Did you know that industry computer servers account for 1.5% of the nation’s energy use? The Department of Energy did which is why they awarded $47 million dollars to companies who are seeking to improve energy usage in data centers.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu awarded cash to 14 projects, including HP’s power supply chain projects, Alcatel-Lucent’s data center cooling project, and IBM’s equipment and software project.

The scary thing is, with increased cloud computing comes increased toll on servers – instead of MS Outlook using your processor, Gmail uses theirs, and as such puts more load on the energy grid. God, imagine how much power Google Wave must take up – if more people start using that cloud beast, we may have to get used to brownouts.

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