Green IT will get zero traction until IT pays the electric bill

There's a lot of talk lately about Green Computing in IT circles Larry Dignan even points out that there may be some fatigue setting in because "Green" has become a lucrative marketing term.  I spend a lot of time talking about energy efficient computing but there are times I feel like talking about green computing is falling upon deaf ears because there just doesn't seem to be that much interest in it.

Having come from an IT background, I have a pretty good idea why this is the case with a lot of IT departments.  The main reason I can see for this lack of interest is that many IT departments don't pay the electric bill.  At most they might pay some money for the data center rack space they lease but smaller IT departments simply convert an existing room in to a make shift server room with a mixture of rack-mount and floor standing servers.  Facilities picks up the cost of electricity for those rooms as well as the rest of the building which powers and cools all the office equipment.

As a result of this typical arrangement, energy efficient computing simply doesn't register with many IT departments because it simply doesn't show up on their budget and it isn't their problem.  They're concerned with procurement costs and that often means less efficient components and if it drives up the electric bill which includes all the extra cooling costs from the extra heat generated, that's someone else's problem.

Until IT gets billed for all the power it uses including the power used by the desktops and the extra power required to cool the building or IT takes over the power budget, energy efficiency will not be taken seriously.  Desktop computers will not be forced to go in to S3 sleep state and only woken at night when updates need to be applied.  It won't be worth the trouble until they see it show up on their budget.