Greenzo - IT Power Needs You

I have some friends in Greenpeace, and no I don't think they've been in boats chasing whaling ships, but they are passionate and extremely dedicated, you have to be if your desire is to change the world.  So when I saw their campaign to get Facebook to change how they power their data centers, a big old light bulb went off.  How much electricity are our data centers drawing? will we need to increase the demand and more importantly WHERE will that power source come from?

The need to move from coal sources to smart power choices like wind as MD is attempting to do makes more sense then ever before.  And the quicker the better.

Earth Day as you know is rapidly approaching, lot's of organizations are gearing up to join in the conversation that Greenpeace is advocating for Facebook and that's how Green is IT?  I was recently approached by my good friend Beverly Magda, an Associate Dean at Georgetown, who is bringing folks together in an attempt to make a dent in the Greening of IT.  The summit is April 20 - 21 in Tysons Corner VA and I'm ready to lend a voice and help where I can, hope you can too.  http://www.greeniteconomicsummit.com/

Below are some facts shared by the Greenpeace campaign, the consumption of powering the Internet is stagering!  We need our green superhero Greenzo promoter of environmental consciousness (and G.E. products) - but for real, besides I like the green cape.

Michael Sola heads up the IT program at NWF. he's a blogger, invited presenter and speaker - he also rarely has to show ID to walk into a pub. Follow him at http://twitter.com/michaelsola : his views and comments are his own

Did you know?

IT companies are rapidly increasing their electricity consumption, making IT one of the largest growth sectors for electricity demand. The amount of electricity needed to power the Internet would place it 5th if ranked among countries by electricity consumption.

Facebook has a real opportunity to lead by example by extending this spirit of innovation to the environment. The company can show that businesses can flourish by being clean-energy powered.

Our IT sector climate campaign

Greenpeace has been working with the IT industry for half a decade to get companies to be greener. Facebook's coal problem is representative of the IT sector's growing demand for energy.

At current growth rates, data centers and telecommunication networks - two key components of 'the cloud' that Facebook depends on - will consume about 1,963 billion kilowatts hours of electricity in 2020. That's more than triple their current consumption and more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined.

Find out more - visit www.greenpeace.org/unfriendcoal