressure? Or is it a sign that renewable energy will become a larger factor on site location decisions, boosting regions with “green” power in their utility mix?
We put the question to our readers: Is the availability of renewable energy a major factor in your site location decision? Take our poll:
About Rich Miller
Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.
Former photovoltaics salesman
Posted December 19th, 2011Photovoltaics and wind power have valid niche applications, but will never pay for themselves in a high-density mission-critical application. Both solar and wind energy are MATURE industries, with MATURE technologies, and with more than 40 years of commercial production on multiple continents. There are no magic breakthroughs in the pipeline, and there is no solar fairy to make wishes come true. If these technologies made economic sense without government subsidies, business owners would be stampeding to use them without being told to. Instead, there ARE government subsidies and there are bullies (both inside government and in environmental special-interest groups) who withhold permits and make other threats.
RESOURCE LINKS:
Building A Cloud-Savvy Model for TCO and ROI
How Storage is Shaping The Cloud Data Center
Bringing Colo to the Customer: Modular Gets Local
Microsoft’s $1 Billion Data Center
December 16th, 2011