Influent | Technology in Motion

Fellow startups - check out these helpful insights from Greentech Media and take a look at how the big guys are gearing up their green initiatives.

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Unilever, IBM and other companies said they are constantly investigating green technologies that would help them conserve energy or sell products to customers who embrace efficiencies.

What do big companies like Unilever, IBM or Frito-Lay want from cleantech startups? The answer appears to be technologies that will help them go “green” or sell the things they already understand.

Unilever, which makes food as well as personal and household cleaning products, is interested in smart grid technologies, but not because it wants to enter the information technology market. The company is keenly interested in how consumers use water and other resources at home, said Phil Giesler, director of innovation and corporate ventures at Unilever.

“We realized that the major water use is not in the process of making the products but in how consumers use them,” said Giesler at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovation near San Francisco on Wednesday. Giesler joined other company executives on a panel about what large companies want to startups. “That realization has led us to come up with formulations that need less water” to use.

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During our meetings with data-center companies, we have asked their take on the green data-center movement. A different kind of green is often emphasized—money.

Energy efficiency is one of the most sought after characteristics in computing. There are two reasons for this; first is the ability to create PR and influence public opinion and second is the need to create higher computing density without increasing energy costs. If a given device can make a data center 20% more efficient then the same center can offer 20% more computing power without adding additional costs. Although many data-centers are working hard to become innately more efficient, this often means using the same amount of power to do more work rather than a focus on overall power reduction.

Some purists might consider this not truly ‘going green,’ however using the same amount of power to produce more work is in fact the definition of efficiency. Being green only has upsides; you’re creating positive PR, saving money while creating greater computing power and did I mention helping the environment.

Check out a network of data-center companies that feel the same way. Visit Greengrid. A global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data-centers and business computing ecosystems.