Building & Design

The European Commission (EC) has published a voluntary code of conduct for running an energy efficient data centre. The guidelines, recommendations and best practices could reduce energy consumption by up to 20%.

The code of conduct covers IT equipment such as servers and the environmental conditions under which they are maintained.

Last year, data centres in Europe consumed 56 TWh of electricity – as much as some entire countries consume. This level of energy consumption equates to CO₂ emissions of around 2% of the global total – about the same as the airline industry.

If no action is taken to curb the energy usage of data centres, consumption could almost double to reach 104 TWh by 2020.

But a few simple measures can reduce energy usage. For example, instead of running many servers at low capacity, creating ‘virtual servers’ from just a few servers means that they can be run at full load.

Data centres are also often overcooled. Increasing the temperature in server rooms, using natural cooling instead of air chillers or providing cooling only where it is needed can also reduce energy usage.

UK Minister for Sustainable Development and Energy Innovation, Lord Hunt, has welcomed the launch of the code and urged businesses to adopt it.

If UK companies adopt the code, they could save around £700 million in electricity costs over the next six years. Cutting electricity usage could save the UK around 4.7 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions, which could be crucial in helping realise the country’s now binding 80% reduction target by 2050.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is aiming to make its IBM data centre compliant with the code within the next 12 months.

BT, TelecityGroup, IOMart, Quest Software and Microsoft have also indicated intentions to sign up to the code and The Green Grid – a consortium of organisations dedicated to improving the energy efficiency of data centres and business computing systems – has also given its support.

“The EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres is an important landmark in the high-tech industries response to the challenge of global warming,” says John Higgins, director general of Intellect, the trade association for the UK technology industry.

And home users can also become more energy efficient thanks to Edison, a free energy management software system for PCs, which is now available in the UK.

The software, which was launched by Seattle-based company Verdiem in the US three months ago, claims to be able to cut energy use on desktop PCs by 80%.

For further information:
re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/energyefficiency/html/standby_initiative_data%20centers.htm
www.defra.gov.uk
www.thegreengrid.org
www.verdiem.com/edison/