Efficiency: the hidden secret to solving our energy crisis: hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States

Original publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O., 2009. LC Number: KF25 .E2 2008f OCLC Number: (OCoLC)311551580 Subject: Energy consumption -- United States. Excerpt: ... 11 ing for education and training; and big increases in energy R & D funding, which has fallen to historical lows since the 1970s. But we need more than just technological innovation. People and institutions also need to evolve to meet the new challenges with the overarching goal of breaking down barriers to efficiency and mak-ing the more efficient choice always the more profitable choice. So I am going to give you an example from some recent work I have been doing in data centers. These are the high density com-puting facilities that power the internet and that help virtually all modern companies to operate efficiently. What you find in these facilities is that typically the people who buy the computers have one budget and the people who buy the electricity and supply the cooling to the computers have a separate budget. And so the people who buy the computers do not have an incen-tive to spend even an additional dollar for a more efficient server because the savings accrue and the savings are substantial - typi-cally $ 5 or $ 10 for every $ 1 spent on a server for efficiency - the savings are substantial, and yet they accrue in someone else's budget. So the IT folks just will not buy a more efficient server. So that is an example - I have others that we can talk about in the ques-tion period - that is an example of the kind of institutional issues that are surmountable, but we need to figure out how to solve these problems more effectively and more broadly. Keep in mind that these are the most mission-critical, the most sophisticated, the most carefully designed facilities in business today. And even in these facilities we see these kind of misplaced incentives. That to me means that it is likely these misplaced incentives are pervasive throughout the economy. Great challenge also means gre...