Across all industries, companies have long been touting the green benefits of their products. To a lesser extent, companies are taking a serious look at their own environmental impacts and finding ways to reduce their footprints.

And the IT industry has been working to move its green impacts beyond the data center and office desktop out to the larger world of business operations -- a move called, variously "IT for Green" or "Green IT 2.0."

With the advance of technology that can bring buildings, vehicles, and the energy grid itself under the purview of IT, there is an increasing number of old-line companies in manufacturing, utilities, and other industries that are starting to sell the green benefits of their products and services.

Schneider Electric, which we profiled in September, is one good example of this, and I just came upon another: Eaton. The manufacturing company's CIO, William Blausey Jr., explained in an interview with IndustryWeek how the company is putting its technology to work in its own data centers -- and seeing big savings:

For example, Eaton has installed six of its model 9315 uninterruptible power systems (UPS) in its data centers, helping the company save roughly $75,000 a year in energy costs at the facilities.

 

When Eaton completes construction of two new 100,000-square-foot enterprise data centers in Kentucky to replace its existing Cleveland-based facilities, the company plans to take full advantage of its expanded green-product portfolio. Eaton will install four of its latest UPS models -- the 9395 -- at the new data centers, which will help the company save $75,000 in annual energy costs at each facility, according to Blausey. [...]

Blausey expects Eaton's recent acquisition of Wright Line LLC, a Worcester, Mass.-based manufacturer of customized enclosures, rack systems and air-flow management systems for IT data center electronics, to pay green dividends at the new facilities. Eaton plans to use Wright Line computer racking, which can reduce power consumption by the air-handling units by 30%.

While Blausey admits that Eaton's existing data centers lack the "level of sophistication" that he anticipates at the new facilities, the company has been able to achieve some laudable efficiencies at the Cleveland-based centers. By investing in VMware virtualization technology, which has enabled Eaton to remove 670 servers, the company has reduced its annual power consumption by more than 4.4 million kilowatt-hours and cut its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2,685 metric tons.

Read more of the interview with Blausey at IndustryWeek.com.