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4: The Government’s Role—Regulation and EPA Activity 67

which includes green computing because computers are central to all univer-
sity fields of study.
The case study on Columbia University in Chapter 10, “Green IT Case
Studies for Universities and a Large Company,” and the collaboration section
in Chapter 3, describe how Columbia is working on green IT with federal,
state, and city governments. Those sections describe how Columbia plans to
rigorously measure recommended government and industry best practices
and technological innovations in a real-world environment. The Columbia
green IT plan includes working with New York City’s government and
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ten-year-plan on reducing carbon emissions by
30 percent based on 2007 levels. Columbia’s green IT plan also involves
working closely with other research universities, different government agen-
cies, and organizations on high performance computing (HPC).
State and other government agencies don’t just work with educational
institutions on energy efficiency guidelines, regulations, and incentives, of
course. In New York State’s Con Edison territory, data centers that can per-
manently reduce electric demand by at least 20 kilowatts can get help paying
for their capital improvement costs with an incentive of $600 per kilowatt
ptg
from New York State Energy Research and Development Authority
(NYSERDA). There is a cap of 65 percent of costs or $1.25 million per facil-
ity. NYSERDA is also examining potential incentives for data center pro-
curement and energy management but has not yet finalized any details.

Chapter Summary and Conclusions

The following conclusions can be made from the preceding discussion on
government regulation and green IT:

■ Governments have become very involved in IT energy use and related
environmental regulation. The large amount of electrical power spent on
IT has been a significant motivation in attracting both government and
environmental attention.
■ Industry organizations are establishing efficiency metrics at the server
and data center level to integrate facilities and IT resources.
■ The EPA is establishing efficiency metrics at the server level as an exten-
sion to its ENERGY STAR workstation metrics.