Microsoft has introduced employee incentives to improve energy efficiency and it’s paying off. From 2004 to 2007, Microsoft saw a 22 percent improvement in the energy efficiency of its data centers, Network World reports.
Microsoft has begun charging business units based on the amount of energy consumed by the servers that host their services instead of basing the charge on the amount of floor space required to stack the servers that their services used – which led to extremely dense, power hungry servers.
This has allowed the company to do away with underutilized equipment resulting in major savings.
The effort has also led to developers writing new code and examining the trade off between extra speed and energy savings.
Data-center facilities managers are in the game plan too – yearly bonuses are based on year-over-year efficiency improvements.
Dupont is also using incentives to cut energy use.