Federal Express – Megan Chavez – 2010

Goals

During summer 2010, Memphis-based FedEx hosted two EDF Climate Corps fellows – Megan Chavez, an MBA candidate at Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and Ryan Campbell of Tennessee State University. The fellows collaborated with FedEx team members to identify energy efficiency opportunities at the company’s data centers. These fellows utilized their business backgrounds to conduct in-depth investigations of existing practices, identify potential energy opportunities, conduct financial analyses, and communicate proposed solutions among key stakeholders to achieve buy-in to an energy management strategy.

Solutions

Initially, the team identified communications barriers and lack of decision documentation as key challenges for the two primary stakeholders in the data center space. Although the stakeholders were responsible for and operated in the same building, they often had different approaches to managing the space. And with limited formal communication about decisions, these decisions often created energy inefficiencies. The Climate Corps fellows interviewed team members from different groups to identify the energy goals shared among all stakeholders. Based on these goals, the fellows proposed a shared vision and strategy for implementing energy management across all FedEx data centers.

Potential Impact

After developing standards and processes that could be implemented across all data center facilities, the fellows recommended that a local implementation team be organized to design and implement a guiding policy for each individual data center. In addition to recommending a set of best practices, the fellows also analyzed two potential retrofits for improving temperature control and air flow. The analyses of these two solutions not only provided potential operational improvements, they also could generate long-term energy savings for FedEx.