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The Economist: Green IT is about saving money and not the environment

Yes, the "Green" in Green IT is really about greenbacks.

My other post mentions that lobbyists are educating Capitol Hill that it's tackling this problem.

Green IT: Tech execs lobby Capitol Hill

From eWeek's Tech Execs Stump for Green IT on Capitol Hill:

Not so long ago, any sort of "green" discussion on Capitol Hill between the IT industry and lawmakers would have meant only one thing: the size of the political donation.

But members of the Technology CEO Council, an IT lobbying group, were pitching a different green message this week: an energy initiative that leverages technology to achieve greater efficiencies in power consumption.

I was made aware of this trend last year when I visited the Google offices here in NYC for their Spring Speakers Series. The topic for this particular meeting was about optimizing data centers. Absolute performance statistics weren't disclosed for Google's operation--it was more about percentages since this is one of their most closely-guarded secrets.

As I recall, the point was made that Google considers energy consumption in the design and maintenance of their data centers a very important factor. And this is not only about cost savings. The speaker also mentioned that Congress was looking at mandates for examining the energy efficiencies of data centers.

I think this new lobbying effort is a pre-emptive effort to make the case for the energy-efficient technology that these large IT companies are using and the legislators are not aware of.