By Karen Stephenson

According to Harvard researchers as reported in Newsweek on August 29, 2009, seven grams of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere for every Google search query made. Google disputes this number, but there's no doubt that the Information Technology industry is rapidly becoming a very large contributor to global warming. According to the Newsweek article, the IT industry now accounts for 2% of global emissions; this is comparable to the annual total of emissions for an aircraft.

Considering that the price of geothermal and hydroelectric energy is very low and their production is totally free from atmospheric emissions of fossil fuels and from the potential hazards of nuclear power, these energy sources are destined to become the way of the future.

Iceland is a nation that can boast that their electricity comes from affordable, sustainable geothermal and hydroelectric energy. These resources are 100% renewable and there is no green energy cost premium. Geothermal power is in abundance due to the volcanic forces that shaped the country. Iceland is currently struggling from the global financial crisis; therefore it is in a great position to become a "green data hub." The colder climate provides an inexpensive way to cool data hub centres and 100% of the energy required to run them comes from geothermal and hydroelectric plants. Remarkably, less than 20% of this clean energy has been tapped thus far.

Verne Global

Verne Global is a corporation that has launched a $300 million, 37,000 square-metre data centre just outside of Reykjavik, Iceland's capital. Calculations by Verne Global show that carbon emissions could be reduced by 50,000 metric tons a year, creating a savings of $100 million in electric bills over a ten-year period for companies such as major financial institutions that power from 15,000 to 20,000 servers, using about five megawatts of power.

To put this in perspective, that's about the size of Facebook, which in late 2008, stated they were operating upwards of 10,000 servers. The giant Internet companies generally are secretive about the size of their data centres and the energy they use, but Google says they're using at least 45 megawatts in nine of their largest centres.

Phenomenal Savings

Jeff Monroe, head of Verne Global, says that the data centre industry is not on par with the airline industry in terms of leaving carbon footprints. Monroe boasts that if a company moves its data centre to Iceland, "The carbon savings would be enormous. For example, if a large internet media company operating thousands and thousands of servers relocated its servers to Iceland, that company would save greater than half a million metric tons of carbon annually."

Iceland has a cooler climate and an abundance of green energy. This is why prior to the global economic crisis, Iceland laid a vast network of underwater fibre-optic cables to mainland Europe and to North America. It makes sense; no company would consider moving its data centre into the middle of a North Atlantic island without trustworthy connections. The cables coming in provide a capacity greater than five terabits per second - all with server farms in mind. Data sited in Iceland is just 17 milliseconds from London, England.

Later this year, it's anticipated that the first companies will start leasing space in this data centre. Based on the success of this site, more are planned.

Verne Global expects demand to be huge because as numerous global servers continue to grow, a huge black environmental cloud is looming - all that energy translates to an increase in CO² production. In reality, Iceland has far more power than it can use.

Iceland Offers Clean Energy to India

Iceland's President, Olafur Grimsson, offered to give India energy technology to help the country move away from its dependence on oil and coal to generate electricity. There are currently about 1.15 billion people living in an energy-starved India. They get just 3% of their energy from nuclear energy. India has plans to increase nuclear capacity from 4,120 megawatts to 63,000 by 2030.

President Grimsson has invited Indian businesses to invest in Iceland and set up joint ventures in information technology, banking, pharmaceutical and other sectors to strengthen India's presence in the US and European markets.

After suffering intense economic disaster, there is a green rainbow over Iceland. This Icelandic news story happily concludes with irony. In a country brought to its knees by finance, one of the early customers rumoured to have signed a deal to move its servers to Iceland is one of America's largest investment banks.