http://www.silicon.com/retailandleisure/0,3800011842,39168542,00.htm?r=1

Tesco is reducing air conditioning in data centres and checking the energy consumption of new equipment as part of the supermarket giant’s plans to reduce its carbon footprint.

Tesco has pledged to halve carbon emissions from existing stores by 2020 and encourage customers to buy more energy-efficient goods.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Colin Cobain, group IT director at Tesco, said the IT department is already looking at ways to reduce energy consumption and is in the process of developing a green strategy to help meet these goals. He said: “We are trying to do the right things and we’re developing our plans at the moment.”

This includes reducing energy consumption at Tesco’s data centres. Cobain said: “We are looking at various things to do with how is IT actually affecting the environment so we’ve done things in the past few months like increasing the average ambient temperature in the data centres to try and reduce the amount of air-conditioning.”

Very cool, reducing air conditioning requirements can be a great way of instantly having an impact on your energy/operational costs. Coupling that with DC power, or energy efficient servers and you could have an effective way of providing the infrastructure in a way that contains your energy costs and therefore your operating costs.