Data Centers
While
data centers continue to be built all across the country, they are not
without their challenges, namely operating costs and power demand.
According to a survey conducted by AFCOM, the leading association for
data center professionals, more than half of all data centers will have
to relocate to new facilities or outsource applications by 2010. The
key factor for this is the cost of cooling and power. Respondents to
the survey also reported that insufficient power and excessive heat
were two of the biggest problems facing data center operations, with 80
percent of AFCOM members acknowledging a power failure at their center
within the last five years, most caused by power outages.
"Some
of these large data centers have huge energy demands and tend toward
locations with least-cost electricity, like areas with
hydroelectric-generated electricity or nuclear-generated electricity,"
says Buzz Canup, managing principal for Fluor Global Location
Strategies.
The Boyd Company, a site selection firm located in
Princeton, New Jersey, compares the cost of operating data centers in
45 U.S. cities in its 2008 report Banking and Financial Services: A
Comparative Cost Analysis for Information Assurance Operations. Their
conclusion: The most expensive city in which to run a data center is in
New York City, where operating a 125,000-square-foot center runs $28.1
million. The least expensive city is Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where
the cost to operate a 125,000 square-foot center runs $11.2 million.
Perhaps this is the reason that ADP, HSBC, and Wells Fargo all have
data centers located in Sioux Falls.
Biotechnology and Life Sciences
According
to BIO, the world's largest biotechnology organization, biotechnology
has created more than 200 new therapies and vaccines over the past few
years, including products to treat breast cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS,
and autoimmune disorders. There are more than 400 biotech drug products
and vaccines currently in clinical trials.
As of 2006, there
were 1,452 biotechnology companies in the United States, of which 336
were publicly held. The market capitalization of these publicly traded
companies was $360 billion as of April 2008. So great is the field that
healthcare biotech revenues alone rose from $8 billion in 1992 to $58.8
billion in 2006. U.S. publicly traded biotech companies spent $27.1
billion on research and development in 2006 and employed 180,000
people, according to BIO.
The top 10 states for biotech in the
United States, according to the Battelle/BIO study Growing the Nation's
Biotech Sector, are New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Indiana, Florida, California, Massachusetts, and Missouri.
Also emerging as biotech hotspots are Georgia, Maryland, and Texas.
Green Technologies
On
December 19, 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy
Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007. The key factor in this
legislation was an expansion of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS),
first enacted into law as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This
expansion requires the use of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels
annually by 2022, of which 21 billion gallons must come from advanced
biofuels; additionally, 16 billion gallons must come from cellulosic
ethanol by 2022.
All of this is great news for those companies
involved in the production of ethanol, solar, wind, and other
alternative energy sources. "A lot of alternative energy sources are in
the early stages of development," says Canup. "It's not a huge market
right now, but it's certainly going to develop into a huge market
pretty quickly." The numbers certainly bear this out. According to
Ethanol Across America, a nonprofit, non-partisan education campaign of
the Clean Fuels Foundation, by late 2007, 125 U.S. plants had produced
seven billion gallons of ethanol annually, with another 80 plants under
construction. This has led more than 100 communities in the United
States to build ethanol plants.
According to the U.S. Department
of Commerce, as of 2005, the ethanol industry has added more than $25
billion to the nation's gross economic output, through operating
spending and capital spending for new plants; it has supported more
than 147,000 jobs across all sectors of the economy; and $4.4 billion
went directly to consumers this past year through increased economic
activity and new jobs. In fact, the General Accounting Office reports
that a 50 percent decline in ethanol production would cost the U.S.
Treasury $3.2 billion annually.
Solar power has also exploded in
Europe, Japan, and the United States. According to the Global Solar
Center, for the past 15 years, market demand for solar power has grown
30 percent per year. The U.S. solar market increased 57 percent in 2007
and is expected to skyrocket in 2008. The United States is the
fourth-largest market for solar power behind Germany, Spain, and Japan,
with California controlling 80 percent of the U.S. solar market.
The
photovoltaic industry generated $17.2 billion in global revenues in
2007. A report by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association and
Greenpeace reports that solar energy could generate 2.5 percent of the
world's electricity and fulfill the annual output from 150 coal-fired
power plants by 2025. The report also stated that photovoltaic systems,
which convert solar light energy into power, now generate 0.05 percent
of world electricity and could rise to 2.5 percent in 2025 and 16
percent in 2040.
As high-tech industries continue to grow
throughout the United States, more locations will have opportunities to
join the growing list of hotspots. Those that can meet the needs of
companies seeking low costs, educated employees, and highly desirable
quality-of-life offerings will see the most success.
