cnet news has a post on US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Google's warm reception for secretary of energy

by Tom Krazit

Google CEO Eric Schmidt (left) and U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at Google headquarters Monday.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--For a bunch of search engineers, Google employees care an awful lot about energy and the environment.

Google hosted an event for employees Monday featuring Steven Chu, the U.S. secretary of energy under President Obama and a man Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said "may become one of the most influential scientists of our generation, if he isn't already." Chu took about an hour to speak to a packed room of Google employees followinghis announcement of $151 million in funding for new energy-related projects as part of the ARPA-E program.

Part of the format has Schmidt interviewing Chu.

Schmidt, who serves as an adviser to the administration on President Obama's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, asked Chu what it's like being the senior scientist in the government. He's actually the first scientist to hold the secretary of energy position, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.

"It's funny in a macabre sort of way. I don't think Congress treats me like your average cabinet member," Chu said with a wry chuckle. He said he's spent much of his first year on the job talking to Congress about the problems with energy use and the environment, and that legislators are receptive, for the most part.

"I think the president has made it very clear that science plays such an integral role in the decisions we have to make," Chu said. He was preaching to the choir at the Googleplex.

On a regular basis I hear Green IT is a fad and not important. Google has done a great job of providing a way for its staff to work together to use less energy for Google services.

What those people who think Green IT is a fad miss is having your staff focus on making things greener, means you have benchmarked your performance. And continually evaluate new ways to reduce energy consumption and reduce your carbon footprint. This saves money over the long haul and makes it easier to provide new services.

The winners in internet services are going to go to those who have the highest performance per watt. Google is in a race and many think the race isn’t worth the effort. Amazon gets it. Who else?

I bet you Eric Schmidt is helping the federal gov’t understand how much more efficient it would be to host services in the Google cloud vs federal data centers.

Can Google be the lowest cost utility for data center services? Who is competing with Google to be the lowest cost? The lowest cost provider will be the most efficient using energy.

Being the greenest is another way to say you are the lowest cost provider of IT services.

Still think Green IT will be a fad?