From modern chicken coops to buildings of years past — built to naturally breathe outside air — familiar designs are bringing new inspiration to how we’re creating the data centers that serve up your favorite websites. As our co-founder David Filo noted two weeks ago, we’re focused on building some of the greenest data centers in the world. Our team of data center engineers is working on never-been-done-before designs and technologies that can radically increase our energy efficiency – both in existing facilities and those we build from the ground up. We’ll give you a behind-the-scene look at their work in the coming months.

In the meantime, you might want to check out public radio. Chris Page, our director of climate and energy strategy, who works with the data center team to squeeze more work out of every kilowatt-hour our data centers consume, spoke to the folks at Public Radio International’s “Living on Earth” program for a segment that aired this week. She gives you both a virtual tour of our local Sunnyvale data center and explains how far the industry has come since energy efficiency became a priority. Think facilities that operate more like a Tesla than your mom’s old wood-paneled station wagon (but without the pricetag).

Head over to “Living on Earth” to check out the transcript or listen to the program.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

This morning, at a press conference in Buffalo, New York, with New York Governor David Paterson and Senator Chuck Schumer, we took another big step forward in addressing climate change. We announced plans to build one of the greenest, most energy-efficient data centers in the world.

This is significant because data centers represent the majority of our energy consumption. Keeping Yahoo! running smoothly for more than 500 million people around the world calls for a lot of server power. So we’ve made it a priority to become a leader in designing and building data centers that are environmentally sustainable, investing millions to design facilities that make the best use of the energy we consume.

Here’s what makes us so proud of our future New York data center plans. First, it will be powered by one of the cleanest utilities in the country – fed predominantly by renewable hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls. And second, a record 90% of that energy will power the servers. To put that in context, the industry average is 50% or lower, with the other half dedicated mostly to keeping the servers cool.

For data center geeks, we expect our Buffalo Lockport, NY, data center design will have an annualized average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.1 or better. To achieve that, we’ve come up with a unique building design that we call the Yahoo! Computing Coop (because it looks like something chickens live in), which is angled to take advantage of Buffalo’s microclimate, using 100% outside air to cool the servers.

We’ve been pushing green data center standards since we started building our own data centers two years ago. For example, our facilities in Washington are powered by zero-carbon wind and hydroelectric sources, and we use free cooling for most of the year, dropping energy consumption by 40-50%. As we build more capacity to meet demand, we’ll continue to focus on innovations and inventions that improve energy efficiency. And we’ve been sharing best practices to encourage the entire industry to put smarter policies in play.

And we’ll continue to push ourselves hard to lower our impact. Today we’re committing to reduce the carbon intensity of our data centers by at least 40% by 2014. In other words, we’ll decrease our average electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from our data centers around the world. We’ll get there through a combination of innovative data center design, improving how we utilize our servers, cloud computing, and locating our data centers in areas where cleaner energy is available.

Reducing our carbon footprint has always been a priority and we’ve decided to focus all our energy and investment on that philosophy. We will no longer purchase carbon offsets as announced in 2007. Instead, we’ll focus our resources on reducing our carbon impact while helping the rest of the industry do the same. We believe creating highly-efficient data centers will have a greater long-term, direct impact on the environment and gives us the best opportunity to play a leadership role in addressing climate change.

So the next time you check your email, do a Yahoo! search, or get the latest environmental info on Yahoo! Green, you can feel good about putting some of the greenest data centers in the industry to work.

David Filo
Co-founder and Chief Yahoo

Here in California, we know all too well that summer days can put a strain on our electricity grid. This is especially true on the hottest weekday afternoons, when air conditioners are working their hardest and office buildings are full of employees.

In response, as part of our climate and sustainability efforts at Yahoo!, we are partnering with Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) to reduce electricity demand on the hottest days of the year (like today).

When a demand response event happens, the Yahoo! facilities team is alerted by PG&E. Then we let Yahoos know that we’ll be letting our buildings run slightly warmer, and turning off lights that are decorative or near windows.

When we got the call for an event during an unseasonably hot day in May, we were able to reduce our electricity consumption on campus by 13.5% . That’s enough to power roughly 750 California homes. A second event came in July, when temperatures outside reached 95 degrees.

What’s the impact of these kinds of programs? They avoid the need to build additional and costly “peaking” power plants that sit idle 90% of the time except during extreme demand spikes. It’s actually cheaper to reduce energy than to build power plants. In turn, they avoid greenhouse gas emissions (and air pollution) during the curtailment period. It can also help avoid potential blackouts.

During the event, we encouraged our employees to watch how our actions affected our power load in real time via our Green Screen, an online energy monitoring dashboard that tracks energy consumption building by building at our Sunnyvale headquarters. You can see an image below of the results, with a drop-off in energy use starting at 2PM.

Yahoos also received free compact fluorescent light bulbs to help them save money (over $37 per bulb!) and energy at home, along with light bulb recycling information and energy savings tips from Flex Your Power, a state-sponsored energy savings campaign.

If you aren’t a Yahoo! you can still do your part to reduce energy use at peak periods at home. Set thermostats at 78 degrees in the summer, to reduce the load on your air conditioner; shutoff unnecessary lighting; and use appliances like coffee makers, laundry machines, and processing equipment either before noon or after 7 pm.

For more info on saving energy at work and at home, check out Flex Your Power.

Chris Page
Director, Climate and Energy Strategy