Firms must measure overall environmental impact of datacentres
Archana Venkatraman  IT must move beyond just measuring a
datacentre’s energy efficiency and power consumption to
assessing its overall environmental impact to make meaningful
changes and ensure IT facilities are truly sustainable.  As
businesses come under increasing pressure from regulators and
government bodies to determine their total carbon footprint,
they must shift away from assessing a single criterion to a
global assessment, according to the industry body The Green
Grid.  But current datacentre-efficiency methodology is
restricted to the energy use alone.   “Yes, reducing PUE [power
usage effectiveness] and using renewable energy will have a
significant positive impact on how you conduct your business,”
said Christophe Garnier, The Green Grid’s EMEA Technical Work
Group member.   “But if you want a fair and honest assessment of
exactly what impact your facilities are having on the
environment, then you must assess the impact of all eleme