Survey finds energy efficiency ‘not a top priority’ for IT managers

A new report suggests IT managers are not putting environmental concerns and energy efficiency as high on their agenda as they should, with 43% stating they have no environmental policy and more than half (59%) saying they do not measure PUE. Furthermore, only 9% indicated energy efficiency as the top criterion when setting data centre design strategy. 

SuperMicro Computer, a supplier of green computing technology, released its first annual ‘Data Centres and The Environment’ survey report aimed at helping data centre managers better understand the industry norms around environmental impact and provide quantitative comparisons with their peer group. 

The report highlights the need for IT managers to quantify the real impact data centres can have on the environment and some of the opportunities to minimise the impact. The report found that:

• 43% of respondent companies have no existing environmental policy, and half of those companies have no plan to develop one in the near future. These companies stated they avoid considering environmental issues because they consider them too expensive (29%), they lack resources or understanding (27%), or environmental issues are simply not a company priority (14%).

• 58% of businesses already have an environmental policy in place, but only 28% of respondents consider environmental issues in the selection of data centre technology. Similarly, only 9% indicated energy efficiency as the top criterion when setting data centre design strategy.

• 59% of respondents considered power efficiency as “extremely important” or “important” to their actual data centre design. However, more than half of the respondents (58%) are still not measuring power usage effectiveness (PUE), which is the ratio of total energy used by a data centre facility to the energy delivered to the IT equipment. For those that did measure PUE, 22% have an average data centre PUE of 2.0 or higher, and only 6% are with the ideal range between 1.0 and 1.19.

The report also reveals that about 1 in 10 businesses have not yet implemented an equipment recycling programme to help limit e-waste; 12% of survey respondents simply dispose of decommissioned hardware.

“The findings of this new research report should help start the conversation in the IT industry on the impact of data centres on the environment,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of SuperMicro.