Data centres go green with LEED-like sustainability rating
New certification in the UK greens data centres operations and give owners a LEED-like sustainability rating.
The British Computer Society launched last month a new certification called the Certified Energy Efficiency Datacentre Award (CEEDA) that aims to bring together the best practices for data centre operations, and give owners a LEED-like sustainability rating as a badge of green IT quality.
At the moment, the leading green building certification standards, such as LEED and BREEAM in the UK, can all be applied to data centre operations, but those ratings don’t do a lot to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions once the computer facilities are up and running. And, although groups like The Green Grid have developed a number of metrics to help green IT operations for IT managers and CIOs, green data centres remain a piecemeal affair.
Zahl Limbuwala, chair of the BCS’s data center specialist group, told eWeek Europe said “We have the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centers, but the issue with that is that it is a self-certifying program. It doesn’t attempt to see what the operator is doing onsite. We felt this represented a void in the market, for operators who are looking for accreditation on energy efficiency in their data centers, but which independently verifies the work they have done.”
Data centres must be evaluated by third-party auditors on six areas in order to ground one of the ranked LEED-like sustainability ratings under CEEDA
The Certified Energy Efficiency Data centre Award (CEEDA), is based on the EU’s Code of Conduct for Data Centres, and offers a Bronze, Silver and Gold rating for data centres. In order to ground one of the ranked ratings under CEEDA, data centres must be evaluated by third-party auditors on six areas:
- Data Center Utilisation
- IT Equipment and Services
- Cooling
- Data Center Power Equipment
- Data Center Building
- Monitoring
Each level of certification requires higher adherence to the criteria, with a Gold rating requiring, among many other achievements, a PUE of less than 1.5 for the 12 months prior to certification.
The British Computer Society has been promoting green IT to its members and the UK technology sector for some time. In 2009, the group launched a green education program for IT professionals, and earlier in 2009 was the first professional body to sign onto the EU’s Code of Conduct for Data Centers.
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