I recently saw an interesting article on a survey which has been covered widely throughout the UK tech media.

The survey showed that public sector IT managers are deeply skeptical about their ability to deliver on high-profile targets intended to ensure the government's IT estate is carbon neutral by 2012.

One news article can be seen here: Updated: Public sector bosses fear they will miss green IT goals - 03 Jul 2009 - BusinessGreen.com

Targeting major reductions in carbon emissions from data centres within the public sector and proposed cuts in public spending go together like chalk and cheese. Everyone should now know that there are easy fixes that can help towards more efficient data centre operations such as fitting blanking plates, hot aisle/cold aisle separation, increasing server inlet air temperatures etc.

However, from the survey results I doubt if these well publicised actions are that well known - let alone acted upon! To help you out on365 has come up with 15 quick ways to improving data centre efficiency- 15 Quick Fixes to Improve Data Centre Efficiency - on365.

These tips are only the starting point. To make major inroads into reducing the carbon footprint will require significant investment. Whether this is at the physical infrastructure level, such as complete and physical separation of hot and cold air, the use of free-cooling coils in chillers or at the computational level in terms of server/SAN virtualisation, a government operated private cloud – money, and plenty of it, will be required. Just the management of data centre efficiency will require the government committing to big sums. Global commercial organisations such as Google, HP, IBM and eBay have published some very aggressive PUE results (down as low as 1.1) for some of their data centres. OK these might not be their most important or business critical sites but the numbers are a target. They show that it can be done. Some involve radical measures like locating the DC in Iceland or not bothering with UPS protection but they all took investment. Obviously Government has little choice but to cut public spending. I guess it will come down to which is the most important, the treasuries debt management targets or the Governments green targets.