Carbon Reduction Commitment angers IT industry

Although the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme was welcomed by green campaigners it has sparked criticism from the IT community.

Although the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme, which came into force earlier this month was welcomed by green campaigners, it has sparked criticism from the IT community.

The scheme requires about 5,000 large organisations to report annually on their energy use and to buy carbon allowances in line with their carbon footprints.

Commentators argue that as a result of the way the scheme evaluates energy consumption – in terms of absolute energy use – users of cloud computing will be penalised, resulting in a hike in the cost of cloud computing services.

This is because of the concentrated nature of such businesses, which manage the IT services of many firms from one enormous server centre.

Daniel Lowe, managing director of independent data centre UKSolutions, said: “This [scheme] may prevent companies outsourcing their technology to the cloud, even though cloud services are actually more energy efficient because server centres benefit from economies of scale.”

He went on to explain that some members of the community were looking for a 'climate change agreement' such as that agreed with food suppliers.

"Suppliers simply have to refrigerate food and so to penalise them for a practice that is core to their industry is unfair when compared with other industries in which such practices are not core," he said. "The government has recognised this."

Arguably a fairer way of calculating energy use would be to make it relative by considering how many users/computers benefit from any one cloud computing centre.

"The only problem is, though, that the government doesn't want to make its energy efficiency laws too complex and it is reluctant to attribute the climate change agreement to other sectors," he said.