Green Grid, Climate Savers Merge IT Programs

by | Jul 20, 2012

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Consortium the Green Grid and nonprofit the Climate Savers Computing Initiative are combining their green IT programs.

Under the plan CSCI will move its programs and membership under the Green Grid banner, as the groups attempt to accelerate the implementation of energy efficiency and sustainability within the IT and communications industries.

The Green Grid says that it focuses its efforts on business computing ecosystems “holistically,” including all IT, facility and infrastructure systems. It invented the power usage effectiveness ratio as a means of measuring data center efficiency.

CSCI focuses on reducing the carbon footprint of information and communications technologies through improvements in energy efficiency and power management of devices.

The Green Grid hopes that by welcoming CSCI into its organization, the group’s efforts will now cover the “entire computing and communications ecosystem” – from data centers to personal computers.

Launched in 2007 by Google, Intel and a host of other organizations, CSCI set out to improve computer power supply efficiency and reduce IT-related greenhouse gas emissions. At its launch, the group set a 90 percent efficiency target for power supplies, a goal it said could save $5.5 billion in energy costs. At that time most computer power supplies operated at 65 percent efficiency, CSCI said.

The group also aimed to cut computer-related greenhouse gas emissions in an amount equal to removing more than 11 million cars from the road or shutting down 20 500 MW coal-fired power plants. CSCI now says it has has helped the IT industry reduce its CO2 emissions by 41-45 million tons per year, every year since 2007.

Since its launch the CSCI has partenered with the National Governors Association and instigated campaigns aimed at increasing efficiency in university IT systems.

Guidelines set by the Green Grid nonprofit were recently used by eBay to design a data center with a PUE ratio of 1.35. The center in Phoenix, Ariz, recorded the PUE ratio over the course of one week in January 2012. The center has a best-case PUE as low as 1.26 for measurements taken in that month, according to a case study released by the Green Grid.

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