AT&T Services Inc. announced that it has joined The Green Grid while revealing it will also participate in a new program by the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new Energy Star rating system for data centre infrastructures.

“Managing the energy we use in an efficient way is crucial to staying competitive — a commitment that begins in our corporate headquarters and extends throughout our global operations,” said Chris Rice, executive vice president for Shared Services at AT&T. “Joining The Green Grid and collaborating with the EPA reflects this commitment, and we look forward to collaborating with our industry peers to promote more sustainable IT energy efficiency practices.”

As part of its role in the new Energy Star data centre initiative, AT&T has committed to monitoring select company data centres and submit energy data to the EPA during the next 12 months. According to a report by InformationWeek, some 240 data centre operators in the US and Canada have signed up for the program.

The new rating system aims to help data centre operators assess the energy performance of their buildings’ infrastructure and identify buildings with the greatest opportunity for improvement, allowing them to capture the financial and environmental benefits of improved energy efficiency in their facilities.

The initiative will ultimately enable data centre facilities to earn Energy Star certification if they meet the energy efficiency benchmarks.

However, the Energy Star for data centre infrastructure certification is not a given. Andrew Fanara, the EPA’s Energy Star program product development team leader, told InformationWeek that the exercise over the next 12 months is to “evaluate whether creating Energy Star specifications for energy efficient data centres is viable.”

“We could decide that Energy Star is not appropriate to data centres,” he said. “We needed to get this data, with the possible end result being, can we do Energy Star for data centers?”

The EPA is also reportedly working on an Energy Star certification for data centre servers and plans to begin work on creating a similar certification program for storage and network products used inside data centres, the InformationWeek report said.

“Data center electricity use has been growing rapidly in recent years, roughly doubling from 2000 to 2005,” said Jonathan Koomey, Ph.D., staff scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and consulting professor, Stanford University. “There’s significant potential for improving energy efficiency in those facilities, and many large companies are starting to make the institutional and technological changes needed to capture that efficiency. In this case, businesses can save money and reduce pollution at the same time.”

AT&T’S FIVE STRATEGY FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Meanwhile, AT&T revealed five strategies to improve energy efficient at its data centre operations.

- Consolidation: Understanding that data centers have very clear scale economies, AT&T works to close smaller and less efficient data centers.

- Optimization: AT&T works to improve the use and efficiency of resources in its data centers, including cooling, power, space, processors and storage.

- Application rationalization: AT&T works to unify business applications and eliminate redundant solutions whenever practical.

- Supplier/partner integration: AT&T works to integrate its suppliers and partners into the company’s energy conservation initiative process.

- Industry/government collaboration: AT&T participates in forums, committees and commissions to further identify, understand and promote the adoption of best practices and innovation.

Through its participation in The Green Grid and the ENERGY STAR data center initiative, AT&T is expanding the company’s active involvement in working with the industry to find solutions for improved energy efficiency.

AT&T’s Rice currently serves as chairman of the board of the Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Solutions (ATIS), a technical planning and standards development organization that works to develop and promote technical and operations standards for the communications and related information technologies industries worldwide. As a chair of the ATIS Network Interface, Power and Protection-Telecommunications Energy Efficiency (NIPP-TEE) subcommittee, AT&T is helping develop industry standards for measuring and stating energy efficiency of telecommunications network equipment.

“AT&T works with industry bodies, such as ATIS, so that both the suppliers and users of telecommunications equipment can coalesce around a widely accepted approach to measuring and improving energy efficiency,” Rice said. “In the end, this approach can deliver lower-cost solutions and broader benefits for all key stakeholders across our entire industry.”

AT&T works to enhance energy performance and minimize energy consumption in company buildings, IT systems and networks, and the company is evaluating alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power. The company conserves natural resources through waste reduction and recovery and recycling efforts, helping its customers do the same. AT&T also helps customers further manage their own environmental impact through intelligent use of AT&T products and services, such as teleconferencing, video conferencing and other broadband applications.