For example, the trick to increasing the knowledge of the employees at Kodak
lay in giving them the means by which they could visualize in concrete ways
the relationship between their actions and the energy resources they were
consuming. The management team at Kodak understood that people usually
don’t fully comprehend the effect of leaving the lights on at night. For exam-
ple, we get a bill at the end of the month, and we see that it is perhaps higher
than the month before. Maybe we complain a bit about it, too. Ordinarily,
though, that’s the end of it. A significant shift in thinking and acting has not
come about because of what is essentially a minor statistic.However, Kodak’s management also saw that people feel bad when they see
carbon dioxide in the air. But they needed a way to create a link between that
feeling and the fact that the longer we leave the lights on, the greater our
carbon footprint.To make it concrete, Kodak made polar bears their mascot to help employees
connect their energy use with carbon emissions. News at the time showed a
polar bear that was about to drown because the greenhouse effect is melting
the polar icecaps; the hunting grounds this bear had once been able to swim
to were no longer there, so he just kept on swimming, waiting for them to
appear. Team Kodak made the effective connection between leaving the lights
on and a drowning polar bear to help their people visualize the consequences
of their actions.In consequence of such presentations, Kodak’s energy management program
began to demonstrate quantitative and qualitative shifts. Of course it didn’t
hurt that Kodak leveraged the shift still more by displaying the facility’s
resource consumption right next to the My HR display, which is where every-
one goes to see the bonuses they receive for contributing to enhanced energy
conservation!Chapter 11: Making Your Business Processes Environmentally Friendly 191
Data centers are a little too hot these days
The green issues developing from the increase
in computing power have emerged as a preemi-
nent concern for companies from Nashville to
Hong Kong. And it’s no wonder: Data centers
consumed about 60 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh)
in 2006, roughly 1.5 percent of the total U.S. elec-
tricity consumption. The energy consumption of
servers and data centers has doubled in the past
five years, too, and that number is projected to
double again over the next five years, to more
than 100 billion kWh. The result is $7.4 billion in
annual costs. A recently issued EPA report
(“Report to Congress on Server and Data Center
Energy Efficiency”), however, showed that data
centers in the United States can save up to $4
billion in annual electricity costs alone by devel-
oping and using more efficient equipment and
operations.[0]