By John Zipperer

This past winter, Europe’s energy vulnerability grabbed worldwide attention during a disagreement between Russia and Ukraine that resulted in a gas cutoff. Factories and other businesses from Bulgaria to Spain faced forced shutdowns. But German businesses were not as badly affected as they could have been. For decades, German business — the basis of the Eurozone’s largest economy — has focused on making the most of its tight energy supplies, as well as utilizing alternative sources. The country has been successful at it, too. With little in the way of natural reserves, Germany competes head-to-head against countries far richer in both oil and gas, yet it regularly earns the spot as the world’s number-one exporter.

Germany’s list of accomplishments is growing even longer. Already a leader in solar and wind energy, Germany is extending its energy savvy into the IT realm. From reusing nuclear power plants to merging nature and business, German data centers are using less energy and converting that energy efficiency into a bottom-line benefit. Spending less on energy means German businesses have more operating budget to allocate to IT innovation, new equipment and staffing.

This giant leap forward comes from an IT industry that understands its energy scarcity challenges — and embraces them. The proof is in the numbers. For example, German data networking solutions company Brocade recently surveyed thousands of European executives about their attitudes and practices of addressing energy efficiency. Almost across the board, German businesses were in the lead, recognizing green energy as a priority, seeing the need to educate staff about potential solutions, and taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints (see “Thinking Green,” p. 42).

That energy awareness comes directly from the top. German business gets a boost from a federal government that has long paid attention to energy issues and pushed for the country to become more efficient. “I talk to my German colleagues, and this message of green and energy efficiency — they’ve been raised on it,” says Mike Murphy, Brocade’s Director of Marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa. “They spend more money and effort than European counterparts on energy efficiency education.” Murphy notes that in his company’s survey, Germany had Europe’s highest rate of conservation education, 27 percent. “Government has to play a part in that,” he adds. “That’s a net-net: Education equals awareness, awareness equals activity, and activity equals results and saved costs.”

Leading Green
Indeed, German Chancellor Angela Merkel last year set a goal of reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 40 percent by 2020. It was just the latest high-profile move by a country that saw its environment minister tell the Bundestag — Germany’s national parliament — the year before that Germany should become the most energy efficient country on the planet.

Data centers are a particularly juicy target for conservation because of their tremendous energy needs. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2006 estimated that servers and data centers accounted for a full 1.5 percent of the total U.S. electricity use. In Germany, the government cites similar numbers and notes that power consumption of servers and data centers reached 10.1 terawatt hours in 2008, more than twice as much as was used in 2000. Further, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety argues that if more of the country’s data centers used available green technology, that would shave a total of 3.6 billion euros (roughly $4.55 billion) from electric bills by 2013. This is significant because the Brocade survey found that European respondents estimated their companies spent as much as a quarter of their total operating expenses on their energy bills.

“Germans and other Europeans understand the nature of efficiency and effectiveness, particularly with regard to energy, quite well,” says Greg Schulz, Founder and Senior Analyst at StorageIO Group, a storage research firm based in Stillwater, Minn., and the author of The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC/ Auerbach Publications, 2009). Germans know they need to do more with less and maximize resource usage and productivity. “Certainly there are other countries that talk energy efficiency,” Schulz says. “However, talking is one thing; action is another.”