IT managers will need a standardised approach to
measuring energy efficiency in datacentres before buying in to
plans to reduce carbon emissions, a government energy efficiency
adviser has warned.
The draft
Climate Change Bill, published last month,
aims to bind the government to cutting carbon emissions by 60%
before 2050. The bill does not give precise reduction targets
for businesses to meet, but datacentres have been identified as
high users of power, consuming 1.5% of all UK electricity.
However, there is little data to advise managers on how to be
more efficient.
A spokesman for the Office of the Mayor of London said that since
datacentres were major users of energy, it was vital that
datacentre operators in the capital used the most energy efficient
technology available.
However, the mayor's office said it did not have any figures on
the number of datacentres in London or how much energy they
use.
Robin Murray, a consultant at the
Market Transformation Programme (MTP), a
government-funded initiative which advises and supports the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on energy
efficiency, said, "There is not an agreed method for measuring
energy efficiency in datacentres, and this is the biggest barrier
for managers in determining how green their site is."
The MTP is undertaking research to clarify the state of
efficiency in datacentres in the hope of developing a best practice
approach or code of conduct which IT managers can use as guide to
go green.
Initiatives such as the Green Grid should help, but Murray said a lack of
statistics about datacentres came, in part, from business not
wanting to disclose information.
"You need to gain a commitment to be energy efficient from the
people who buy IT equipment, the people that maintain it, cooling
and uninterruptible power supply suppliers and senior management.
This will not happen if you cannot measure the success of how
energy efficient you are being."
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