Green IT is a hot topic here at the Gartner Data Center Conference with 250 people in John Phelps presentation.

More and more enterprises are considering a green data center and what that actually means. This presentation looks at some best practices that can be done today and also looks at key green technologies and processes to consider for the future.

Key Issues:

What critical forces will drive enterprises to consider green data center strategies during the next five years?

What best practices and processes should users follow when creating a green data center?

What are some of the new green technologies that are emerging that companies should be tracking?

John covered a good overview of Green Data Center.

Mike Manos’s presentation was a more specific drill down into the topic of Carbon Regulation coming.

Regulation. It's Real. It's Coming. It's Expensive.

Wednesday, 02 December 2009
01:45 PM-02:45 PM

Speaker: Mike Manos
Location: Octavius 2
Session Type: Solution Provider Session

Energy regulation is coming. The US House of Representatives has already passed its Cap and Trade legislation and the Senate has a bill in committee. In Europe it already exists. The operational and cost impact on datacenters in the today's regulatory environment is substantial. In this presentation Mr. Manos will provide a detailed overview of the pending industry-impacting legislation and what you will need to do to negate its impact.

Mike was as passionate as ever. Mike started off asking if Data Center Regulation is an issue. 80% of audience raised their hands.

There are about 125 people in the room.

One specific Mike drilled into Carbon Reduction Commitment CRC in the UK, and the impact of the act.

CRC is designed to improve energy efficiency in large organisations. It will operate as a 'cap and trade' mechanism, providing a financial incentive to reduce energy use by putting a price on carbon emissions from energy use. In CRC, organisations buy allowances equal to their annual emissions. The overall emissions reduction target is achieved by placing a ‘cap’ on the total allowances available to each group of CRC participants. Within that overall limit, individual organisations can determine the most cost-effective way to reduce their emissions. This could be through buying extra allowances or investing in ways to decrease the number of allowances they need to buy.

Let me drop to the closing statement.

Preparing for Regulation. What to do?

Prepare for regulation. (make a plan)
Measure energy consumption.
May require work changes.
Select appropriate tools.
Need to determine how to look at data centers in aggregate. (holistic view)

Overall it was good to see that the audience was engaged on the topic.

Yeh!!! Mike told the audience water is the next issue.

Matt Stansberry was in the audience as well, so hopefully he’ll write something as well.