Pacific Gas & Energy are pushing for web hosting companies to be more energy efficient by adopting measures recommended by Pacific Gas & Energy Energy Savings Assistance programs. These programs were developed by Pacific Gas & Energy (PG&E) in order to help increase the efficient use of energy and decrease the impact companies have on the environment. The industry they are currently focusing on is the high tech industry.

Currently, PG&E intends to focus on data centers located in the Pacific Northwest, Southwest, and the North East. Although these are the focus regions, PG&E intends to promote energy efficient measures to data centers across the nation.

PG&E will aid web hosting companies in conserving energy by analyzing the energy efficiency of each company and recommend suitable, environmentally-friendly replacement technologies. They will also document the activities within participating companies, analyzing how energy efficient they are and giving pointers on how the companies can improve.

PG&E, with their vast selection of energy conserving technology, have the objective to help change the infrastructure of the hosting world. “A customer choosing from our menu of programs, which include cooling system improvements, high-efficiency power conditioning equipment retrofits, airflow management tune-ups, virtualization, and replacement of computing and data storage equipment with the latest technologies can generally drive a third to as much as half of the energy use out of their operations,” projected Mark Bramfitt, High Tech Segment Manager for PG&E.

Many web hosting companies have already implemented these environmental friendly movements and have noticed a significant impact on their energy conservation. Some web hosting companies are also able to boast about shifting their Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), a ratio measuring the efficiency of power usage specifically by data centers, to 1.37 while the average PUE is currently 2.0. These precautions have made the services offered by some web hosting companies cheaper, attracting more and more customers.

PG&E are striving to encourage environmental conservation among web hosting companies and data centers. They are confident that it can have a significant impact on both the environment and the technological market.

“We have developed program and service offerings for the information technology industry, and sharing our knowledge with other utilities will drive energy savings and environmental benefits more widely in this rapidly expanding market,” concluded the director of Customer Energy Efficiency at PG&E, Roland Risser.