Good News: The EPA Has Decided Against Regulating Data CentersGood News: The EPA Has Decided Against Regulating Data Centers

According to a recently published interview, an official with the Environmental Protection Agency says the EPA will proceed with its plan to extend the Energy Star program to enterprise servers, but it is otherwise not likely to regulate data centers.The executive was Andrew Fanara, team leader at the EPA for Energy Star product specifications, who was quoted in Forbes.com as saying that neither the EPA nor the Department of Energy has any plans to regulate the amount of energy that IT devices can draw, or the amount of power that data centers can use.

Basically, he told the interviewer, economic forces can be expected to handle the situation without any need for federal regulations. Also, the field is changing so fast that the rule-making process wouldn't work well, and already in some regions the utilities can't supply large amounts of additional power on short notice. But the EPA is proceeding with its plans for Energy Star criteria for enterprise servers.

The current Energy Star specification for computers only covers servers that are derived from desktops, and excludes rack units and blades. (Strangely, it also exempts desktop-derived servers from having to offer a sleep mode.)

Due by December 31, he said the new enterprise server speciation would take into account the fact that efficiency can vary by load, but it should still provide a meaningful comparison between products.

As usual, vendor compliance will be voluntary, but federal agencies will be required to buy products that comply.

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