Equinix, Inc, a leading global provider of network-neutral datacenters and Internet exchange services, has announced that it has joined the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ENERGY STAR® program, and that it has committed to assisting with EPA's initiative to develop a ratings program to measure, track and improve the energy performance of the nation's datacenters.
The ENERGY STAR program began in 1992 as a voluntary market-based partnership for businesses in all industries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through increased energy efficiency.
Equinix has agreed to participate in EPA's data collection initiative aimed at developing a specific ENERGY STAR ratings program to measure, track and improve the overall energy performance of the nation's datacenters. The goal of the program is to assist datacenter operators in improving energy efficiency by assessing energy performance using standardized metrics that are simple and can be tracked on a continuous basis.
To develop the rating system, EPA is collecting data on energy use and operating characteristics from a large number of existing datacenter operators, including both stand-alone facilities as well as datacenters located in offices and other buildings. Equinix's participation in the program will include the collection of 12 consecutive months of IT and datacenter energy use data from June 2008 through June 2009 from a sampling of its US Internet Business Exchange (IBX®) centers. Participants in the program currently include 150 datacenter owners and operators, industry associations, and equipment suppliers and consultants.
While this initiative will focus on the datacenter infrastructure, such as power and cooling operations, a separate ENERGY STAR specification is being developed to address the energy efficiency of servers typically hosted within a datacenter and which generally consume as much, or in some cases more, power than the operational infrastructure. EPA plans to expand the ENERGY STAR program to other datacenter IT products longer term, including storage and networking equipment.
EPA currently provides an energy performance rating for a wide variety of commercial buildings and plants, allowing operators to compare their performance against a national sample of similar facilities and track changes in energy use over time. The performance rating system is based on a scale of 1-100, with a rating of 50 indicating that the building, from an energy consumption standpoint, performs better than 50% of all similar buildings nationwide. A rating of 75 qualifies the building for the ENERGY STAR designation.
"By joining ENERGY STAR, Equinix has made a fundamental commitment to resource conservation through the continuous improvement of energy performance, said Mike Zatz, manager of EPA's ENERGY STAR Commercial Buildings Program. "We look forward to its participation as we develop the performance metrics for the increasingly important segment of datacenter facilities and lead the way to greater energy efficiencies.
"Together with EPA and our industry peers, Equinix is pleased to help develop consistent methods for measuring energy performance as well as sharing industry best practices for operators of large datacenters, said Dave Pickut, chief technology officer for Equinix. "Equinix has more than 10 years of experience in designing and building some of the most modern datacenters in the industry and we believe that we have a lot to offer, as well as a lot to gain, from participating in this initiative.
Equinix is committed to operating the most efficient datacenters in the industry adopting a variety of programs that maximize efficiency of operations, reduce environmental impact and support industry green efforts including:
Implementing the most advanced datacenter design that leverages the efficiencies of scale;
Working with customers to develop equipment deployments and configurations that maximize efficiency and conservation, including hot-aisle, cold-aisle configurations and separation of supply and exhaust air;
Harnessing external air temperature with the deployment of water-side heat exchangers and air economizers that cool centers by bringing in outside air when conditions are favorable;
Using green energy sources, such as Equinix's four centers in Switzerland which operate on 100% hydropower;
Aggressively implementing new designs and technologies which take maximum advantage of conservation;
and Participation in The Green Grid, a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in datacenters and business computing ecosystems.