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Intel have carried out a limited pilot to find out how a data centre would perform without the usual data centre environmental controls [PDF].
The top and bottom of it was that the servers, over a nine month test period performed as well whilst exposed to regular none air conditioned air and limited air filtration as servers in a fully air conditioned data centre.
Does this mean that you can switch off all of your air conditioners and circulate none conditioned air instead? No, I’d wait for longer follow up studies before you do that. 
[via vnunet.com]
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I don’t see this as being much different from those occasional reports that come out from physiologists who claim that athletes don’t need to stretch before a game.
Great, interesting, but every coach in existence is still going to do it because they’ve had personal experience that not stretching leads to pulled muscles, just like most IT people have experience that says no AC is a Bad Thing(tm).
During the study the servers were placed in the car park (under cover one would assume) so I expect fire regulations weren’t an issue. Data centres are sealed because of fire regulations as much as anything else. It is hard to see that changing any time soon.
It would save a lot of power if instead of running the data centre at an ambient 18-21 celcius the temperature was permitted to be higher. In the study at least the operating temperature varied quite a lot apparently without any significant reduction in reliability albeit over a relatively short study.
It seems that you can solve the power consumption problem in one of two ways: 1) cool the servers using much less electricity; 2) remove the requirement to cool equipment so much in the first place.
Option 1 doesn’t seem very likely any time soon unless those much heralded fusion reactors start working soon.