Given the parlous state of the world economy, firms could be forgiven for letting Green IT slip swiftly down their priority lists. But a new report from IDC highlights how energy inefficiency in server rooms and datacentres can directly impact profitability.

The analyst's research shows that the amount of energy required by servers and datacenters in Europe is climbing at a worrying speed and grew by more than 13% between 2006 and 2007.

In 2007, servers in Western Europe consumed more than 16.3TWh – almost twice the amount of electricity needed every year to power all street lighting and traffic signals in the UK. At a datacentre level, IDC estimates the consumption levels in Western Europe to have exceeded 40TWh in 2007 and this is expected to grow to more than 42TWh in 2008.

"When addressing power issues, everyone naturally links the topic to a general plan of cost saving. What few companies seem to grasp though is the extent to which energy will impact the IT infrastructure bottom line in the next year," says Nathaniel Martinez, IDC's European Enterprise Servers programme director.

"At a cost of 10.71 euro cents per kWh, electricity is a large source of costs. Last year, €1.6 billion was spent on powering servers throughout Western Europe, which translated into €4.4 billion for entire datacentres. Unless a drastic change in products and company practices occurs, things will not get any better in the future. In 2012, we could face a scenario where for every euro spent on buying new servers, more than €0.80 will be needed to power the existing datacentre infrastructure."

"European organisations must also reconsider their organisational procedures if they are to cope with the impact that the datacentre energy bill has on the bottom line of their finance," adds Giorgio Nebuloni, an IDC European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions research analyst.

"To reach this goal, they have to engage in TCO calculations, including detailed energy expenses, and they must encourage a much tighter cooperation between facility management and the IT department, which, in most cases, still work without any coordination whatsoever."

Such concerns could actually be a boon to the Power i as besides being reliable, scaleable and secure, the platform is also remarkably energy efficient. Users typically attain a system utilisation level of over 40% even without using logical partitioning, considerably higher than that achieved with x86 and Unix servers. While this in itself is perhaps not a reason for complacency, it's certainly worth considering the next time you are asked about your favourite computer's green credentials.