Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) vendor Power Assure has teamed up with Carbonomics, a consultant that helps companies navigate the convoluted carbon-credit trading market, to help data center operators in developing countries cut energy use of their facilities and turn the savings into carbon-emission credits they can sell to companies in the developed world.

The companies are able to do this because a new data center energy-consumption baseline and monitoring methodology developed by the United Nations is based on two Power Assure products, the company said.

Power Assure’s EM/4 Dynamics Power Management solution and PAR(4)/UL2640 for IT equipment baseline measurements make up the foundation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change baseline and monitoring methodology.

The methodology is called “Energy efficiency in data centers through dynamics power management.” It was based on a protocol that was prepared and proposed by Power Assure and Carbonomics.

Companies in developing countries can make money by selling carbon-emission credits they are allotted but do not use to companies in industrialized nations, where these credits are scarce. According to Power Assure, this is now a multi-billion-dollar market.

The DCIM vendor partnered with Carbonomics to use the consultancy’s expertise in moving clients’ energy efficiency projects quickly through the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. This is the name of the mechanism for trading emission credits.

Brad Wurtz, Power Assure’s president and CEO, said recognition of the company’s technology by the UN adds carbon-emission management capabilities to the vendor’s value proposition.

“This is a first-to-market solution in what is becoming a huge market: increasing the efficiency and lowering the power cost and associated carbon usage of the rapidly expanding growth of data centers across the globe,” he said.