In the world of technology, Yahoo! sometimes gets forgotten in lieu of companies like Microsoft and Google, who tend to dominate news headlines and our computer use, but the new data center that Yahoo! is building in New York deserves plenty of attention (and could probably teach those other companies a thing or two about getting greener). The data center will be located in Lockport, New York and will be one of the greenest in the world, with most of the energy coming from renewable hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls.

While we’re all getting better about seeking out energy-efficient computers and computer accessories and we’re trying to be smarter about how much time we spent using electronics, data centers are often overlooked, despite the fact that they use vast amounts of energy to power all the servers that keep things running smoothly online. The new Yahoo! energy-efficient data center hopes to significantly reduce the energy Yahoo! uses. It’s more than just renewable hydroelectric power (although that’s a crucial and excellent step), they’re also using 100% outside air to cool the data center, which they’ve nicknamed the “Computing Coop” for its chicken coop-design. That means that 90% of the renewable hydroelectric power they’re using goes to powering their servers, whereas most data centers use about half of their power just to cool the servers.

The Lockport data center won’t be the first in Yahoo’s fleet to be green, for the last two years (since they started building their own data centers) they’ve implemented features like zero-carbon wind and hydroelectric power and free cooling. It’s all part of their goal to reduce the carbon impact of the data centers by a minimum of 40% by 2014—something all web giants will likely be striving for soon. Another step they’ve taken for that goal is to stop buying carbon offsets and invest that money into reducing their own carbon impact, which is crucial for companies that want to start preventing problems instead of just trying to remedy their effects.

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