Using innovative technology that targets cooling efficiency, Verizon has significantly reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions at 24 of its U.S. data centers. The technology, intelligent energy management systems from Vigilent, enabled Verizon to achieve the following results:

• Turning off approximately 40 percent of the computer room air conditioners in these data centers within two days of implementing the energy management systems, providing an instant reduction in energy consumption and an anticipated savings of more than 55 million kilowatt annually.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 66 million pounds of CO₂ on an annualized basis.
• Decreasing average temperatures by two degrees Fahrenheit throughout the data centers, with significantly reduced temperature fluctuations and extremes.

"Vigilent energy management systems have reduced cooling consumption by more than 40 percent as well as provided important safeguards that help improve our uptime," said Mark Capurso, director of national technical operations at Verizon. "This combination of energy savings and improved efficiencies goes a long way toward helping meet Verizon's goal of improving its carbon efficiency by 15 percent this year."

Vigilent energy management systems consist of hundreds of wireless temperature sensors at each data center that are connected through an intelligent mesh network to on-site servers using energy management software. These systems delivered real-time data about environmental conditions throughout each facility, then provided analysis and recommendations for optimal configurations and performance.

Verizon, which is implementing an aggressive campaign to reduce energy usage, based its choice of Vigilent systems on an extensive investigation into a wide range of approaches to address data center cooling issues. Verizon anticipates installing the Vigilent system at more of the company's U.S. data center sites.

"We are enthusiastic about our collaboration with Verizon, a company which has led the way in combining technology leadership with stewardship of the environment," said Mark Housley, chief executive officer, Vigilent. "Vigilent and Verizon worked closely to implement dynamic cooling at these facilities across the U.S., and the results speak for themselves. Verizon was able to capture significant reductions in cooling energy and its carbon footprint while simultaneously helping to increase uptime, resilience, and protection for these mission-critical facilities."

Overall, Verizon's energy reduction and recycling initiatives in its facilities around the globe reduced CO₂ emissions by more than 297.5 million pounds in 2010, leading to an improvement of more than 15 percent in the rate of emissions per terabyte of data, a new metric Verizon developed to measure carbon efficiency.