Comments

"I couldn't agree more with your views around 'green wash' and the negative impact this is having - although its not all doom and gloom ! Here at the Carbon Trust in the UK we have been looking at Data Centre optimisation for some time and have recently launched a new service which covers all aspects of the data centre life cycle from design and build ( location, passive design, building fabric, on-site renewable energy generation - waste heat re-use etc) through to best practice operation which covers aspects such as consolidation, rationalisation and virtualisation, modular design and operation etc. Our approach is holistic in that we consider both the IT 'layer' and supporting mechanical and electrical 'layer' bringing together for the first time a full range a specialist skill sets in one intervention. The approach also references the EU Code of Conduct for data centres as a good benchmark for data centre optimisation. Due to the fact we are an independent and well respected brand in the carbon space we can cut through the greenwash and provide objective business cases for optimising new and existing facilities. This often involves more sophisticated approaches to calculating the cost of carbon to a business and indeed the future costs not just in terms of overhead but to future business continuity and market share.

We also recognise, validate and certificate empirical based evidence of carbon reduction through the Carbon Trust Standard - indeed Telecity a large co-location data centre provider here in the UK recently attained the Carbon Trust Standard - not so amazing you may think - but actually this is quite an achievement given they are in a growth market and a very high proportion of their carbon footprint is electricty consumption to deliver their platforms - hence any reduction has to be in their core area of business rather than at the periphery. Telecity actually sets a clear precedent in the co-location market as it is the first to achieve the Carbon Trust Standard – most significantly it also demonstrates that the supposed ‘disconnect’ with the customer in terms of how they configure and operate their IT infrastructure on a co-lo’s platform can actually be overcome in relation to carbon reduction - in this case it appears this was as simple as engaging their customers and getting agreement to make simple changes to the facility like blanking plates and operating temperature threshold.

I also agree about carbon footprint as the future challenge or what we would term as full life cycle carbon assessment - this is a topic we are addressing through our ICT Forum with industry and our Carbon Footprinting Company - our aspiration is to provide the ICT industry with the ‘golden key’ to unlocking the 'enabling' impact of ICT in terms of displacing more carbon intensive legacy or manual based systems and processes – in essence the key is a much simplified framework and methodology to enable full LCA carbon footprinting of products and services and hence transparencies in relation to the net carbon benefit of any given digital solution. This being said, our position is that industry should remain focused at optimising their existing infrastructure and re-designing their technology roadmaps for future build out. Failure to do this will only compound the problem of emissions from ICT as we see exponential growth of data volumes and mass adoption of existing digital technologies in emerging non OECD markets. Most importantly it will detract from the value of realising a low carbon future through a digital approach. The biggest challenge we have beyond LCA measurement is how we then go on to reduce emissions from ICT at a macro level – my opinion is we should go back to first principles in relation to design and start thinking about truly dynamic, load - linear devices, networks and hence ICT infrastructure in general i.e. its on or its off !




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