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Why data center efficiency in 2000s is like paper recycling in 1970s?

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Harmeet
New Update

DALLAS, USA: On the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, the World Wide Web existed only in research labs, "texting" was something you wrote in a notebook and the closest thing to a data center was the public library.

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On that day, millions of people gathered at events around the country to learn, share and work toward innovative solutions to protect our natural resources. In advance of Earth Day, Jeff Schnitzer, GM, GE's Critical Power business, discussed recent trends in data center energy efficiency.

"In 1970, we worried about landfills and paper waste, some 44,310,000 tons of it annually. Today, those things that were on paper now are in digital format, with an estimated 639,800 gigabytes of that digital information passing through data centers every minute. Forty-four years later, Earth Day 2014 reminds us to examine the impact data centers have on our natural resources and sustainability and the strides being made by businesses and governments to meet new data center energy efficiency levels," said Schnitzer.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, data centers account for up to 2.5 percent of the total electricity generated in the United States. Schnitzer added, "There are a number of technology innovations that contribute to the overall energy efficiency of data centers."