Powering a Paperless World
August 30th, 2007 by Vihar ShethPosted in Corporations, Energy, Responsibility, Technology
This article on STLtoday.com details a few real estate acquisitions that just closed in the St. Louis market but doesn’t speak to the unique nature of the acquirer. The company who bought the three buildings, Digital Realty Trust, specializes in technology and datacenter-related real estate. Nothing special on the sustainability front here, except that this investment signals that St. Louis is doing well in grabbing the attention of West Coast companies (my previous post, Pure Power, highlighted the same). Finding the company’s specialty interesting, I did some digging on their website and found a heartening paragraph:
Our Green Datacenter Vision
Digital Realty Trust is committed to developing practical standards that reduce datacenter power requirements and negative by-products while increasing their operational effectiveness. Our datacenter facilities are designed to LEEDs (U.S.A.) and BREEAM (Europe) certification standards. Digital Realty Trust is a voting member of the Green Grid consortium.
What people often forget is that when they go digital, consumption of paper is replaced by the consumption of electricity. The Internet only works because gazillions of megawatts of power keep server farms from going dark and shutting down your access to videos of kittens playing with yarn (I know, so cute!). And those suckers run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. I’m not sure what level of energy use essentially negates the elimination of a ream of paper, but you can see where I’m going with this. In the digital age, waste isn’t localized in your recycling bin (or trash can if you suck), but focused where power - dirty power at that - produced. This makes ignoring the environmental effects of reading something on the Internet easier to ignore than reading something on paper. I’m encouraged that companies like Digital Realty Trust are making an effort to green their business, especially when there’s no ostensible negative effect on the environment from their operations. One’s motivation is completely different when his coal plant is being picketed. The company’s decision signals heightened social conscience and corporate responsibility. I’d love to get my hands on some data that shows how their greening efforts have reduced power consumption, but either way, kudos.
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3 Responses to “Powering a Paperless World”
By camphor on Sep 5, 2007
Are you of the opinion that _all_ power is ‘dirty’?
By Vihar Sheth on Sep 6, 2007
To some degree, yes. While wind and solar and the like are emission-free, the construction of the equipment that makes those technologies possible uses dirty power and creates waste. The first step is to reduce waste and emissions to a level mother nature and humankind and manage and properly dispose of. The second step is to use as much clean energy as possible.