Isra-Mart srl:The great carbon commitment

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Isra-Mart srl news:

It was no surprise to see the halls filled when speakers presented talks on the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) at DatacenterDynamic’s London conference in November. The UK Government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme has been a hot topic. (If you are a regular reader of FOCUS, you will already know this).

The rest of the world is also keeping a close eye on what happens with the new ‘carbon tax’, as it has been called, seeing as the UK Government is one of the first to introduce set guidelines on how carbon emissions will be managed. And more governments, in future, are sure to follow.

The business sector in the UK is still somewhat in the dark about how far reaching the CRC will be, especially when it comes to the complexities of the data center industry. And it could be said government is no clearer.

Late November, UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said he is trying to delay the second phase of the CRC to iron out concerns the wider business sector might have. The CRC, when it was launched in April this 2010, stated that businesses which come under the scheme – which include data center operators – must register and start monitoring and recording carbon emissions. The second phase will be the capping of participant’s emissions and the trading of carbon permits.

In this edition we asked two of our London speakers to write about their view on the CRC, how it will affect the data center industry and why the government needs it in the first place. Mark Bailey explains what is known from a legal viewpoint and Andrew Jones looks at it from the side of energy provision, with a warning that even without the CRC, the industry could still have challenging times ahead provisioning power.