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hed the new guidelines at its second annual technical forum in San Jose Wednesday. The Green Grid calls it the Data Center 2.0 program, which it says will create a "multi-year set of design guides proposed for use by data center operators and designers to build and operate energy efficient data centers."

"IBM has been spreading the whole "smarter planet" spiel for a while now, but in the past few days, they've revealed the punchline. It's data. The key to a smarter planet is learning how to process and extract information from the 15 petabytes of data we generate per day. "

"Understanding the carbon balance of a business is a vital first step towards thinking about management decisions that may have some mitigating effect on climate change by reducing GHG emissions. The calculator has been updated with the latest UK National Inventory Report (1990-2006) data published in April 2009. This may change the output from previously entered data. Working through the steps below will help you calculate your carbon balance and understand the results. Step 1 - Get your data together. You will need physical data for crops, stock and energy use. Step 2 - Log-in (on menu bar) to enter your farm details or if you have previously used the calculator select a farm profile that has already been created by clicking on it. Step 3 - Create a calculation for the farm selected. If you have already created calculations for the farm selected you may also modify, copy or use any of these, also by clicking on the description. Step 4 - Enter data in the input screen. For more guidance visit the Help page. Step 5 - When finished obtain your CALM report by clicking "Report" at the top of the screen and choosing the output format you require. Step 6 - Use the mitigation advisory notes, available from the reports section, to assess ways you can improve your carbon balance."

The Green Grid, a non-profit consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, has announced its technology roadmap and key deliverables for 2007. For the next several months, The Green Grid will focus on data collection through the documentation of existing standards and the evaluation of metrics; data assessment through a market study of current efficiency practices; and technology proposals that outline The Green Grid's recommendations for the future of energy efficient data centers.

An independent survey of senior data centre professionals from across Europe carried out on behalf of Digital Realty Trust has revealed heightened concerns about government regulation in the European data centre industry.

As you've probably already heard, Google is exploring the possibility of an offshore data facility , powered with Pelamis wave energy converter units.

Corporations are mishandling their data center energy consumption to the point that they risk disruptive failures of their technology infrastructure

Corporations are mishandling their data center energy consumption to the point that they risk disruptive failures of their technology infrastructure

The IBM survey found that only 30 per cent of respondents' firms are collecting data frequently enough to make strategic decisions that address inefficiencies across eight major categories: carbon dioxide, water, waste, energy, sustainable procurement, labor standards, product composition and product lifecycle. Twenty-four percent collect this information monthly, while another 32 per cent do so no more than quarterly.

By using direct current, rather than drawing electricity from outlets that supply alternating current, data center managers can reduce their energy consumption by up to 40 percent, according to the company.

The paper itself is flawed suggesting that virtualisation can reeduce the number of servers required to 7% - enough to handle the average processing load. Webusers want instant reaction during the peak - for that you need spare capacity. Is this a surprise?

The Internet doesn't produce belching smokestacks or toxin-spewing drainpipes. Instead, the environmental impact of the data centers that power the Web and private networks is about as visible as the electrons moving around a company's servers. But visible or not, the ecological and economic costs of those servers are massive. A report released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that U.S. data centers (collections of computers used to power businesses' and government agencies' IT infrastructures and Web sites) consumed around 61 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006 at a cost of about $4.5 billion. That's about 1.5% of total U.S. electricity consumption, more than the electricity used by American televisions, or equivalent to the output of about 15 typical power plants

A week after a slew of popular Web sites were knocked offline temporarily by a power outage in San Francisco, the data center for the Web sites has finally disclosed what went wrong. Basically, backup generators made by a Dutch company called Hitec failed to work, according to an update posted to the Web site of data center 365 Main. Here's what happened: transformer breakers at a San Francisco Pacific Gas & Electric power station unexpectedly opened, causing a power surge that cut off electricity to a portion of the city. (PG&E does not know why the breakers opened.) Three out of 10 of 365 Main's 2.1-megawatt backup generators failed to start up, cutting power to equipment of more than 40 percent of the data center's customers for up to 45 minutes.

Emerson had originally considered placing condensers separate from the building. Instead, the condensers were installed on the data center roof near the computer room's air conditioning systems, saving about 2.5 miles of copper piping.

Now Andrew Hopper , head of the Cambridge University Computing Lab, is working on a solution that could help reduce the demand data centers place on the grid.

Offshore is promising, but still early days.

Rail travel is more energy efficient, and uses less fuel, than cars or airplanes. According to U.S. Department of Energy data, Amtrak is almost 20 percent more efficient than domestic airline travel and 30 percent more efficient than auto travel ...