Carbon Trust funds datacentre simulation project to cut emissions

The Carbon Trust wants to find a way accurately measure data centre carbon output

The BCS and the Carbon Trust are developing a Java tool to simulate energy use in datacentres in the hope of driving down carbon emissions.

The Carbon Trust is financing the project, with the amount of funding directly related to the expected carbon savings. Funding is described as “substantial” though no figures have been disclosed.

The Carbon Trust said it has no measurement yet on how much carbon it expects to save through the project. The tool is expected to be ready for deployment in March 2009.

Liam Newcombe, director of developer Romonet, is building the tool. He said it is impossible to find meaningful measurements for server energy use as different vendors choose different things to measure.

“You cannot just stick a power meter behind a blade rack and start measuring. We want to develop an open source tool that can be used by all the industry,” he said.
“The variables are wide. It depends on workloads, time of day and even location. We are creating a simulation tool which looks at workload by applications, server set-up and even utility feed.

“So if, for example, I want to do virtualisation I can analyse what I will save. We can do the analysis that reduces expenditure and risk. This is key because energy is the new capital cost.”

IT would benefit from a closer understanding of the emissions it is responsible for, said Hugh Jones, solutions director at the Carbon Trust.

“One needs to make a fact-based investigation into where the main emission points are and what can be changed cost-effectively. There is no doubt that emissions caused by datacentres are rising,” he said.

The plan is to target new and existing datacentre operations. The argument concerns measuring the amount of energy IT uses against what it saves and finding a meaningful way to charge for it. Measuring the supply side in terms of IT use and managing the demand side in terms of the incentives for accountability is crucial, said Newcombe.

“We must answer the important business question: ‘What is my return on investment?’ If we can do that for each business process that is supported by IT, we are making progress,” he said.