Faced with rising and volatile energy prices and thespecter of potential power outages, eBay decided last year that itwas time to step up its use of renewable power sources.

With its data centers comprising about half of the company'senergy consumption, eBay's sustainability team determined it madesense to focus on those facilities. First, it would consolidate thecompany's eight U.S. centers into three situated in Utah, Arizonaand Nevada. In addition, it would add onto the existing Utah centerto create a 30-megawatt facility powered entirely by renewableenergy, to be completed by mid-2013.

“This means we'll be completely clean and green,” says DeanNelson, senior director of global data center strategy,architecture and operations at the San Jose, Calif.-based onlinecommerce platform, at right. “We're reinventing how we run our datacenters.”