Issue 4, June 2009
FOCUS COVER FEATURE
H
ow quickly is the data center industry adapting to the looming carbon credit scheme, which will impact businesses in early 2010?
How will the scheme affect data center services contracts? Will it drive data center investment overseas to countries with less stringent tax regimes?
The impact of the carbon credit scheme will be seismic. This is no conventional bomb – it will have an immediate impact on every aspect of data center operations.
Within its Carbon Reduction Commitment, the UK is taking a lead on carbon taxes that will affect those organisations using 6,000MWH or more per year. This will affect more than 5,000 UK organisations, according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and many data center operations.
Amid all the uncertainty over exactly how data centers will be affected, carbon emissions and carbon trading have already become a topic for discussion in data center services contracts between end users and suppliers, and are fast-becoming a major topic for colocation customers as well. It is already being used as a marketing tool by vendors.
On the side of both supplier and customer, there appears to be a good deal of confusion, misunderstanding and frustration. DatacenterDynamics’ own research reveals that users don’t trust the UK government (in the form of DECC) to manage the data collection process or fi nancial collection and recycling (see graphs).
Vendors are being extremely cautious. In a paper entitled Key Data Center Trends for 2009, John Bennett, worldwide director of Data Center Transformation Solutions at HP, wrote: “Using technology to ‘go green’ is a trend that has become a global movement, only to gain momentum in 2009, as key business goals for chief information offi cers will include the reduction of energy costs. However, technology organisations will be challenged to quantify the money saved using green technology and measure their carbon footprint reduction. In addition, in 2009, legislation on data center power usage will rise as a concern.”
HP’s consulting arm, EDS, is increasingly being called to understand the carbon issue and talks about it in terms of carbon audits.
What this shows is that you can only know what you know – and right now, no one knows much apart from the fact that carbon tax is coming.
So what can we expect, apart from a lack of
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The increased focus on regulation has polarised industry attitudes. The middle ground of uncertainty and indecision has now diminished to less than 4% from the 35% who were undecided or unsure about the necessity of external regulation to help the industry deal with levels of power consumption in 2007. Over the same period, the proportion expressing a strong opinion, whether pro-regulation (to the right of the bar) or anti-regulation (to the left of the bar), has increased substantially.
There is industry agreement that there needs to be greater cooperation to meet the challenges posed by the demands of the CRC. There is a worrying lack of top-of-mind awareness of 2008’s process of consultation and, in this context, the perception that the timetable for introduction is too quick is not surprising.
Industry reaction to the CRC is positive in principle, but mixed when it comes to the detail. Six in 10 believe the initiative is timely and necessary in the fi ght to reduce data center energy consumption, and many believe that, to date, it has not been fully thought through. One in fi ve believe the initiative is not necessary, with the remaining 16% not having enough information to comment on it.
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