FNBO's Fuel Cell Was Just a Start

First National Bank of Omaha becamethe first bank to build a data center powered entirely by fuel cell technology in 1999, but the $19 billion bank hasn't just rested on its green laurels since then. The bank is in the process of virtualizing its 8,000 desktop PCs, replacing them with more energy efficient terminals that also have double the lifespan of traditional PCs-longer lifespan equals less electronic waste. A server virtualization project cut energy usage, cooling costs, allowed the bank to decrease the time it takes to build a server from one week to half a day, and reduced disaster recovery demands significantly. On the operations side, motion sensitive lighting, sinks and flush devices are becoming the norm as facilities are upgraded. Recycling efforts resulted in more than 350 tons of paper recycled in 2008, a figure the bank translates to the equivalent of 6,236 trees. FNBO is also continuously greening its customer-facing initiatives, in part through its www.bankgreentoday.com Website. The latest effort? The quarterly, full color, high-gloss newsletter that it used to send to 120,000 households manually is going digital, and by next year will only be produced in electronic format.