The city has two server “farms” with about 550 servers altogether. They store the city’s websites, email, applications and other computing services.

Anyone who has been in the server room of their own company knows there needs to be enough air conditioning to keep the machines cool. Plenty of energy consumption all around.

The city wants to replace 260 computer servers with 15 “virtualized” servers by the end of 2013, reducing the actual physical number of servers needed for city business.

That, according to the city, would be the equivalent of taking 228 cars off the road annually, since 2.7 million pounds of carbon emissions would disappear. Electricity consumption would drop by 103 kilowatts and cooling power would decrease by 129 kilowatts.

Every bit helps, especially if it keeps the hydro bills down.