Everyone knows energy costs keep rising, and that cost in keeping data centers cool is pushing the adoption of green technologies.

But did you know that data centers consumed 1.5% of electricity back in 2006 and that figure has been surging ever since due to the increasing amount of data being created, collected and stored and which is now being analyzed to provide valuable business insight.

Research firm Pike expects =the energy demand will prompt ‘green’ data center equipment to grow from today’s $7.5 billion market to $41.4 billion in just five years.

Power and cooling infrastructures will constitute the biggest portion of the green data center market, accounting for 46% of the revenue, while energy-efficient equipment will grab 41% revenue share and monitoring and management technologies boast 14%.

Rising energy costs are fueling efforts by the enterprise to gain greater efficiency as every penny counts during the slower-than-expected recession rebound.

Research firm Forrester reports 70% of businesses have already taken several steps in adopting energy-saving technologies such as virtualization.

And of course IBM is at the head of the pack in providing cost-efficient technologies such as its new IBM i System.