The new facilities are part of IBM's Project Big Green, a $1 billion initiative to dramatically reduce energy use by IBM and its clients through the use of new "green" IBM technologies and a five-step approach to energy efficiency in the data center.

IBM says the new data center in Zurich will be tying into this green philosophy in a unique way. According to reports by Greener Computing (greenercomputing.com), the Zurich facility, which IBM anticipates will be completed later this year, is expected to generate 2,800 megawatts of excess heat each year, heat that would normally be considered as waste. However, in this case, the extra heat will be used to warm up a public swimming pool for local residents.

IBM's VP of global site and facilities services, Steve Sams, says that by collecting and reusing the heat from the data center, the facility will save approximately 130 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

The Austrian project, which is planned to begin operation in May, is described by IBM as a "free-standing cube with about 1,000 square feet of IT space that fulfills all state-of-the-art technical security requirements of a data center." It has no windows, is equipped with an automatic fire-extinguishing system and will use a technique called "free cooling" in the cold months - meaning the air conditioning for the data center will come directly from the cold outside air - to keep the facility cool.

IBM says that the facility will serve as the central hub for kika/Leiner's business, which has been expanding all throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and is expected to reduce electric power consumption by up to 40 percent.

On Friday, IBM announced that it had completed the construction of an energy-efficient data center in Egypt for local telecommunications provider Telecom Egypt, expanding IBM's footprint in the Middle East, as well as further developing its green program.