The posters of Norwegian waterfalls that line the lobby of the $100 million, 100,000-square ft. data center in Oslo have the word hydroelectric printed across them. It's the reason why this data center and others like it are just about 100 percent green. Today, DigiPlex is one of the leading builders, owners, and operators of green data centers.

After a successful career starting and growing the $2 billion McArthurGlen, Europe's largest owner and operator of designer factory outlet malls, Byrne Murphy, an American real estate developer, couldn't take his eyes off the potential the Internet offered. At the end of the dot.com boom, Murphy partnered with The Carlyle Group, an equity investment firm, to buy DigiPlex, a bankrupt Scandinavian engineering company. Together both parties turned DigiPlex into a company that focuses on building data centers, especially ones that are very green. Murphy says, "We have 100 percent equity and no debt."

Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Murphy, who is the president of DigiPlex, to discuss what it takes to build a green data center, what countries are leading the pack, and how the U.S. ranks in the green data center movement. Here is what he had to say:

EL: Where are you currently building data centers?

BM: We're working on sites in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The most important element of our data center in Oslo is that our power comes from hydroelectricity, which is 100 percent green. We don't have a fossil fuel driven energy source. Nearly all of the Scandinavian countries, including Iceland and Greenland, use hydroelectricity.

EL: Besides hydroelectricity, what other advantages do these colder climates provide for building green data centers?

BM: Green data centers are of such paramount importance now for reasons we've have all been reading about. Some companies, such as IBM that are trying to take the lead on this, are looking at the Northern European climate just for its hydroelectric power. The fjords of Norway produce plenty of this power. Also, this climate has colder ambient air. About 40 percent of the power consumed in data centers goes for cooling down the hot air generated by the enormous heat created by the server farms. For example, if you can suck in 20 degree F air and use that air to cool down your servers, you can save a lot of power. Furthermore, if you can also drive the power in data centers by electricity generated by dams, waterfalls, and hydroelectricity, you can also have an enormous amount of power. This clean power leaves no carbon footprint.

EL: Is Europe further ahead of the United States when it comes to building green data centers?

BM: For decades, Europe has been further along the green curve than the United States. In U.S., we rely heavily on fossil fuel. Up until the past few years, we've ignored alternative sources of clean fuel. As a result, data centers in the U.S. have continued to soak up large amounts of energy. They leave massive carbon footprints.

In contrast, you wouldn't build a new data center any old way in the UK or in Germany. Heavens forbid, if you try to get a permit for that type of a data center. These countries don't want large carbon footprints. Instead, they want something that is clean.  The UK has a very active secondary carbon trading market where you get credit for being clean. You can even make a deal with someone that has a dirty data center.  It will be interesting to see if UK data centers with large carbon footprints will want to team up with clean data centers in Scandinavia. There is nothing formal on the books today about doing this, but there is much chatter that this could certainly happen.

EL: What green measures are you using for your data centers that aren't located near sources for hydroelectricity?

BM: If I can get a data center inside the London beltway to open within eight months based on certain specs, I'm not going to wait for hydroelectric to find the data center. For these data centers that aren't located near hydroelectric sources, I'm trying to incorporate as much green efficiency into the design, mostly through ambient airway uptake. The climates I'm looking at are far enough north in latitude where a good number of weeks per year are 35 degree F or less outside. As a result, we can suck in the cold air rather than having to run generators for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. Specifically, we push air through from inside rather than re-cooling hot air which is 84 degree F. We put the air through a cool water system and it comes out at 43 degrees F. We don't have to spend all that energy if we suck in outside air that is already 43 degrees F. We use the basic guts of a HVAC system, but the ductwork we've added points directly outside to suck in the cold air. Once you have a HVAC system in place, the ductwork isn't a major addition.

EL: Are you planning to build data centers in the United States?

BM: Yes, but the question is when. We have a skewed supply and demand metric. The Internet continues to grow and grow. In fact, we grossly underestimated the Internet growth projection we made several years ago for the consumption of data. For example, mobile devices, such as the Smartphone and the iPhone, soak up more than two percent of Internet bandwidth just by themselves. These devices didn't exist 15 months ago. Youtube.com now soaks about 13 Percent of Internet bandwidth and that figures keeps growing. And Youtube.com didn't exist two years ago. We can cite plenty of other examples.

All this demand on the Internet has to go somewhere. If you're going to fly an airplane, you're going to need an airport. If you're going to have a virtual world, you're going to need a data center. The problem is that data centers are enormously capital intensive to build. Before you even put in the equipment, it's $1,200 per square ft. to construct a data center. That's very expensive compared to building a normal office building, which could range from $300 a square ft. to $400 a square ft. depending upon where you are.

