The Green Grid has, in its latest report, introduced a framework that organizations can use to identify and uniformly describe the key elements of their data centers so that diverse methodologies can be employed to evaluate a facility's environmental impact.
With both public and private sector organizations under pressure from central government and industry regulators to reduce carbon footprints, the open industry consortium for promoting efficiency of IT resources notes that environmental impact assessments for data centers are becoming increasingly commonplace.
However, the diverse range of often-incompatible approaches to assessments that exists means that many organizations struggle to have a clear idea of exactly what such assessments should entail, says The Green Grid. The central problem organizations face is the lack of a universal definition of what a data center is, contends the consortium.
The new report, Data Center Life Cycle Assessment Guidelines, examines the benefits of a life cycle approach to environmental impact assessment, deconstructs the process of defining assessment boundaries, and clarifies the relevant stages of a data center's lifespan.
Ultimately, the report calls for data centers to be assessed in a comprehensive and flexible way that maps environmental impacts against life cycle stages to determine the relative overall impact of different environmental indicators.
The report will be discussed at The Green Grid’s EMEA Forum in Brussels on Wednesday, November 21 at 09:30 GMT.
Download the full report here.