Bad news. While tech giants boast super-low power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratings, most corporate data centers aren’t following suit.

A recent eWEEK article by Scot Petersen, a technology analyst at Ziff Brothers Investment, noted that while Google and Facebook are edging ever closer to a coveted 1.0 PUE score — the closer to 1.0 the better – most business IT operations fall short.

By contrast, IDC’s report shows that more than two-thirds of the enterprises it surveyed logged a PUE of more than 2.0, and 10 percent were over 3.0 or didn’t know. The data showed that data center managers are indeed measuring their PUE, but not really doing anything about it.

Not only are those data centers burning through a lot of electricity, not all of which comes from renewable sources, they’re also incurring big power and cooling costs. One way for businesses to achieve an enviable PUE is to kick their addiction to AC. Petersen writes:

Many data centers are also being kept needlessly cool. About 75 percent of enterprises are keeping their data centers below 75 degrees F, when guidelines set by ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) call for a recommended maximum of 80.6 degrees and allowable maximum of 95 degrees.

Even five years ago, HP data center guru John Bennett was advocating letting servers get a little toasty. They can take it.

Read the rest over at eWEEK.

Image Credit: Flickr user Tristan Schmurr – CC