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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- In its latest initiative to dramatically raise the energy efficiency of data centers in both the short and long term, the global consortium for the advancement of energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, The Green Grid (www.thegreengrid.org), has released an easily digestible guide to policies affecting the data center industry in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
According to The Green Grid's Tuesday announcement at the EMEA Technical Forum in London, "The Green Grid Energy Policy Research For Data centers" explains everything organisations need to know about current and forthcoming policies affecting the data center industry in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The report also provides a summary of incentives and voluntary initiatives, along with practical steps for improvement and achievement.
Climate change and fuel security have significantly moved up in the policy agenda at both the European Union and national levels, and as data centers and their energy footprint grows, the industry will be particularly affected by the drive for energy efficiency. In fact, this is one of the key highlights expected to result from the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit in December.
"The overall finding from the report is that legislation is continuously tightening, and therefore it is advisable to innovate now and seek out opportunities to manage future implications for all data centers across the region," Dell representative and The Green Grid EMEA Technical Work Group chair Vic Smith said in a statement.
Faced with the implications of rising legislation, The Green Grid's guide provides recommendations on how to best achieve these and prepare for future initiatives. For instance, it recommends that all stakeholders prepare for and manage risks associated with the UK's Carbon Reduction Commitment. Data center operators should proactively measure and report their energy consumption and drive continuous improvements in hardware, software, and building services. And data center operators should make full use of available energy efficiency incentives, such as tax reductions and capital allowances.
Future legislation will have far reaching implications for data center operators, according to The Green Grid. Revisions to Energy Performance of Buildings Directive will force new buildings to have zero net energy consumption (or "zero energy") by the end of 2018, and member states will set minimum percentages for a share of existing buildings to be energy neutral in 2015 and 2020.
The forthcoming UK carbon trading laws (under its Carbon Reduction Commitment to cut 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050) will establish a new carbon trading market from April 2010, which could present the most significant financial risk to the data center sector as daily penalties will be enforced for non-compliance. The whitepaper covers some indicative models of how the legislation would affect data centers of different sizes.
The Green Grid will be discussing the new guide in Paris on Thursday, October 22, at its latest EMEA Technical Forum since last week's events in Frankfurt, Germany and Amsterdam.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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