Energy efficient servers are all well and good, but Google tackles the datacenter first when it comes to power savings. In an InternetNews article, Andy Patrizio examines their way of thinking.

Every hardware vendor out there, from IBM on down is frantically looking for ways to cut power and heat in their products, but the datacenter building has not gotten as much attention. IBM has tried with its green datacenter efforts, but by and large, the building remains an overlooked issue.

Big mistake, because for every watt of power used by the computers, you will spend 0.96 watts to run the datacenter - in other words, requiring 0.96 watts of power for the facility itself for every 1 watt of power for computers. Google datacenters, on the other hand, are 21 percent of the cost. In some cases, it's as low as 15 percent.

Several elements work together to achieve these results, including maximizing airflow and water management. And at the end of the day, retired servers are repurposed, scavenged for parts or recycled.

More details here.