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7

The Need for Standard

IT Energy-Use Metrics

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”

—Quotation attributed to many, including W. E.
Deming and Peter Drucker

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As mentioned earlier, to measure green IT, we must have standards as to
what constitutes green IT. The standards are IT energy-use metrics. This
chapter explores the status and future for IT energy-use metrics. In addition
to measurements for IT energy use, this chapter also discusses the Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating
System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). LEED
provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction.
LEED does not relate directly to green data centers, but rather to the overall
building. LEED’s applicability to green IT is discussed in the LEED section
of this chapter.
Another metric for green IT is the Electronic Product Environmental
Assessment Tool (EPEAT). EPEAT got a big boost in January 2007, when
President Bush signed an executive order requiring that 95 percent of elec-
tronic products procured by federal agencies meet EPEAT standards, if
there’s a standard for that product. First, however, let’s look at some stan-
dards and metrics specifically developed for measuring IT and data center
energy efficiency, such as SPEC marks and the metrics being developed by
the EPA. The EPA is pushing for metrics for all aspects of data center use,
and the EPA metrics should be the guideline for green data centers.
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