I’ve been hearing from vendors lately touting their green IT initiatives. Chip makers are telling us about their green processors and storage vendors are giddy about their green drives. It’s mostly marketing hype. Now don’t get me wrong; I am willing to consider all things green (although I prefer the color blue). But what these vendors are really doing is reducing the increasing power requirements of their devices. It is similar to what legislators in Minnesota call a “budget cut”. Oh, the power requirements of these devices will increase — just not as quickly.

I don’t mind this type of green IT thinking because I’m a big fan of efficiency. If you can squeeze more processor cycles out of the same number of electrons, more power to you (pardon the pun). But don’t try to convince me that my business or my data center is greener as a result. Even the most efficient state of the art data centers chew up enormous amounts of power and the power requirements are only going to increase.

Politicians are pushing for greener power production in our state. They have even suggested putting what could be considered tariffs on power generated by neighboring states. I can’t imagine a better way to hurt business — especially technology business — in Minnesota. Instead of tarrifs, governments could be doing more to promote green technologies. If I’m Google, am I going to build a data center in Minnesota or Iowa? Oops, that question has already been answered. The bottom line is that power is as important to a technology company as roads are to a trucking company. If we need technology to solve the energy problems of the future, why are we planning to choke technology development by increasing power costs?

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