New Data Center Sustainability Metrics

Green Grid announced the release of two new data center sustainability metrics designed to help improve carbon and water-use effectiveness.

Source: Green Grid

Share

The Green Grid announced the creation of two new metrics designed to help improve the sustainability of data center facilities by measuring the effectiveness of carbon and water use tied specifically to the IT energy infrastructure they contain.   The new metrics, called Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE) and the upcoming Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), are joining The Green Grid’s Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric. All are designed to help IT, facilities, and sustainability organizations across the globe optimize their data centers.

PUE helps managers determine the efficiency of the IT gear in their data centers by comparing the total amount of energy consumed by the data center facility to the total amount of energy consumed by the IT equipment inside it. PUE was recently established by a cross-industry data center metric task force as the recommended metric for determining energy efficiency in dedicated data center facilities.

CUE will help managers determine the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated in delivering work from the IT gear in a data center facility. Similarly, WUE will help managers determine the amount of water used by the facility, and the amount used to deliver work from IT operations.

A white paper outlining the new CUE metric, including methods for calculating it, can be found on The Green Grid’s Web site. Materials related to WUE will be made available in the first quarter of 2011. PUE, CUE and WUE will be discussed at length at The Green Grid’s Technical Forum 2011 in March, and interested organizations can become active in The Green Grid by becoming members.

The Green Grid welcomes active participation from the organization’s members and the industry at large on these topics, consistent with its efforts to encourage worldwide industry collaboration on strategic and tactical projects to improve data center efficiency.  Registration to The Green Grid Technical Forum 2011 opens to members and non-members today, and the event will be held on March 1-2 in Santa Clara, CA. Attendance is open to members of The Green Grid on March 1, and then opens to the public and the media on March 2. Topics will include technical content and training in the areas of energy efficiency and sustainability, including PUE, CUE and WUE metrics.