Yahoo is really going all out when it comes to their new design for green technology enhanced data center named Coop. The design is based on an innovation already present in chicken coops, where most of the cooling for the structure is provided by open air-flow. With their enormous power consumption for servers comes a giant heating bill, which in turn further increases power consumption for cooling.

GigaOM right now has a story on Yahoo’s new data center design,

The 155,000-square-foot data center, which can accommodate 50,000 servers, is cooled almost 100 percent by outside air (in contrast to the large power-hungry chillers in most data centers), and uses 40 percent less energy than typical data centers. While cooling can traditionally suck up a good half of the energy consumption of a data center, Yahoo’s Coop design attributes just 1 percent of its annual energy consumption to cooling.

The design is so efficient that the EPA gave Yahoo $9.9 million in a grant in January to invest in the construction of the center in Lockport, NY. So far it’s proven to be one of the most energy efficient data center designs in the world, beating out even some of Google’s most environmental installations. The Green Grid organization, which measures power-to-heat ratios for energy efficiency gave the Coop centers a 1.08 Power Usage Effectiveness measure (or PUE.) On the scale a 1 is pretty good and a 2 is quite poor. Google so far can only boast installations that reach about 1.2—whereas the current average hovers around 1.92.

Facebook, on the side of the issue, have put themselves in hot water over the construction of a datacenter that is not using enough green technology. As reported by SiliconANGLE, the environmental organization GreenPeace has taken issue with Facebook over using power supplier PacifiCorp. Their criticism comes in the form of a video clip asking Facebook to unfriend coal—a reference to GreenPeace’s disagreement with PacifiCorp’s use of it as a source of energy.

Not far behind the green curve, Oracle is also hopping on the bandwagon with Oracle Openworld 2010, touted to be the greenest Oracle event ever. Eweek has an article on Openworld,

The conference should make green aficionados happy, as Oracle claims it is the largest sustainable event, with a 76 percent reduction in paper used over last year’s event. There also will be 800,000 gallons of water saved and 140 tons of waste diverted from landfills, and 60 percent of all the food to be consumed at the event is organic and from local growers, Sim [Oracle’s senior vice president] said.

Oracle OpenWorld 2010 appears that it will be the largest conference in Oracle’s history, spreading itself across San Francisco by combining itself with JavaOne and Oracle Develop. It brags a prodigious 2,300 hours of upcoming content, which makes almost 58 weeks of information—although most of the 41,000 expected attendees will not be able to absorb all of that. The 76% reduction in paper will probably go a very long way with so many people attending.

Since this week is all about OpenWorld 2010 there may be a lot more news on the green angle, but right now it seems to be an afterthought. Still, something right now is much better than nothing. Just ask Yahoo who are getting both good press and power savings and Facebook who are getting poo-pooed by GreenPeace.