Google is so big and powerful that when they take an interest in something it's a. worth watching b. more likely to progress than if your average academic write a paper. So the paper on 'The Case for Energy-Proportional Computing'  from  Luiz André Barroso and Urs Hölzle that appears in the December issue of IEEE's Computer magazine is worth reading.  Among other things they argue that 'energy efficiency must improve as fast as computing performance to avoid a significant growth in computers' energy footprint.'

Nick Carr comments that

As a first step, they recommend that energy consumption benchmarks be expanded to include readings at different levels of capacity utilization. That would put pressure on component manufacturers to green up their act.