You have an enormous need for these data centers just when you have a capital crunch. So where is the money going to come from? There is a real need for data centers and thus the problem associated with building them.  It's one that isn't easily solved. The very smart money is going to press on with data center development anyway. For example, Digital Realty, the largest data center developer in the world, is trying to press on anyway, but the company has it own set of issues. It's a very difficult time. To this end, you don't see huge numbers of new data centers just being built any old way all across the U.S. Why? There is almost no debt, even the equity is very hard to find, but yet the demand is there for it.

EL: Can we really build green data centers in the United States?

BM:  The question is 'what do you consider green?' Yes, you can build one, but whose definition of green are you talking about? The answer is this: The data centers being built in the U.S. are greener than those built three years or four years ago. On the other hand, very few of these data centers are as green as some of the ones in Europe. We just don't have the hydroelectric power here. Green data centers are being built in the Pacific Northwest by google.com and amazon.com. Neither company wants to talk about them for security reasons. Amazon.com is building data centers next to rivers to have a source of green power. I can't give out specifications about these data centers because amazon.com won't release any information.

EL: If you wanted to build a green data center in the U.S., what challenges would do you face?

BM: The first obstacle is to find a site that is located next to a water source to make hydroelectricity and that has enough fiber somewhere nearby.  Most important, can you get all of the appropriate zoning in place in time to build? The demand is very high for that. Getting the combination of a hydroelectric location and plenty of fiber exists in many places, but not in all places. If you're in a really rural location, you'll need backbone fiber. How expensive is it to get there? Combined with assembly with the zoning and the very important construction financing  -- debt and equity in a short time horizon -- can make it all feasible. Financing, the last part of the process, might be daunting at the moment. That should change, but the question is when?

EL: Can you power a data center by wind?

BM: Yes, but not a very big one. If you have a large data center, you'd need a huge wind farm. Everybody likes to be green. Any population, however, doesn't like the look or sound of wind farms.  It sounds like you have an airplane behind you the entire time. That's why Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite have been opposing wind farm sites on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard.  Some folks advocate being green until it hits their backyard.

EL: Would you recommend that a European company or a U.S. company with a European operation build a data center outside say in Norway?

BM: It might be a good idea if you have a European-based business already. On the one hand, it would be a challenge to convince a London-based company to move its primary data center to Norway. On the other hand, you need to answer how the company is going to use the data center. If you're a trading operation, you need milliseconds between when someone pushes a button and the trade happens. If the fiber is too long and too far away from the data center, you run the risk that the fiber can be cut. The further away your data center is from the information being pushed out, you run into latency issues about the quality of fiber. If you're backing up data, then it might make sense to use a data center in another country.

EL: What does the Asian market look like for building data centers? Are they concerned about going green?

BM: Asia offers a huge opportunity for building data centers. In fact, this area doesn't have many data centers. As a result, you can drive the demand there. The very large banks and trading floors need data centers. They need more of them. The big corporations expanding there need more of them. Although it's a huge opportunity for building data centers, being green isn't so terribly important in East Asia. It's growing in importance, but not there yet.

EL:  How about the Middle East and South America?

BM: The Middle East has a huge demand for data centers. Places like Dubai build cities all at once, and these cities need power. Anything that needs also power needs a data center. Because the Middle East countries create and profit from fossil fuels, they aren't concerned about green data centers. It's just not profitable to go in this direction.

As for South America, I'm not well versed on the depth of the market for data centers there. I do know that Brazil has a need for data centers and also has big power generators there.

Canada is a good, but small market for building green data centers. You'll get all the support you'll need because the Canadian people and the Canadian government understand the need to be green.

EL: Many companies are moving to server virtualization as a way to make their data centers greener. What's your feeling about this?

BM: When it comes to improving your green factor, we haven't seen a gain changing process thus far to say 'here is the great secret.' It makes sense to change and to reduce dramatically the amount of power per server. IBM is trying to get way out there. In the meantime, data center demand keeps growing, and we're just beginning to figure how to keep up with that growth and how to do it while reducing power consumption. As a data center builder and owner, I don't want to be perceived as a power-consuming hog.

EL: Have you talked to people in financial services about having greener data centers?

BM: Being green is on all corporate agendas. It's getting into board rooms. Companies like to be green when and where they can just as long as it's not increasing their costs by more than two percent here and there. If you can make a case for it, companies would rather be green than not be green.

Elizabeth M. Ferrarini - She is a free-lance writer and IT consultant from Boston, Massachusetts. Reach her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.