6 valuable green IT resources

Embarking down the sustainable IT path can be pretty daunting. You may very well appreciate, in a general sense, the potential benefits you can reap from green IT, including lower costs and a better environmental track record.

Fortunately, there are some valuable resources out there to assist you. Some sources might cost a bit of money. Some deliver information for free. And there’s one that might not only provide some gratis guidance but will also help you pay for an energy-saving green-tech implementation.

The following is a list of six valuable resources to consider tapping as you contemplate embracing green technology.

1. ASHRAE – At first blush, you might not equate the long-winded organizational name American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers with datacenter efficiency. However, ASHRAE is an excellent resource for information on that very subject. The nonprofit group has some 50,000 members. Its lofty mission is “advancing heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration to serve humanity and promote a sustainable world through research, standards writing, publishing and continuing education.”

For starters, the group has for sale a book called “Best Practices for Datacom Facility Energy Efficiency,” a title that leaves no question as to what the book is about. The 230-page publication thoroughly covers the gamut of reaping higher efficiency from the datacenter, from design and construction to operation and maintenance. Topics include HVAC equipment, airflow, liquid cooling, and lots more.

It’s certainly not bedtime reading, nor is it well suited for a layman trying to get a better sense of what sustainable IT is all about. However, a datacenter admin or engineer will certainly find useful nuggets of information in this clearly written publication.

Also, because the group’s not affiliated with a particular vendor, you needn’t worry about it attempting to push a particular technology on you. For more information, go to the bookstore section of the ASHRAE Web site.

In addition to the book, the group offers workshops on datacenter efficiency, such as a series of free events coming up in New York this year.

2. The Uptime Institute – If shooting the messenger was standard practice in the IT industry, the vendor-neutral Uptime Institute would be riddled with bullet-holes. Take, for example, the results of the group’s recent study, which found that 42 percent of enterprise datacenters will exceed power capacity within 12 to 24 months unless they carry out a costly expansion; another 23 percent said it would take 24 to 60 months to run out of power capacity.

Fortunately, Uptime doesn’t just deliver the bad news; it provides answers in many forms. Like ASHRAE, Uptime hosts educational seminars on various topics pertaining to datacenter energy efficiency. (They’re not free, by the way — but they can be quite valuable, according to folks who’ve attended.)

Uptime also hosts a load of free white papers on its site with practical information on topics such as deploying alternative cooling systems and budgeting for the cost of a new datacenter.

3. The Green Grid – This consortium of high-tech companies has blossomed considerably since its official formation last year. It started off with 11 companies — some of the most well-recognized IT companies in the world — and now has a roster of more than 150 organizations. The group’s ambition: advancing energy efficiency in the datacenter.

To that end, members of the Green Grid have worked feverishly since the group’s founding to generate recommended metrics, best practices, and technologies — while remaining vendor-neutral in the process. Some of the fruits of the group’s labors are freely available for public consumption, both through white papers and at events. Much of the meat, though, remains restricted to paying Green Grid members. (Membership starts at $5,000 per year.)

4. Your local utility – Datacenter operators aren’t the only ones feeling the pain of limited energy supplies; many utility companies are struggling to meet customer demand. The good news is many utility companies realize it’s in their best interest to help companies cut power consumption — and are even going so far as to help customers foot the bill of energy-saving investments. PG&E in California is leading the trend: It’s helped customers pay for virtualization projects and massive solar-power implementations, for example.

Other utilities are expected to follow suit. As reported recently by IDG, “Seattle City Light will launch a program in the coming weeks that rewards companies for installing network-based software that manages PC power consumption” while “BC Hydro, which serves British Columbia … plans to offer to pay up to 60 percent of the cost of implementing virtualization software to consolidate servers.”

Is your local utility part of the trend? Check the company Web site or pick up the phone and find out.

5. The EPA and U.S. Department of Energy – The benefits of seeing companies marry green and IT aren’t lost on the Feds. Through Energy Star, for example, the EPA and DOE have already raised the energy-efficiency bar for computers and other desktop hardware with Energy Star 4.0. They aren’t stopping there, though.

The EPA last year released a report to Congress, assessing opportunities for energy-efficiency improvements for servers and datacenters in the United States. In the report, the EPA recommends “a mix of programs and incentives, as well as a holistic approach to achieve significant savings.” (You can download the entire report from the Energy Star Web site.)

Moreover, the EPA and DOE are working on developing new energy-efficiency specifications for servers and benchmarks for entire datacenters. Right now, they’re seeking input from organizations for both endeavors. The payoff, though, will be freely available specifications and practices with weigh-in from stakeholders of all types.

6. EPEAT – EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) is the resource of choice for organizations seeking to purchase the greenest IT wares. (Federal agencies are now required to purchase at least 95 percent EPEAT-registered products, in fact.) The EPEAT product registry, maintained by the Green Electronics Council, is a database of IT gear that meets a strict set of environmental criteria, including power consumption, materials used in the product, materials used to package the product, and many, many others. Depending on how many criteria they meet, products receive a rating of Bronze, Silver, or Gold.

As I’ve written previously, the differences between, say, Gold and Silver products can be trivial. Nevertheless, EPEAT is an excellent place to start a green-tech shopping spree.

The above list is by no means exhaustive, and I’d love to know which resources you consider most valuable as you research green-tech practices and purchases.