Cutting Greenhouse Gases from Office Buildings

June 18, 2006 – Vol.11 No.13

CUTTING GREENHOUSE GASES FROM OFFICE BUILDINGS.

Computer data centers are the backbone of the Internet and the backbone of many companies. Virtually every large private corporation and institution has a data center. It’s a computer-driven world after all.

Data centers are also energy hogs, and the more data they transfer the more energy they consume. In a global information economy the world’s bank of data is growing rapidly as is the energy needed to distribute it.

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Labs) say that running data servers on directly on DC current can save up to 20 percent in electricity. The common method of stepping down AC current in stages from grid power to DC current inside each server is wasteful, they say. Electric energy savings equals cuts in greenhouse gas emissions if energy is from a conventional source.

Low voltage DC servers are commercially available, researchers say, but not widely used outside the telecommunications industry. The reluctance in the data industry to switch to DC systems is due to a lack of experience, they say.

Escalators and elevators are certainly common in office buildings and operate almost continuously as long as people are occupying the building.

Power Efficiency Corporation, using technology first developed at NASA, offers electric motor controls that can reduce energy consumption by 20-40 percent or higher for a wide variety of applications. The technology allocates power to the motor in direct proportion to the motor’s workload.

The company is taking orders for its products with the most recent sale to Amtech Elevator Services, a division of elevator giant, Otis Elevator. The sale is for Power Commander (tm) motor controls for escalators at two Federal buildings in Pennsylvania. A previous sale was for escalators at the Columbus (Ohio) International Airport.

Those are just two specific examples of how greenhouse gas emissions and energy can be saved in office buildings. The World Resources Institute (WRI) knows there are many more measures that can be taken and has published a guidebook to help office building managers get started on cutting greenhouse gases.

The guidebook, “Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management” offers a generalized outline for companies to use to develop their own plan of action. The Guide also uses case studies to show how selected companies have made significant cuts in their emissions.

For the Guide visit WRI at http://newsroom.wri.org/ . Visit Berkeley Labs at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-DC-power.html and Power Efficiency at http://www.powerefficiencycorp.com/