Photos: How data centers are cooling down

In addition to featuring one of the largest U.S. solar plants, Google aims by 2012 to produce 50 megawatts of electricity through "clean" forms of energy. Energy efficiency efforts alone have reduced Google's load by 50 percent within 5 years, said Bill Weihl, Google's energy czar.

And Google is helping to lead efforts to green the IT grid through the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a collection of nearly 180 enterprises aiming to halve the power consumption of computers by 2010.

Desktop computers currently waste half of the power they use and servers waste one-third, according to Weihl. However, Google's servers achieve as much as 94 percent efficiency, he added.

"This industry spent 30 years selling based on product specs and features," Weihl said. "Energy efficiency was not on the radar."