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SAN RAMON, California, August 26 /PRNewswire/ –

- Data centers, projected to be one of the world’s biggest energy users, face rapidly rising costs and tough carbon regulations

TrendPoint Systems, a leader in data center energy management solutions, today announced a four-point plan aimed at dramatically reducing energy costs and carbon emissions at data centers. A recent study by McKinsey & Co. predicted that data centers will surpass the airline industry as the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and called for data centers to double their energy efficiency by 2012. TrendPoint projects that by implementing only a part of its plan — focused on managing cooling costs — data centers can reduce energy cooling costs by a third or more.

The four point plan from TrendPoint provides a comprehensive approach for actively monitoring and managing energy use in data centers in order to help companies tackle this urgent problem. The plan will enable companies to set and manage energy budgets at the user and departmental level, allowing them to comply with proposed regulations on energy emissions, such as those slated for enforcement in the Western United States and Canadian Provinces by 2012. This group has established the Western Climate Initiative to follow the lead of the U.K. and other European countries in establishing “cap and trade” regulations on energy use. Businesses that comply will be able to trade their energy savings on the open market in an “energy exchange.”

According to Bob Hunter, CEO of TrendPoint, it is critical that data centers get control of their energy use, especially as these new regulations loom that will require energy and carbon reductions. Reducing energy use will be especially difficult, given the rapid increases in server processing power, resulting in more power consumption, and a greater demand for cooling in data centers.

“Data centers will soon be hit with a ‘perfect storm’ in terms of coal and natural gas driven utility cost increases coupled with the new carbon caps. These sites already have energy densities that are ten times greater than that of commercial office buildings, and their energy use is doubling every four years. The combination of rising energy usage coupled with significant electricity price increases and carbon caps creates a very troubling picture for data centers. Companies need a complete solution to deal with this pending crisis and that is exactly what we provide. We’ve taken a comprehensive approach to the issue, giving data center owners and users the ability to set energy budgets and the tools to manage their energy efficiency over both the short and long term. That’s the only way to take control of this rapidly accelerating problem.”

An interesting read and it highlights the contribution data centers make to the carbon footprint of your business, our economy and our world. With this in mind, and the ongoing pressures in not just energy efficiency, but corporate social responsibility and the availability of power. How we provision, manage and account for our data centers financially and in terms of their carbon footprint, our corporate social responsibility becomes that bit more important. As a client it might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but as my costs start to include the possibility of a ‘carbon rating’, is your IT going to be as much a benefit as a hindrance to your business?

That one day soon, like the airlines, corporates could be issuing statements like “Profits are up, but we’ve had to pay more in carbon credit this year, so this has had an effect on costs. Capitalization is at…. and overall profits for the quarter are…”

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