Fuel Cell-Powered Data Centers Could Cut Costs and Carbon

angry tapir writes "A group of Microsoft researchers believe that using fuel cells to power data centers could potentially result in an 'over 20% reduction in costs using conservative projections', cutting infrastructure and power input costs. In addition, using fuel cells would likely result in a smaller carbon footprint for data centers. The researchers looked at the potential of using fuel cells at the rack level to power servers in data centers — although they note there is a long way to go before this could become a reality (not least of the small worldwide production level of fuel cells)."

Eco Idoits will love this

[frovingslosh]

What a great idea. Fuel cells produce no nasty carbon emissions. So as long as you ignore how the hydrogen that feeds them is produced in the first place (generally from an extremely dirty and wasteful natural gas extraction process) and the pollution involved in actually making extremely expensive fuel cells in the first place, this makes perfect sense.

I think this is 'feel-good' BS

[xtronics]

Fuel cells need ultra pure fuel in order to not spoil their extremely expensive reactors. Creating this fuel and transporting it cleanly is not cheap.

I've seen no end of articles claiming that fuel cells are the cure to everything. Tons of grant money has flowed and no products are displacing other technology.

The market place is far from perfect, but it is far better than any panel of pointy headed academics at providing workable solutions. M$ has shown the lack of ability to create new profitable products for many years now - this looks like yet another windoze fone effort.